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paps

238 karma · joined February 4, 2012

Co-founder of https://phantombuster.com (martin@phantombuster.com)

Personal site: https://martintapia.com (contact@martintapia.com)

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/martintapia; my proof: https://keybase.io/martintapia/sigs/gDIRFlJk-m3IIBCwtbGwmwqhNg_WwL4bYsPZYPSxEyQ ]

submissionscomments
paps··on Port knocking
Would you mind explaining why fail2ban is bad?
paps··on Get PostgreSQL Database Structure as a Detailed JavaScript Object
We use it in our CI, just before deployment, to compare the DB structure of what's being tested with the DB structure of our staging or production environment.

It's a last minute check that prevented a lot of mistakes.

paps··on America’s Teens Are Choosing YouTube Over Facebook
Facebook Local?
paps··on Show HN: API store
Well, it's up for debate. We automate websites on behalf of our users (that is, logged in as them). Which means the site knows at all time who's doing what and can take action in case of abuse.

Also, we see more and more ruling indicating that scraping is in fact legal. Websites can block users according to their ToS but they can't take legal action against them or us. Maybe.

In any case, our platform also provides the tools for anyone to automate any website (make them into an API). That part is just a developer tool.

paps··on Show HN: API store
It's similar in the sense that it's a listing of APIs. But we're providing non-official APIs that work by automating / scraping websites. Our platform runs Headless Chrome instances behind the scenes.

As a matter of fact, the automation code is available here: https://github.com/phantombuster/api-store

paps··on What to Do When Laptops and Silence Take Over Your Cafe?
In France we have Anticafe[1]. They charge 5€ per hour spent there in exchange for unlimited wifi, coffee and pastries.

As I understand it they're quite successful. They have opened multiple new cafes in Paris' central neighborhoods.

[1] https://www.anticafe.eu/

paps··on Why you can’t cash out part 1: Bitcoin’s “price” is largely fictional
> I think its also worth pointing out that less than 1000 entities owns 40% of the bitcoins.

This is FUD. 1000 wallets own 40% of BTC. See here https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses....

paps··on Headless mode in Firefox
We're developing a library[1] for this use-case. The goal is to have the same simple API for multiple browsers. Right now it supports both Headless Chrome and PhantomJS.

We think we'll begin work on Firefox headless soon. PRs welcome :)

[1] https://github.com/phantombuster/nickjs

paps··on Headless mode in Firefox
Where I work (https://phantombuster.com) we use them for scraping the web.

They're a hassle-free way of getting the data. No need to worry about CORS, sessions, cookies, CSRF and other modern web stuff. Just simulate a human and you’re in.

paps··on Show HN: Getting started with Puppeteer and Chrome Headless for Web Scraping
Where I work we prefer jQuery to the native DOM API for scraping. It really speeds up the process of extracting data.

For example with Puppeteer you can do page.injectFile("jquery-3.2.1.min.js"). I think that would simplify your evaluate() calls.

It would also be easy to speed up the whole process by doing a single evaluate() call per page with all your scraping code in it.

BTW we just released an article with tips & tricks for Headless Chrome: https://blog.phantombuster.com/web-scraping-in-2017-headless... What do you think?

paps··on Show HN: Hosted Headless Chrome service (we just added Chromeless)
It's the first time we're talking about Phantombuster here on HN :) Happy to discuss and receive constructive feedback!

Hope you like it as much as we liked building it.

paps··on Changing San Francisco is foreseen as a haven for wealthy and childless (1981)
In a similar vein there's this book that was mentionned in YC's winter reading list: https://www.amazon.com/Pandaemonium-Coming-Machine-Contempor...

I haven't received it yet but it seems promising

paps··on Using AWS Lambda to call and text you when your servers are down
Thanks for this. I would use it but you only do HTTP requests, right? It would be great if you could also do a true ICMP ping (like the name suggests!)
paps··on Using Google without a Google+ profile
I highly recommend using Alien Tube [0]. It fetches reddit comments for the video, it's really well done. If it finds nothing, it displays the orignal YouTube comments.

[0] https://alientube.co/

paps··on [dead]
Fees are there to prevent micro-transaction spam. If there were no fees, anyone could flood the network with very small transactions and it would suck.

For big transactions like this one, involving old coins, no fee is needed and miners will accept it immediately.

paps··on [dead]
No need to pay fees when the coins are old. Fees are there to prevent spam.
paps··on Peter R’s Theory on the Collapse of Mt. Gox
You can add coins to a paper wallet many times.

What is considered risky is spending only a fraction of the paper wallet, for the following reasons:

- you just used the private key for creating a transaction, so the chances of it being compromised increases

- the client you used might have sent the change to another address while you're thinking the remaining coins are still in the paper wallet

But if it's done well, yes, it's possible to spend a fraction of a paper wallet.

paps··on Your best passive income? (2014)
Mining scrypt coins is proficient. I make $400/month with 2 machines I built 6 months ago.
paps··on Four UK men arrested over Silk Road links
It has already happened: Sheep Marketplace, http://sheep5u64fi457aw.onion

Most SR vendors are transitionning to this site.

Or it's just a big honeypot.

paps··on Canadian hacker dupes Walmart to win Defcon prize
>Set up an internal company security word of the day and don’t give any information to anyone who doesn’t know it.

I don't think it's a good idea. Imagine a social engineering attack from inside the company, or if somehow the hacker has access to the word of the day. When he'll say the word, the guy on the other end of the phone will be way more relaxed and ready to give much more information...

paps··on Facebook Outage: Wake Up Call For Websites
Does anyone know what caused the outage at Facebook?
paps··on Notch live coding 0x10c
He's listening to http://www.di.fm/, specifically the Electro House stream.