In Defense of Pirates (The Old Time Ones) - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102961315

<comment><USER2> And the romanticization continues...

Just like the Wild West outlaw or the medieval highwayman (like Robin Hood), there seems to be this weird sense of elevating thuggery to heroic status when the metaphorical statute of limitations runs out. It scares me a bit to think the people like Timothy McVeigh, the Columbine killers or these Somali pirates are going to be fondly remembered as I approach my retirement years...

<comment><USER3> Human beings are rarely simple, one dimensional creatures. What's wrong with acknowledging some positive aspects of otherwise reprehensible people?

We don't have to admire or revere someone to be able to learn from them. It's not their thuggery that's being elevated here, but their institution of democracy among the crew members.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Emperor says to the Pirate: "How dare you think you can molest the seas!"

The pirate replies: "I am but a man with a small boat, so you call me a pirate. Yet you have a vast navy, and they call you an Emperor? How dare you think you can molest the world!"

\-- Noam Chomsky: Pirates & Emperors

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=676452061991429040>

<comment><USER5> The quote is from Augustine's City of God, originally, and it referred to Alexander the Great as the emperor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _At a time when the legitimate world's favored system of government was > unconstrained monarchy, early 18th-century pirates were practicing > constitutional democracy._

... and at a time when the legitimate world's favored system of government is unconstrained "democracy", modern pirates are practicing refreshing market anarchism.</comment>


Show HN: HTTP Status Dogs, a weekend project - <AUTHOR> http://httpstatusdogs.com/

<comment><USER2> Cool.

1) What's the source of the photos you don't mention a source for?

2) Is this project intended for others to actually use as the content of their various HTTP error pages? Is that compatible with the licenses of the various images you used?

3) Your footer says "© Copywrite 2011". It should be copyright. It's the _right_ to produce and distribute copies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

1) Originally, all of the photos were gotten from various sources, like Flickr, friends' dogs, photos I'd seen on icanhascheezburger and other memes, and Google Images to fill in the rest.

Then someone suggested I provide attribution for all of them. It's not my intent to steal anyone's photos, so I'm trying to go back and either find photos available with a flexible CC license (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)) [1] on Flickr, as well as my friends' dogs. A few kind people have even offered up pics of their own.

If the owner of any of these dogs sees this and wants his/her dog taken down, I'll happily do it.

2) It wasn't intended for that originally. I had created this the weekend after Tomomi created her HTTP Status Cats, really just as a joke and because I prefer dogs. But perhaps if I can find enough photos with the proper license, others can use them without any worries.

Come to think of it, I wonder how Tomomi is handling licensing issues. Maybe I ought to ask her.

3) Heh, good eye. That was a joke, since I didn't feel I had a claim to any kind of rights to these images.

[1] <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en></comment></comment>


Why Joost will fail: It's the interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/03/31/joost-lots-buzz-lacks-web-interface

<comment><USER2> I thought Joost's strongest point was it's interface. I loved the interface. Not being browser-based was a plus for me. Having control of the video's size (beyond YouTube-esque postage stamp or full-screen), video that looked decent full-screen, good (and simple) controls... they got a lot right.

The reason I quit using Joost was that they had absolutely nothing I wanted to watch. The only TV shows they were able to get were the ones no one wanted to put on TV or DVD or anything else.

I try to hop on their website every few months in hopes of them getting a deal similar to the Hulu guys, because I really want them to succeed, but so far nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> My understanding is that Joost will fail because the developers can't get along with anybody including one another, geniuses though they may be.</comment>


Mahbod Moghadam (RapGenius) brags about abusing Vyvanse at Disrupt NY 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4NAzQPll7Lo#t=561s

<comment><USER2> abusing?</comment>


Ask HN: What comes first: the idea or the skill? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
I'm an avid HN reader, but also a non-programmer. I'd like to get some insight to what a programmer perceives.
To come up with a disruptive new idea (e.g., Facebook, Uber), does one need to know programming skills to discover that idea? Would understanding how software works on a technical level lead to ideas being thought of more readily? Or should someone focus on the problem first and then learn the tools to solve the problem?
I guess to put it more succinctly: Do you need to learn about the tools first to come across a valid problem/solution, or can someone think of a problem/solution without having the tools first. <comment><USER2> It depends on the type of idea. FB and Uber are not eureka-type of ideas: they are timely innovations resting on top of existing similar products/services but probably better due to technology, timing, business model, etc. I'd say that for such ideas skill is not required but rather the ability to spot innovation opportunities.

Then there's the eureka-type idea like the blockchain or 5D storage disks. I'd say that for these ideas you need to have a strong knowledge on a given field in order to be able to come up with such breakthrough.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've seen many instances of people coming up with great ideas, then subsequently developing the technical skill necessary to implement them.

On the other hand, being highly skilled in a field allows one to see opportunities (e.g. market gaps) or come across cutting edge technology that could be used to solve age-old problems.</comment>


Journalist Michael Hastings, 33, Dies in a Car Crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenation.com/blog/174870/journalist-michael-hastings-33-dies-car-crash

<comment><USER2> Here's a lengthy discussion on the topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5922667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5922667)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks...</comment></comment>


STEM Careers and Technological Change - barry-cotter http://www.nber.org/papers/w25065#fromrss <comment> barry-cotter > ... This paper shows that the "STEM shortage" phenomenon is explained by > technological change, which introduces new job tasks and makes old ones > obsolete. We find that the initially high economic return to applied STEM > degrees declines by more than 50 percent in the first decade of working > life. This coincides with a rapid exit of college graduates from STEM > occupations.</comment>


Ask HN: Speech to Text that keeps audio? - <AUTHOR>

I'm loving saving typing by using speech to text. Particularly out and about with my Android Phone, it lets me capture ideas I'd have to remember (or forget).
However... accuracy isn't great, and unless I correct problems with the text immediately then parts are unintelligible when I read it later - and wonder "What the heck was I saying?"
Do you know of an app - for Android or any operating system (desktop/mobile) - that will let you select a word/section of the text and hear the speech associated with that bit?
I have searched through the app stores and found nothing that combines speech to text and audio playback.
If it doesn't exist, consider this my free gift to you, and I look forward to using your app! <comment><USER2> [http://living-lens.tv/](http://living-lens.tv/)

Not targeted at consumers and more of a research tool for videos, though.</comment>


John Thurloe, Cromwell's postmaster, and the interception of mail - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06s98cf <comment><AUTHOR> BBC radio programme

> Jonathan Freedland finds out how today's concerns about the privacy of our > communications, and debates about encryption, have intriguing precedents in > the 17th century.</comment>


Beatrice Tinsley, Astronomer Who Saw the Course of the Universe - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/obituaries/overlooked-beatrice-tinsley-astronomer.html <comment><AUTHOR> I was going to say that the most astonishing anecdote is in the lede, which describes the time that Tinsley, as a 26-year-old, publicly rebutted "Allan Sandage, arguably the most important astronomer in the world". But this was even more striking to me:

> _But despite her rising prominence, she couldn't find a job in Texas. She > complained to her father that she felt "rejected and undervalued > intellectually."_

> _Reluctantly, she expanded her search and took a job at Yale, drawn by the > chance to work with Larson. She divorced Brian Tinsley, from whom she had > grown distant, and gave up custody of the children, leaving on Christmas, > Larson said._

If she got a professorship at Yale (the article describes her as Yale's first female astronomy professor), then she couldn't have been missing jobs for being unqualified. And I'm assuming NASA had close ties with Texas academia, and NASA itself wasn't new to female leaders (e.g. Margaret Hamilton of the Apollo project). How unnecessarily tragic that her family had to deal with such strife because a Texas institution didn't give her her earned respect.

Even worse, she put this emotional burden on herself:

> _It was a choice she later agonized over. When her cancer appeared, Larson > said, she wondered if it was nature's retribution for her being a bad > mother._

edit: Some additional context: her husband, also a physicist, did get a job at UT-Dallas, which is why she had moved there in the first place. Incidentally, he is still alive and still working there, according to Wikipedia [0]. I don't blame him for not being the one to sacrifice his career for family (assuming Yale is as or more prestigious than UT). As infrequent as it is today for the husband to do that, it must have been unthinkable back then.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Tinsley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Tinsley)</comment>


[WWDC14] First person in line for WWDC14 Keynote at Moscone West. - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/floetic/status/473249560458829825 <comment><USER2> I really hope he has some warmer clothes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha! I'm sure he does.</comment></comment>


Microchip Unveils Online MPLAB IDE and $10 Board - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2016/02/15/microchip-unveils-online-mplab-ide-and-10-board/ <comment><USER2> Is there any reason to use PIC instead of ARM at this point? You can get similarly priced dev boards for Cortex M0 microcontrollers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I always think you should start out learning 8-bit micros like PIC or AVR. The datasheets are short enough you can conceivably read the whole thing. This gets you some instinct on what peripherals a micro should have, how to look up their functionality, how to troubleshoot when they don't work, etc.

There's a much higher bar for getting everything working on an ARM controller (ie: did you turn on the peripheral clock before trying to drive that pin?). But I agree, once you're initiated you should prototype everything on a 32-bit micro and then port to smaller or more cost effective chips once all the functionality is established.

<comment><USER2> That's a fair point. I started with AVR myself and I can imagine that I might have gotten pretty frustrated if I'd tried to jump straight into ARM. As far as cost-effectiveness is concerned, there are some _very_ cheap cortex M0 chips out there now (e.g. [http://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/STM3...](http://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/STM32F030K6T6/?qs=%2fha2pyFadujR%2fWSfahMbfqNxy8AOR702lobnZPPAgDjioxyhIVrlUw%3d%3d), [http://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Cypress- Semiconductor/C...](http://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Cypress- Semiconductor/CY8C4013SXI-400/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtOXy69nW9rM4zhsIgo0l9Hi%252bMw%252bJnLl%2fosN3n16WjTMw%3d%3d)). At least in the case of the AVR chips, you have to go to the low-end ATTiny's before there's any significant price advantage in bulk.</comment></comment></comment>


Point of Vue: Angular is doomed, React is OK – We deserve better - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vyaron/point-of-vue-angular-is-doomed-react-is-ok-we-deserve-better-fb60652a8cb4 <comment><USER2> I've built large production apps in all 3 frameworks. After using React with TSX -- and getting symbols and refactoring across templates -- there's no going back. IDE support with VSCode is incredible.

I routinely see Angular and Vue projects littered with magic strings/globals in their templates. These are ok on the first pass-through building the app, but refactoring and maintenance are a nightmare.

The state of the art right now IMO really is React + TSX.</comment>


The Shy Connector - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/sachac/the-shy-connector <comment><USER2> Slightly offtopic: I think a lot of introverts are considered shy unfairly.

I'm an introvert myself, and I've been always described as "shy", but I don't think I am. I have never had any problems with meeting new people, even if they supposedly "outrank" me. (In fact, as an anecdote, on my first job interview the interviewer remarked she was surprised at how relaxed I was).

I tend to be quiet for two reasons. First, do you know that common saying that says that a real friend is someone who can sit with you in silence? Yeah, I can sit with _anyone_ in silence. Never feels awkward to me.

Second, I hate, truly hate small talk. When I watched George Carlin's People are Boring[1] I found myself violently agreeing. And since I instinctively follow the golden rule in those cases, and I know my interests are unusual, I tend to avoid boring others by staying quiet.

What I really need is a way to distinguish true interest from politeness. But unfortunately that seems to be far too common a defect.

Any other introverts who don't consider themselves shy?

[1]: <http://youtu.be/eyWsFfd9pqE>

<comment><USER3> > Any other introverts who don't consider themselves shy?

In this society, I think there is pressure for someone who has a shy friend to label them not shy. Maybe because it makes them feel better. To put inordinate emphasis on examples of their friend not being shy to support their argument that the friend is not shy. I think, in general, people will bolster whatever argument they want to bolster. To some friends, I may come across as not shy - but the reality is: Even though I do like being around people, as much I may regret/feel the pangs of being lonely sometimes, I prefer solitude and hiding in my cave regularly. Maybe that is being shy.

As an example, the other day, I was referencing being shy and my friend's wife called me out on it. She claimed that I knew a lot of people (true) in a large number of areas (true). If I am not shy, then how did I meet these people? My answer was that I when I get focused on a project (be it, salsa dancing, learning how to draw/paint, helping a non-profit) - I get uber focused. In this situations, I draw people in because I am supremely interested in soaking up as much as I can about the project du jour. I recognize that I don't know much - I excel in situations where I don't know much but want to know more - and I find, especially, in non-technology situations - that you can't just Google it - you have to talk to actual people. However, most of these people I know - it is a very loose connection - we're not friends per se just friendly. I just know lots of people because I have lots of interests.

I can't talk sports (didn't grow up watching football on TV like many of my peers). I can't talk politics. But I am an extremely good listener - I can draw people out on a one-to-one basis and get them to really talk about what is important to them. Not always, of course (I usually have my force fields up). However, being able to connect with someone on a non-superficial basis is a joy in my life - and it usually happens within minutes - when it happens. It is much harder to engage a group. In fact, at parties, I will be intensely soaking up the conversation (saying nothing but totally being a sponge) and my friends (extroverts) will ask me later - very annoying btw - whether I am having a good time. Usually, I am because I love hearing about other people's lives. In a group situation, I am definitely more passive - and could be seen as a non-participant. And in a way, I am. But I am listening to _everyone_ and _everything_.

So I am not shy on a one-to-one basis. Does that count?

When I look at true extroverts, I marvel at their ability to work the room. To seamlessly jump from group to group. That skill can be taught - but it is more than a skill - it is a leap beyond being wrapped up in yourself, thinking that everyone is thinking about you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like me in a way... I love to talk to someone interesting one on one, but I don't tend to interact as much as a group.

I do have a theory that a lot of the people who engage you in smalltalk also have similar dislike for the practice, but they've been assured again and again that this is something they must do.

<comment><USER3> Next time someone asks 'What do you do?' (and it is obvious they are just going through the motions)

As an experiment, I recommend you try this: 'Do you really want to talk about that? Let's talk about something we both find interesting'

<comment><USER4> The question is what are you both going to find interesting? Smalltalk is what you're doing while you try to find something that you're both interested in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is incredible.

Says more about what people should do to grow their network than countless books have by so called "experts".

</comment><comment><USER6> Very interesting.

I think you can also turn this around:

 _2000 Twitter followers._ _900 blog subscribers._ _800 Facebook friends._ _700 LinkedIn contact._ _Countless presentations._ _You can't be shy."_

to say:

"you havn't made any presentations?" "you have no blog subscribers?" "you have no tweets?"

...

"you havn't made any performances?" "you have made no writings available?"

=> You're not an extrovert!

It would be nice to have a word for the type of people who actively and volontarily reaches out to an audience when they feel that they have something that might be useful to others.

As opposed to just "extrovert" which might as well someone who is all talk, a bullshitter, or a lier.

Performer?

</comment><comment><USER7> We are all naturally shy. The most effective leaders learn to come out of their shell. Business is often based on building connections. How many CEO's, founders, and leaders all know each other. It is for this reason companies are often drawn to Silicon Valley, New York and now China. It is so important to build your confidence to meet others. I know computers allow connection it is helpful to build both online and in person networking. We are moving more and more to an online world but I believe there is value in looking someone in the eyes (either in person or on Skype).

<comment><USER8> This is really not true. Watching my niece grow up from birth has proven to me that some people are simply outgoing. She didn't learn it, she just was it from the get go. maybe others learn to be shy and then have to spend a lot of effort unlearning it. and of course there are many people are are naturally shy. But not by any means all of us.

<comment><USER9> We are all pretty similar to me. At least, _I_ am.

(I think the general term for this is the typical mind fallacy: we all model others by generalizing from ourselves. It's usually a pretty reasonable way for our minds to work; after all, as humans we are much more alike than we are different.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In a room full of introverts, I'm the guy in the corner. Well, at programmer meetups I am, anyway. Shy and introverted are two different things, but in either case it extends to electronic interactions as much as it does to person to person interactions. Plus, I think an person who makes presentations may be shy, but they are still outgoing by most standards.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually making presentations changes things a lot for a person. I've seen people who spoke so softly you could barely hear them improve dramatically with some practice. Try joining Toastmasters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dude, it's OK that you 're an extrovert, take it easy.

<comment><USER12> Ahem, does that presentation say anything else? It's explicitly about people who are introverts. It doesn't mention or target extroverts at all. It doesn't say anything whatsoever negative about extroverts or imply that there is anything wrong with them.

<comment><USER11> You don't get my point. The author claims that he does all that because he is an introvert which is not the case at all. Introverts do not try so hard to make themselves generally available. It's a choice.

There's a certain ring to being an introvert lately I think? Maybe it's the new chic? A revival of teenage angst? In any case call a spade a spade.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, because being overwhelmed by prolonged social interaction and preferring to spend time alone makes you an extrovert.

What???

<comment><USER11> The whole presentation is about how to _avoid_ being all that.

<comment><USER12> It's about getting the best of both worlds. It's about getting some of the benefits of being an extrovert without having to act (because that's how it feels to introverts) like one.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town - <AUTHOR> http://business.financialpost.com/entrepreneur/fp-startups/without-affordable-housing-vancouver-risks-becoming-an-economic-ghost-town <comment><USER2> One of the main reasons of the housing crisis in the Bay Area is Prop 13 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_\(1978\))) Prop 13 basically keeps the property taxes constant (or 1% increase) as the value of your house increases (doubles or triples). Your tax gets re- calculated only if you sell your house and the new owner starts paying potentially multiples of what the previous owner has been paying in taxes. This works great for older people who own property they can basically stay at their home forever, but it creates an unfair situation for new comers in the area and the newer generations.

How are property taxes calculated in other places in the world? Vancouver? London? Tokyo?

This is such a hard problem to solve, no one wants to force elderly people to move because of a bull real estate market, but you also need young hard working people in your city for economic growth. My solution would be to jack up the real estate inheritance tax and allocate that money for public transportation and affordable housing.

<comment><USER3> Those house owning elderly you're feeling sorry benefitted from the biggest bull market it history. They may have saw 100x gains on their house while many youth will are spending 30-50% of their income on housing if they're lucky to get a good job. If they do, they can look forward to paying entitlements to these elderly people while they themselves may never see the same turn done to them because the system will be bankrupt by then. I don't see why the elderly should be any more immune to economic realities than everyone else. If you can't afford to live in your house or city any more, at least you had an opportunity to roll the dice and make the best of your life there. Others won't even get that. What about the people who will never afford to, people who might have made a positive net improvement to the economy if we weren't so concerned with protecting people. If it gets too expensive, let them sell their house and go live out their lives very comfortably in a low cost city and open the room for people who are going to contribute to the economy that has to pay for their entitlements.

<comment><USER4> It's insane. The people who don't work live close to the business districts collecting social security paid for by the people who do work who have to commute in from afar for the privilege. Then the people who don't work vote themselves favorable property tax rules so they don't have to pay their fair share of keeping up the city.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. If the housing costs shoot way up, why should those people suddenly pay more money? Did a real estate bubble suddenly make it more expensive to police the area? I don't think so. The city doesn't need more money, it needs to stick to its budget.

<comment><USER4> It's not about raising more money, it's about fairly apportioning the tax burden. Why should two homeowners with the same value of property pay different amounts of taxes just because one is old and has owned the house a long time?

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, why should your tax bill go up simply because other people are willing to spend increasingly large amounts of money to buy a house like yours?

It's not like income tax where your tax bill only goes up when you get more money to pay it with.

<comment><USER7> One can argue that it should be the opposite of an income tax.

If the value of your house goes up because you remodel the kitchen, then it seems fair that you should be able to pocket that value. You did the work, so your taxes should not increase.

If the value of your house goes up because the government opens a new light rail station nearby, then you did nothing to earn this, so it seems fair that society should be able to get higher taxes from you.

In a speculative bubble, you did nothing to earn the extra value, but--- arguably!---neither did the government, so it is less clear cut.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. The current system is controversial because there is a dichotomy between what entrenched residents and newcomers pay to that government.

I assert it's a problem with a non-trivial solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like many major cities of the world are experiencing this problem, and no city has been able to come up with a good solution. It always leads to displacement and newspaper articles about displacement, but no real solutions.

Here are a couple of solutions:

1\. Build really tall. Hasn't worked out all that great in Hong Kong, though.

2\. Rent control. This is often unfair and inflates price of non-rent controlled apartments.

3\. Tax the living crap out of property speculation. Not sure if this has been tried anywhere, and I'm sure it would be unpopular among many middle class home owners as well. I'm still rooting for Georgism.

4\. Accept that it's a lost cause and move on to the next underdog city that will stay un-gentrified for the next 10 years.

<comment><USER10> I think it's a symptom of something else: the hyper-centralization of relevance and cultural center of gravity in only a few places.

When I was younger (1990s), I don't remember it mattering _so much_ where you were located. I've spoken to older people and they concur: they've all said that when they were young being in, say, Indianapolis or Toledo was not a big deal.

Today, at least in the USA, there's a strong sense that you're nobody unless you are in one of about eight big coastal cities. Nothing happens anywhere else.

I'm talking about perception here. You can argue that this isn't really true, and that you can do anything most anywhere, but the cultural _perception_ is that you're nobody and can't do anything unless you are in NYC, SF, LA, etc.

I'm a startup founder and have been told by several people on several occasions that we are doomed because we are not in the Bay Area. I'm in SoCal but apparently if we're not in SF or its Southern suburbs it's impossible to succeed as a tech company. Obviously I don't believe this, but the meme is strong. If enough people take this stuff seriously, it's going to contribute to a hell of a property bubble in SF/SV.

I still don't understand why this is the case, especially since the Internet was _supposed_ to have the opposite effect. By making information globally available and communication easy, the Internet was supposed to flatten the world and make place less relevant. Instead I've noticed a strong and obvious trend in the opposite direction since circa 2000.

I can only comment on the USA, but what I see elsewhere seems to support this being a global thing. London has gone totally insane for example. I wonder if the Internet is actually having a paradoxical centralizing effect here, allowing larger cities to broadcast their cultural "signal" and then have that signal amplified enough by network effects to make them appear exponentially more and more influential. This in turn drives a feedback loop in which talent and ambition is drawn increasingly to these cities, etc., and the rest of the country is hollowed out.

It's actually part of an even larger trend. Since 2000 _everything_ seems to have gone increasingly power law: wealth distribution, geographic relevance, education, etc.

<comment><USER11> As far as I can see this is _exactly_ what is happening. More powerful computers and communications are amplifying the power of individuals, and as a result making relationships even more important. And cities have always been the places of innovation and relationships. Just even more so now.

<comment><USER10> But it's not just cities. Philadelphia and Baltimore and Atlanta are big cities, but they aren't the right cities. It's a small number of them. It's not just urbanism, but also brand.

<comment><USER12> I think it may just depend on what it is you're trying to accomplish with your career. Take Atlanta since you bring it up. Atlanta already is the number one place to be globally for a career in Information Security which is a significant chunk of the tech community even though it's not nearly as flashy as social-web. Atlanta is also becomming a nexus for email-related startups (it's really not just Mailchimp there are several major ones here when you look at volume of email sent). Turner is headquartered in Atlanta, as is Coca Cola, Home Depot, CNN, and more.

Atlanta has become a really excellent city for graphic artists and design firms because companies such as Cartoon Network pull artists in from the global market, and then these artists stick around and end up engaging with the local startup community. In other words Atlanta is becoming a designer hub (and the city's close-enough proximity to Disney helps boost this effect)

In addition it's also a nexus for medical startups probably due to the fact that the CDC is here.

<comment><USER10> Those are good points and I don't disagree at all, but I was talking about perception more than reality. There's still this immense perception that if you're not in the top five you don't exist, and I think that's one of the factors driving real estate hyperinflation in those places.

The other funny phenomenon I've noted is people _assuming_ we are in SV and asking whether we are "down in the valley" or "up in the city." I say "we're waaaaaay down in the valley... like eight hours South." I bet companies in Atlanta will give an address in one of Atlanta's burbs and get asked "where's that? is that in the East bay?"

Maybe the whole thing is just real estate fund or bank propaganda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If having essentially no affordable housing rendered a city an economic ghost town, then much of the Bay area and Manhattan would be "ghost towns" \- which, in turn, would lower housing prices radically.

What might happen to Vancouver is probably similar to other major cities with housing crunches but an otherwise desirable economic climate: lower wage workers will be displaced further from the city and forced to commute, housing prices will remain astronomical and suck much of the gains from the area.

<comment><USER14> The problem in Vancouver is the house prices are not driven by economic activity in the city itself. Bay area and Manhattan prices are a product of the local economies. Vancouver prices are a product of speculation and wealthy people who live/have property there but don't work there.

<comment><USER15> So why do speculators choose Vancouver of all places to speculate in?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Now-defunct Canadian Immigrant Investor program allowed you to buy permanent resident status in Canada, thus avoiding any potential future tax discrimination against foreigners. Unlike the US Green Card, Canadian PR status is permanent, affords all the privileges of citizenship except voting, and can never be revoked, even if you join a foreign army to fight Canada. A similar incarnation of this program still exists in Quebec (and allows you to move to Vancouver on day 1).

So not only can you buy property in Vancouver, but you can send your family over without worrying about any immigration troubles and always know you will be able to come live here if you desire.

2\. Canada allows unlimited cash to be brought into the country tax-free as a gift to a relative.

3\. Any gains from property speculation will be tax-free if a spouse or child claims the property is their residence. See (1) about ease of getting immigration status for your family.

<comment><USER16> >Canadian PR status is permanent.... and can never be revoked

That is incorrect. It can be revoked if the PR does not remain in Canada for at least 2 years of a 5 year period after it was issued. After the 5 year mark, most PRs have already transitioned to citizenship. [http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=727&...](http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=727&top=10)

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct. PRs must be in Canada for 2 of every 5 years, unless they obtain citizenship. I apologize for the error.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As someone who just moved from Vancouver to the Bay Area, it's obvious the issue isn't housing. It's income. My apartment in trendy yaletown was $2350/month for a very nice 2 bed, 2 bath place within 10 mins of anything in downtown. Try finding something even remotely as nice around Silicon Valley.

The issue we should be tackling is the low wages seen in the area. The same developer who could make $100k USD in the valley makes $60k CAD in Vancouver.

<comment><USER18> Ding ding ding. We have a winner. While I've never ever considered moving to Vancouver, I get recruiter emails several times a month for companies in Vancouver looking for Senior programmers to move there and only offering 80k to 110k CAD at the most. That is not nearly enough money to live in Vancouver. Enough to exist but not enough to live.

The problem as I understand it is that a ton of Vancouver's housing is occupied by children of mega rich people from Asia (mostly China) who are rich enough to not care what rent costs which drives rent up for everyone else. There's such a huge l mismatch between housing costs and salaries in Vancouver.

<comment><USER19> I know a company that pays fresh-grad $70k-$75k base salary with 10-15% bonus almost guaranteed base on company performance (there's a calculation behind it but the bonus amount is part of your package).

Microsoft, Amazon, starting salary was 85-90k to 100k+ 2-3 years ago for 2 years - 5/7 years of experience.

Salesforce Intermediate/borderline Senior SDET (SDET typically make less than SDE) starts from 100k base with a bunch of plus plus that can boost their income to 120k-140k.

OpenDNS lurking well above $100k as well for intermediate developer.

Mogo.ca pays their front-end dev $100k base and this is a small-medium size company.

It's not the norm but thanks to US-based companies, salary is moving up and up.

<comment><USER20> That's in CAD, correct? The Canadian dollar isn't doing too well, and is expected to drop to around $.50 USD by year end.

<comment><USER19> But we're talking about local issue so currency matters less for this topic.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately, Vancouver housing is being driven by international currencies. A low Canadian dollar makes houses in Vancouver a bargain for outsiders and even more unaffordable for anyone earning Canadian dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Vancouver real-estate is like buying gold for foreign investors, without paying tax.

"suggesting the typical wealthy foreign family buying Vancouver real estate pays little or no income or capital gains tax"

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on- business/economy/ho...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on- business/economy/housing/the-real-estate-beat/foreign-investors-avoid-taxes- by-buying-real-estate-in-canada/article26683767/)

<comment><USER23> This is the best response I've seen so far. Real estate is actually a great _export_ for cities and countries, at least properly considered: [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/billion_to_one/2013/1...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/billion_to_one/2013/11/billionaire_apartments_they_should_be_an_economic_boon_to_cities.html).

Seattle has a bunch of similar articles about "outsiders" supposedly driving up housing costs. Which is absurd: steel frame construction and elevators are very old technologies that allow humans to build just about as many housing units as can be desired.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure if you're familiar with Vancouver but outside of the _small_ downtown core, there isn't much zoning for density. Government policy has created a supply shortage.

However, condos come with their own issues as well. There has been a building boom in Toronto that has it owns issues.. [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/fears-that-shoddy- toro...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/fears-that-shoddy-toronto- condos-could-become-future-slums-1.2796979).

I think urban planning is more complicated than simply increasing supply.

<comment><USER25> And yet 100% of major US cities that built a lot of housing between 1990 and 2013 have low housing costs:

[http://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/asking.price...](http://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/asking.prices.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > There are already enough houses and condos in the city with no lights on > because no one actually lives in them.

To me, there seems to be a pretty obvious public policy response. Institute a very high property tax, which is abated on some kind of curve according to the amount of time the owner or tenants spend living in a property, with no tax being due if the property is legitimately occupied for more than, say, ten months.

It might not solve the problem entirely, but at least you would reduce the effect of a diminution of housing supply that is driven by these kinds of absentee owners, and that must be driving up rents, at least.

<comment><USER27> And how much do your 'Occupancy Police' cost to administer such a system ? If it relies on a property owner filling in a form, they're just going to lie to avoid the cost and without someone going round to every single house and monitoring it for weeks and months of the year, you have no way to detect people avoiding the tax.

Super high property tax when I'm not there? Simple, employ a cleaner on some minimal wage and let them stay there when I'm not in town. When I'm in town, put them up in a hotel. I'll probably still save money on the property tax and I can claim to be a caring employer, helping with employment in town. The city council are evil job destroyers by sticking me with huge taxes.

Scotland implements a 'second home' variant of their 'council tax' [a weird name for property tax]. Depending on area, it's a locally chosen multiple of the standard tax. But that's based on whether people declare another property and there's a lot of overhead in policing it. I doubt if it actually raises any extra net income.

But what if your empty property is actually from a relative who recently died and the estate is being finalized? Does that get hit too?

It always sounds simple to just slap extra taxes on rich people (who always happen to be defined as someone other than yourself), but that often leads to unfairness to decidedly non-rich people.

Rich people always find a way round these things - they pay lawyers and accountants to make sure they can. No public policy will ever fix that.

<comment><USER28> Well let's just abandon all taxation by that argument

<comment><USER29> Why would you? Tax is a very effective mechanism to control economy. And don't have to think on extremes even! Very wealthy people are buying condos there just because it's the best (passive) investment for their cash. If you increase tax for vacant property it will incentivize selling over time,or at least renting.. more offer with less cost.

In a macro economical sense Canada already profited from getting foreign $ invested in buying those properties anyway, time to make Vancouver livable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It blows my mind that the internety tech industry, of all industries, is so heavily concentrated in a handful of physical locations around the world. There's this vicious cycle where companies think they need to be in one of these places to attract the best talent, and employees think they need to live in one of these places to have the best career options.

Sometimes when I'm at Red Door in SOMA, overhearing twenty different conversations about startups, I want to scream "We have this thing, it's called the internet, it makes it super easy to communicate from anywhere! Let's go! Let's disperse across the globe!"

I mean, I get it. Face-to-face in-person communication is powerful for building trust, and the valley runs on trust, but still.

<comment><USER31> It's easy to complain about zoning, tax policies, NIMBY-ism, lack of investment in public transit, etc. etc. But the reality is that you could turn all sorts of dials to increase the supply of available housing over the course of years and decades and you'd _still_ have a situation where not everyone could live in an affordable condo/apartment in whatever $TRENDY_CITY.

I suspect that the current concentration of certain sectors of the tech industry in the Bay area is just unsustainable. There's an upper limit to how much companies can afford to pay for employees relative to other areas, how much employees can afford to pay for housing, and how long commutes they'll tolerate.

<comment><USER30> For sure. And the reality also is that people can take job offers and/or move to new cities a lot faster than builders can build housing.

I don't think building more is a panacea that would suddenly mean two-bedrooms in Cow Hollow rent for $1,000 in 2017. That said, restricting market rate construction certainly only makes things worse. And building more would help at least a little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I live in Vancouver. Well, Burnaby.

Like many Vancouverites on HN I am studying for a comp sci degree, and want to work as a developer.

I accept that I have to make sacrifices to keep living in Vancouver, such as:

-Living in a suburb (like Burnaby) -Getting roommates/a shared room -Living on a bus route instead of being a 5 minute walk from Skytrain

With those sacrifices, I can find rents for $750-1000/month. $750 is the lowest one will get for a place relatively close to Skytrain, not too far from downtown (e.g. Burnaby/New West), and in a clean, low property crime area.

More and more companies are paying $70K+ for new grads (something I wouldn't have admitted in say 2012), which is about $45-50K take home assuming you max out your RRSPs. Assuming a "35% of take home salary on housing" rule, you can afford rent of $1350-1450/month (higher if you gross more).

You can get a lot for that kind of money, like a big 1 bedroom (full lease) that's 15 minutes to downtown by transit. I dare you to find something similar in the Bay Area or Seattle, especially with commutes as short and crime rates as low as Vancouver's.

If you absolutely must live in the downtown core, studios start at $1000-1200/month in the West End. There is lots of shared accommodation in Yaletown for <$1000.

I was watching CBS This Morning on Wednesday on the Seattle channel (KIRO), and there was a story about the nuns having the rent on their soup kitchen in San Francisco increased by 50%. In BC, the provincial government restricts annual increases to 2.7% (for 2016) and Vancouver does not have a ward-based system of city councillors, limiting the influence of NIMBYs far more than in SF.

<comment><USER21> As an established middle-aged software developer with a family living in Burnaby who cannot move now because of custody issues, I'm going to give you the same advice I give to all of the engineering co-ops I work with. You should move out of the Vancouver area as soon as you get your degree.

I don't think that you're ever going to have a problem finding 1 bedroom accommodations in Vancouver because that's what developers predominantly build. Eventually you'll probably want to get married and have kids, and then you'll realize that the GVRD has nothing for you.

The detached home market now largely belongs to rich Chinese immigrants who made their millions outside the country; you'll never be able to compete with these folks working in the Canadian economy and paying Canadian taxes. That will largely rule out Vancouver, Burnaby, and by the time you graduate, New West, Coquitlam, Poco, and Port Moody. This isn't even a matter of stretching anymore - this market is completely isolated from CHMC policy now because the prices are beyond what Canadian home buyers could ever leverage.

Developers have little incentive to build 3 bedroom family-friendly condos, so you'll have a hard time finding those, too. I wanted to buy one recently and it was going to cost about $700000. My current 2 bedroom would sell for about $400k, but I don't think that I want to stretch that far on a single income, even though it would mean I could get my kids their own rooms.

And really, is Vancouver so great? The mountains are nice, and the downtown is nice if you're young. But it's a trap for the young - through well-intentioned tolerance and bad public policy we've created a city that is hostile to young families. Live anywhere else in North America and you'll enjoy a more favourable cost of living and/or a better lifestyle.

I'd leave in a minute if I could.

<comment><USER33> Why does / did the Canadian government let so many Chinese come in and buy property like that?

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure that the problem has ever been how many Chinese have immigrated, but how many _rich people who happen to be Chinese_ have immigrated. For starters, we have an entirely misguided and wrong-headed 'immigrant investor program' that allows rich people to jump the immigration queue.

I think the problem is deeper than this, though. Most people in Vancouver actually want prices to stay high; there are a whole lot of home owners in Vancouver who are counting on that $3M cheque for their house to pay for their retirement. Its the provincial government that wields the legislative cudgel here, and they're going to listen to those home-owners waiting for their Chinese-exit. Worse, much of the BC economy is now based on real-estate; selling it, buying it, rebuilding it, and renovating it. We've built our economy on selling rich Chinese people our homes. If the provincial government intervenes and fixes house prices, it would probably harm the construction and real estate business; it would be political suicide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm curious how this problem is unique to Vancouver. Berlin's real-estate values have risen some 40% in just the last 7 years or so. New York City, in the 10 years I lived there, had an enormous escalation in what you get for the same rent payment, even adjusted for inflation. Big cities deal with this all over, so how do they deal with this "problem," or is Vancouver somehow unique in other ways?

<comment><USER35> That was going to be my question.

I mean, look at the Bay Area. They command some of the highest rents in the country, and many tech-sector workers are able to "get by" because of higher salaries from their employers. Of course, if you're not in the tech sector, you're forced to live in more affordable outskirts, like East Bay.

In NYC, they have fantastic transit, so if you don't live in Manhattan, you can still get to work relatively easily. That infrastructure investment has helped NYC maintain its desirability.

Meanwhile, Toronto has a similar problem to Vancouver, except we're building tons of condos. As long as you adjust your outlook to realize that you may only be able to afford a condominium (to buy or rent), you can make it work. Otherwise, you can move to the suburbs, but our transit is garbage, so good luck with that.

Of course, I've simplified my points and glossed over the nuances. But I think the solution is really: 1) Higher density housing (i.e. high-rise residential) 2) Much better transit 3) Options for affordable rent-subsidized housing in these developments

If you do those things, I think you'll make it easier for millenials to choose to stay, and still encourage a diverse community that's not made up of just high-income tech or finance workers. Places like Hong Kong, Tokyo, NYC, Singapore, and many more seem to be thriving cities, and I think those are the factors they have in common.

<comment><USER36> On a weekday, Caltrain stops going south between midnight and 5 AM. Bart going east shuts down around the same time.

In Manhattan, subways run all night to the different boros, Metro-north, the LIRR, PATH, NJ transit etc. run through the night.

People say NYC is expensive, and living on the upper east side or west village can be expensive. But plenty of safe, cheaper places are a 20 minute train ride from Manhattan, and even more are a 30 minute train ride (and so on). You don't get options like that in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER31> Manhattan is very atypical of mass transit systems just about anywhere and, even in New York, not all service is 24 hour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I live in Vancouver. I rent half an old house built in 1941 on a big lot.

It sold twice recently, within a couple months, by the same realtor. They always collect the rent in cash, never issue a receipt. I know a racket when I see one, so I had to figure it out.

First, somebody buys a house in cash but puts it in somebody else's name, like a child or spouse. They get lots of mail sent there. This is to establish primary residence exemption on capital gains when the house is sold. They make it look like that person is living there, when it's actually being rented. Two untaxed sources of income: undeclared cash rental income and the inevitable capital gains on the sale.

As far as investments go, its a sure win. And I have reason to believe I'm renting one of these properties. It happens to work out well for me though cause rents pretty reasonable.

<comment><USER38> Sounds to me the rent could be a lot more reasonable with a 5 min conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > are warning that it's going to be nearly impossible to develop this business > into anything meaningful unless the affordability question is addressed.

one way to address it, and I know this is crazy guys just bear with me, is that these tech leaders could start paying more money. No hope to afford a condo at 75k a year? how about at 150?

Vancouver is simply not that much better than Seattle that I would go back. The salary difference is just too high, especially with the favorable tax situation in washington and the lousy dollar.

</comment><comment><USER40> I lived in Vancouver briefly and worked as a developer. The salaries are horrible when you factor in living costs. You can get a much higher salary in Toronto, Ottawa, or Waterloo.

</comment><comment><USER41> Come to Montreal! It's great here. No way would I want to pledge the rest of my life to a bank in exchange for the right to exist. Rent controls here.

It's odd: it's like the state understands that banks are bastards.

Montreal has some issues with organised crime but nothing compared to the organised crime of banking / money laundering through land. I don't have to pay some gangster $1MM for a shack.

Leave the boomers to their trinkets kids. Walk away. They need your labour, the rest is just paper.

<comment><USER42> \- __It has some ridiculous language issues. __We have the OQLF which goes from business to business to fine anyone not adhering to the French language laws. We once got fined for having the accent the wrong way in our signage, and again for having the wrong verb conjugation in our tagline.

\- __Dumbfounding Bureaucratic issues. __Once when I went to University, I was able to prove to the Provincial Gov, that I lived in Quebec, but the same documents were not accepted by the Federal Gov to prove that I lived in Canada. Meaning I could prove that I lived in Quebec, but not that I lived in Canada.

\- And it was named the most corrupt Province in Canada. [http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-most-corrupt- province...](http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-most-corrupt-province/)

<comment><USER43> I'm pretty sure that the OQLF works on a complaint basis.

<comment><USER42> Pretty sure no one complained about this.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/burgundy-lion- oqlf-1....](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/burgundy-lion- oqlf-1.3423616)

Also, as soon as my friend's company who does most of her business to the States got to a certain amount of employees, they had their agents come in to switch out all of the keyboards and software into French, and advised to make internal emails communications in French as well.

<comment><USER43> From that article:

>A spokesman for the OQLF said the letter is only for information purposes, and there are no penalties involved. The agency's goal, Jean-Pierre Le Blanc said, is to let business owners know that French-language versions of such promotional stickers exist.

>"This is one of about 300 to 400 letters we sent this month to businesses," said Le Blanc. "It's not an investigation. It's not a complaint. It's an incentive."

I suspect that the keyboard anecdote is inflated.

However, the official work language is French, but that is only because we don't want the majority to become second-class citizens..

<comment><USER42> EDIT - Removed Original Comment

You know what, I'm getting emotional on the Internet.

I'm going to stop arguing here. It's not productive, and there's nothing to prove.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Back in the mid/late 90s as Hong Kong was returning to China, the spike in prices started. I recall Condos in Kits for $200k or so, new build later in the 90s was still sub $300k. The victorians around there were still reasonable as well.

In a few short years it went nutty and prices spiked and they've only been going up since.

Those retiring age sold their places in Van, moved to the Okanagan and prices there spiked as well.

Weather is maybe part of it, setting and scenery certainly are too. Easy access to the Pacific Rim is also part of it.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is me. I left Vancouver for Toronto 5 years ago. What is not mentioned (that I saw) is that salaries in Vancouver are also _much_ lower than Toronto for the same job. Montreal is even cheaper than Toronto and is probably more fun (if you are bilingual)

<comment><USER43> Salaries are also much lower in Montréal. If you are willing to learn French, you will be very welcome.

<comment><USER45> I am from NB (Anglo). So I have very rusty French. I am sure it would come back if I used it. Montreal is a great city. My salary doubled for the same industry (programmer with CS) going from Van to TO. Vancouver is beautiful if you like playing in the mountains. I miss the snowboarding and hiking very much. But I was almost homeless I was so poor out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If apartments are 25% vacant on speculation grounds, that's quite a bubble.

I don't intend to do it, but for curiosity's sake: How does one go short on houses?

"I'll pay you to let me borrow your house and sell it to someone else. Later, I'll get you an equivalent house." Never heard of anyone doing such a thing, but at the right up-front payment, I bet someone would take the deal.

<comment><USER47> In practice you can't, but you can short the banks lending into this bubble. Also building companies can be shorted.

The problem with going short on something like housing is the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. This bubble is being pushed by buyers who are not looking to make money, but to get money out of certain countries and providing a safe haven to flee to. Unless this changes then things won't get more rational.

If you had enough money you could short the banks and then whip up a media campaign of anti-foreign investment and xenophobia. Scare the market enough and you might get it to crash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Vancouver and cities like it became popular because of the critical mass of fun, interesting, creative, hard working young people who moved there and created communities. Once priced out, they will just go elsewhere. Other young people will follow and recreate the same communities with a lower price tag. Depending on local land use restrictions, some amount of gentrification then follows. In other words, this is a problem that takes care of itself, to some extent. Visit Austin or Nashville today and you will see this in action.

San Francisco is an outlier given the extremely dense concentration of high paying jobs which drove housing into orbit. This makes it much ''stickier''. However, this entire model is dependent upon the public markets giving tech companies sky high valuations, which could change. Already I see many of the more proactive venture firms scouring outside of SF for deal flow, particularly in these gentrifying second tier cities like Austin, Nashville, Minneapolis, Kansas City, etc.

<comment><USER23> _San Francisco is an outlier given the extremely dense concentration of high paying jobs which drove housing into orbit_

San Francisco's housing policies drove housing into orbit: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf- housing/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/). There are numerous other discussions of this: [http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High- Matters-ebook/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High-Matters- ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957).

We have the technology to build lots of units (steel-frame construction, elevators): [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/03/silicon_valle...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/03/silicon_valley_housing_boom_there_s_no_such_thing.html). "We" just choose not to use them.

<comment><USER49> Would that actually solve the problem? Is there anywhere in America where steel frame construction + concrete walls + elevators is affordable to regular people? Is there even one example of this happening in the real world?

I haven't found any examples, except in already hyper-wealthy neighborhoods, or in 40+ yr old buildings in cities that became significantly less desirable, due to very high crime/poverty/etc. (Detroit, parts of Chicago, etc)

\---

> (From the Slate.com article you linked to) What should be happening in > Silicon Valley is an enormous construction boom. There should be oodles of > blue-collar jobs knocking down suburban-style single-family detached homes > and replacing them with attached townhouses. Right by Caltrain stations, > there should be huge apartment towers going up. Some people might get > dispaced out of the individual house they live in, but generally should be > able to afford to stay in the area

Is that a thing that has ever actually happened -- even just once? It sounds like a false narrative.

In the real world, the creation of the Highrise adds more units (increases supply) but does _not_ reduce demand -- because the presence of the new building makes the neighborhood more attractive, so demand rises even more than the supply was increased, driving prices even higher. If a hypothetical high rise has 20 units, the act of constructing it increases demand by 40 units (20 of which the building absorbs, 20 of which are dumped back into the already-high-demand neighborhood.

I'm in the "low cost of living" Midwest, and even here this occurs. A developer pays $150k for a single family 4bed home. Tears it down, and builds 3 condos on the site, each condo lists for $250k - $300k and is only 2bed each. The previous occupants are guaranteed to be displaced -- even if they could downsize their space needs, they can't afford to double their housing costs.

Where is this hypothetical place where these brand new condos cost equal-or- less than the old single family house that was just torn down?

<comment><USER50> Seattle is currently enjoying falling rents, and is the kind of hip coastal city that people care about: [http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2015/11/bad- timingas...](http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2015/11/bad-timingas- thousands-of-new-apartments-open.html?ana=twt)

For more dramatic numbers, including low prices and a booming population for many years, you should look at Houston, Texas, Hero Of Housing Capitalism.

<comment><USER49> > Seattle is currently enjoying falling rents.

But that's not true, according to your own article.

From your link: "in the core of Seattle, rents went up 3.9 percent year-over- year in September."

<comment><USER50> The next sentence, about how growth was 8 percent the year before, is also meaningful. This is a better/more clear article on the same thing: [http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/morning_call/2015/12/repo...](http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/morning_call/2015/12/report- finds-alarming-deterioration-of-seattle.html)

> rents dropped this quarter in all but South Lake Union, with the average > decline hitting $59 a month. Further, when all of these submarkets are > considered, the average vacancy rate increase was nearly a full percentage > point.

2015 new construction was huge, the biggest since the late eighties/early nineties, and construction for the next couple years, based on filings, looks like it's going to continue that way. So it's likely that apartment prices will continue fall or hold still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Where does the youth diaspora in Vancouver lead to? The suburbs? Other cities in Canada or the US?

<comment><USER52> _The suburbs?_

There's a lot of this, yes. And the suburbs aren't necessarily very suburban: I live in a 30 floor condo tower in Burnaby, and within 2 block radius there's a dozen similar towers and twenty more 30-60 floor towers in various stages of zoning hearings (8) / building approval (7) / digging big holes (2) / towers going up (3).

There are two major phenomena at play in Vancouver:

1\. Across Metro Vancouver, the supply of land for single family detached houses is very constrained; this is pushing prices of _detached_ houses up dramatically.

2\. The City of Vancouver proper is very hostile to development, due to a toxic combination of NIMBYism, height restrictions to maintain "view corridors" of the nearby mountains, and social activists who think that building more housing will somehow make housing _less_ affordable.

But if you're willing to live in a condo and you don't mind living a 20 minute train ride away from downtown, the cost of housing is far more reasonable than hysterical media reports would have you believe; and unlike detached houses, prices of condos have barely kept up with inflation over the past decade.

<comment><USER53> How confident are you of not getting a multi hundred thousand dollar assessment when the condo starts leaking or otherwise falling apart? Owning a condo worries me, no control over the maintenance, no ability to do any changes to it, no space to start a family.

<comment><USER52> The roof on your house can suddenly start leaking, too.

Vancouver was plagued by "leaky condos" in the 1980s and early 1990s, but that's over now: This happened due to a rapid expansion of condo construction using building designs suited for a drier climate. There have been no signs of problems in newer buildings.

Stata corporations are normally supposed to have depreciation reports prepared in order to identify upcoming costs; unfortunately these can be waived with a vote of unit holders, and most do. The best remedy here is to not buy a unit which doesn't have a recent depreciation report.

 _no space to start a family_

In terms of $ per unit floor area, condos are cheaper than detached houses. Sure, you don't get a lawn... but you get access to lots of other amenities. I'm not convinced that raising kids in a condo is as hard as people think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is becoming increasingly true of LA too. Unless you're rent controlled and have been there for a while the price for an apartment is further and further out of reach.

There's construction everywhere but the price of living in those new buildings is even more than the increasingly expensive older areas and a lot of new construction has begun with what seems like little to no consideration for its impact on traffic.

Perhaps developers and the city expect people to use the limited metro system and other public transit but few people, in practice do.

I can't be that upset though, my wife and I are leaving for the suburbs soon with no plans to come back.

There's a lot happening in LA in terms of the tech scene, but it's not enough to outweigh the overwhelming cost of attempting to put down roots there (home ownership is a largely unobtainable goal, insurance of all kinds is expensive, every neighborhood suffers from traffic congestion and on and on).

<comment><USER55> I know only one or two people who actually own their own place in LA. Everyone else rents.

Everyone.

<comment><USER54> We've been rent controlled for 3 years or we wouldn't be able to be here now. I know one person that owns a place and everyone I know who's wanted to start a family has left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I wonder how much of this and similar cases are based on low interests. You can't keep your money in the bank because you won't get any interests and at the same time leveraging your money and buying housing is cheaper. So maybe the solution to housing prices is significantly higher interest rates?

<comment><USER57> I think that's one of the causes, the other is the excessive money supply:

[https://positivemoney.org/issues/house- prices/](https://positivemoney.org/issues/house-prices/)

The issue described is not unique to Vancouver, it's a worldwide phenomenon, lots of desirable locations across the globe are facing the same (from Auckland to London to Sydney to Zurich), even in my hometown in Montevideo, Uruguay, houses are going for ridiculous prices.

A good measure on whether housing is overvalued (IMO) is how many salaries it takes to buy a house. A good salaries to house ratio was something like 4 yearly salaries, it's currently over 10 for England, with some places going to 20 yearly salaries for a house:

[http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/06/average- house-p...](http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/06/average-house-price- rises-times-local-salary-england-wales)

As someone who doesn't own any property, I really hope the housing bubble explodes. OTOH there are people who have gotten very wealthy just by inheriting and holding property, who must dread the same scenario, but where can they safely store their value? As mentioned, interest rates are very low or negative.

<comment><USER58> >As someone who doesn't own any property, I really hope the housing bubble explodes.

Where were you 5-7 years ago?

<comment><USER59> I was sitting on large bank and calling real estate agents in the Bay Area ... who either committed suicide or left the industry. So no house for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Vancouver's problem isn't the house prices. The problem is to a large extent caused by the author of this piece, the Hootsuite CEO. The few tech companies in vancouver don't pay. They expect the city to provide them a steady flow of over-educated 20-somethings willing to work long hours for only slightly more than rent. For the last 15 years the city has provided just that. The complaints now are that those 20-somethings want to own stuff. They want a house. They want to own a dog that isn't left alone 10+ hours every day. They want families. So it is time to let them go and demand the city provide a new flock.

What every company in Vancouver seems to want is an employee who is desperate for work but also independently wealthy. That might seem a conflict but in Vancouver it is normal. There are thousands of young people here who are supported by parents who have enjoyed the rise in house prices. They are desperate for work, but don't much care about the pay because they have support. Hootsuite's problem is that many of those kids are now in their thirties, mom and dad have moved, and they want to have an actual life of their own. That cannot happen at 30k in a city like Vancouver.

(Lets see how long it takes for this comment to hit a nerve. Hoot is a social media company with eyes everywhere.)

<comment><USER61> Man, lots of parallels to game-dev here. You see an almost similar problem, albiet that it means the average career is ~3 years instead of being a geographical migration.

<comment><USER60> I used to work in the Vancouver film industry. I remember an interview with some of the Stargate people where they laughed at the fact that most of the CG guys working on the shows final years (SG Atlantis) were in diapers when SG1 started. As soon as the novelty wore off and they wanted pay, everyone left. Anyone who thinks actresses age quickly in Hollywood, look at the teenagers who work in CG.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just realized that a lot of people in this thread may be Canadians looking to shift around.

If you're interested in working on cool engineering problems in Toronto, e-mail me.

</comment><comment><USER62> I lived in Vancouver from 2000 - 2005. Left when I got married and worked as a software engineer in southern California until the end of 2010. Got fed up waiting for the green card so moved to Australia (my wife is an Aussie) and currently live in Melbourne. Reading articles like this I'm very, very glad I chose not to move back to Vancouver. Sure it's expensive to buy a house in Australia, but rent is relatively cheap. We're paying $1700/month for a 3-bedroom house in a nice neighbourhood 15 minutes by train from downtown Melbourne. Now that we have 3 boys I would never consider moving back to Vancouver. Low salaries, very high housing costs and non-stop rain in winter. Makes no sense at all if you have kids.

</comment><comment><USER63> Meh... article is pushed by special interest groups. Their concerns could be addressed very quickly by raising their employees salaries. Especially since vast majority of companies sell services to the US, and get more CADs than before with the current exchange rate.

<comment><USER16> The Vancouver economy is not 100% tech, there are many, many businesses (logistics, banking, retail, etc.) that have no exports to the US. Can I ask where you are getting your data?

<comment><USER63> Thats true, but did you read the article though? It addresses tech industry in several paragraphs at the very beginning. The older tech industries might be CAD-orientied, but any new startup aspires to be global and charges in USD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> sure, you can't buy a house in Vancouver anymore on a normal salary, but nothing prevents you from living in Surrey, there are plenty of towers going up around the skytrain at Surrey central and King George where you can get an apartment for less than 200k

Yes, it's not Vancouver city, and yes, it's not a house, however via skytrain you can be downtown in a little over 40 minutes and get work done on your laptop in the meantime.

You don't need a house to survive, it is nice, yes, but many many many millions of people live and bring up families in apartments in Europe, so it is definitely doable.

Of course it's annoying to think that 12 years ago you could get a nice house in kits for 400k, or a 1000+ sqf condo downtown for 200k, but what can you do, same deal as buying a lottery ticket or joining a startup that makes it vs one that doesn't. The mountains and nature and weather are available whether you live in vancouver or in one of the suburbs

Metro Vancouver is over 2m people, Surrey is the largest city in the metro area actually, even if Vancouver proper becomes a "haven for the rich" there's plenty of other areas where one can live, the problem is that a lot of tech companies can't seem to see beyond "gastown is trendy" or "let's go to yaletown" or "downtown is where it's at", when they could easily set up in other skytrain-served area and attract more folks that don't like the commute downtown.

It is true, what you could do 10-15 years ago, buy a house within 30 minutes of downtown on a normal salary is not possible anymore (just like it wasn't possible back then to do that for a house in Point Grey) but it is still quite possible to live here, given the amount of immigration that the area is still getting.

Townhouses and condos in Surrey or Langley are still very affordable, the commute is annoying, but from what I hear from friends in the valley it's not like traffic there is that great either, at least up here you can sit on the skytrain and get things done or read a book rather than be stuck in traffic and have no alternatives because there's no decent public transit.

<comment><USER31> This sort of thing is true broadly. It's a bit more complicated in California because the South Bay is also very popular and very expensive, but the trendy areas of many downtowns have, over a relatively short period, become very popular with, among others, a certain young & educated demographic that really has turned them into luxury goods.

This has arguably long been the case in some places like Manhattan. Going back decades, living in a crappy tiny apartment in Manhattan rather than, heaven forbid, Queens was a thing for recent graduates. But, at the same time, tech was generally moving _out_ of metropolitan Boston and the computer companies were mostly out on the 128 and 495 corridors.

<comment><USER65> The Bay Area has been really bad about building, but some of the huge explosions in housing, for example the big towers going up in Redwood City, might finally help alleviate a bit of pressure.

<comment><USER31> Of course, that won't help the folks who don't want to own a car and do want to live in SF and be part of the urban scene but there are probably a lot more opportunities for adding housing south of SF--where most of the tech employment is anyway.

<comment><USER65> Well, it won't help folks who want to live in SF, of course, but it's right on the Caltrain line. I would definitely say you could get by in downtown RWC and commute to SF if you desire without a car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> The price-to-income ratio, a good indicator of affordability is quite ridiculous here. It should be around 4, i.e your home value should be 4 times your gross household yearly income, its closer to 12 here. I believe in this, and though my family makes a good income, in order to meet this ratio I had to move further out to Richmond. Don't regret it at all, since it eases the stress of requiring two well paid jobs just to live a decent life. But the lack of available rental properties, rampant foreign speculation, low interest rates is a pretty perfect storm.

<comment><USER67> Does the fixed price-to-income ratio actually hold meaning across a wide range of mortgage interest rates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Melbourne's just as horrible. So's Sydney. So are a lot of places.

<comment><USER69> So what's happening with this general trend? Does it mean some smaller cities have stagnating prices and people are leaving? Or does that mean the money we've given to China for 30 years is finally buying out the world? Or does that mean that everyone is afraid of a bubble and invests since 7 years in land?

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Previous discussion (also today) here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11086981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11086981)

<comment><USER71> Ok, we merged the threads. Thanks!

The current article seems to be the original source, so we'll keep it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Vancouver is becoming a store of value rather than a city.

</comment><comment><USER73> I see that as a worldwide problem, as interest rates tend to zero.

In Brazil, real estate prices are completely out of touch with median income (at least, the rents are still affordable, because the typical landlord owns only one or two places and simply needs to rent to cover taxes and maintenance, he cannot sit on them).

Economists and governments paid too much attention to the inflation of the Big Mac and forgot real estate and other hard assets. Also, govts have a huge incentive to allow real estate bubbles: tax revenue, abundance of blue-collar jobs while the construction frenzy lasts, illusion of prosperity for whoever already owns the home, etc.

Yet another possibility is that too many people need to put dirty or excess money in a 'safe' investment. I hear that Chinese buy a lot of real estate in London, Vancouver, etc. At least here in Brazil, the money you have in a bank can be frozen in a milissecond if you are suspect of a crime, but controls over real state are very lax, so a lot of corruption money goes into real estate, which fuels the bubble.

</comment><comment><USER74> Slightly off topic, but is the supply significantly higher than the demand out in Vancouver? I've always wondered how companies could get away with the abysmally low salaries for dev roles vs anywhere on the east coast relative to living costs.

<comment><USER75> Yes many people love Vancouver because of the weather (esp relative to the rest of canada) and the proximity to nature there are also a lot of recent ubc/sfu grads and kids from other Canadian schools who find van desirable. This combined with few roles to begin with gives you the current situation

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> There are lots and lots of empty Housing from Tokyo, HK and Sydney and Vancouver, most belongs to Chinese investors. We have empty housing sitting here, acting as a way to park money and yet we have so many suffer from housing price inflation.

If we Tax of empty housing for prolong period of time, like 6 months, which should force the owner to rent out its place, balancing some of the supply and demand issue.

IT DOES NOT solve the housing issues. Far from it, but it is one fair way to get more money to government and stop the price hiking so much.

</comment><comment><USER77> Currently residing within Vancouver.

We love it here, but we have accepted that it is not where we will be able to put roots down.

My partner and I work remotely, we'll enjoy our time here then buy a home elsewhere...

Like maybe Hawaii. :)

<comment><USER78> Funny, the last two people I know who moved to Hawaii, moved back a year later. I'll have to find out why. But they must have a good reason - this is Iowa, and its currently 16 degrees.

<comment><USER31> I know people who love it. But it's expensive and it's a long way from anywhere. You either live in a pretty soulless city (Honolulu) or in effectively a beach community of some sort that's often dominated by tourism.

I appreciate why some people are attracted to it but I could easily see it getting old quickly even if living in a condo near a beautiful beach and ocean initially seemed like the perfect life. (OTOH, it's sure better than Florida IMO.)

<comment><USER78> One lived in a rural (?) farm commune. Why, I don't know. I guess it got to be Groundhog Day.

The other, a chef in a touristy restaurant. Made something new and different every week. He's another story - no idea why he'd give that up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> For all these 'bubble' cities (Vancouver, S.F., Seattle, London, ...), I wonder if the bubble ever pops? Are there examples of the prices/avg. income getting so far out of whack that things collapse?

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global- hou...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-house-prices)

Detroit probably experienced a R.E. bubble in the day...

<comment><USER80> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_\(Japan\))

Everything is still disputed, but Tokyo real estate prices certainly played a part. There was no crash as such, but rather a stagnation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Are Yaletown, Coal Harbour and Olympic Village area (I forget what it is called, I left the Sea-to-Sky a few years ago), no longer the ghost towns of towering apartments they used to be? Even with the growth of 30,000 people per year, I can't image supply being a problem at all.

Is there any really viable plan to get the foreign owned real estate on to the rental market?

</comment><comment><USER82> Yeah, investors are all around in Bay area too. They are making the real estate market crazy. I have witnessed more than 15 offers on ordinary properties in South Bay, and well, they are selling far more than the listed price. All these investors pay all-cash, money gifted from other side of the globe. It doesn't matter where you work, how much is your salary - you can't beat these investors.

<comment><USER65> For very real reasons, it's different in Vancouver than in the Bay Area, which some of the comments touch on.

Not that you're wrong -- we bought in the bay area. Our offer was the best of 13, and narrowly beat out an all-cash offer. Of course, you have to have the right seller to be willing to "risk" selling it to normal people who have to borrow to buy, vs the sure thing of an all cash offer.

Guy across the street bid on tons of properties before buying. I think they had the best of 34 (!) offers. RWC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I can't help but to quote the full song _Modern Man_ from Arcade Fire's album _The Suburbs_ \-- which basically was an entire album chronicling this sort of issue in San Francisco.

 _So I wait my turn, I 'm a modern man And the people behind me, they can't understand Makes me feel like Makes me feel like

So I wait in line, I'm a modern man And the people behind me, they can't understand Makes me feel like Something don't feel right

Like a record that's skipping I'm a modern man And the clock keeps ticking I'm a modern man Makes me feel like Makes me feel like

In my dream I was almost there Then they pulled me aside and said you're going nowhere They say we are the chosen few But we waste it And that's why we're still waiting On a number from the modern man Maybe when you're older you will understand Why you don't feel right Why you can't sleep at night now

In line for a number but you don't understand Like a modern man In line for a number but you don't understand Like a modern man

Oh I had a dream I was dreaming And I feel I'm losing the feeling Makes me feel like Like something don't feel right I erase the number of the modern man Want to break the mirror of the modern man Makes me feel like Makes me feel like

In my dream I was almost there Then they pulled me aside and said you're going nowhere I know we are the chosen few But we waste it And that's why we're still waiting In line for a number but you don't understand Like a modern man In line for a number but you don't understand Like a modern man

If it's alright Then how come you can't sleep at night? In line for a number but you don't understand Like a modern man

I'm a modern man I'm a modern man I'm a modern man I'm a modern man_

In a Law of Rents sort of way, I can't help but to think that these phenomena are self indictments. If land prices are driven by those who can extract the most value from them, and the result is that wealthy people land-grab property that even remains vacant in some cases, or otherwise is a living space for a twenty-something working in finance, law, or medicine, who will eventually move away and be replaced by some other twenty-something in finance, law, or medicine, this seems to say a lot more about failures on the part of the wealthy members of older generations to innovate. If the best a use of that land is dormancy, sitting like gold in a vault, instead of being a place where a working class father inspires a child or where a mother teaches her son or where an artist, like what David Byrne did in the Talking Heads days in New York, transforms a space into a freeing creative studio ... isn't this embarrassing to them (the wealthy older generations)? It's basically an admission that, with the huge wealth endowment and peaceful world they were handed by _their_ parents' generation, they managed to squander it to the point where the best use of land, the most inventive thing they can do with their money, is ... _nothing_. You've got two options: pour your money into consumer variation bullshit startups, or park it into assets like real estate that deprive younger generations of opportunity. It seems that wealth and a half century of the position of passively dominating in Western-led proxy wars has stripped away any sense of civic duty, or even basic _shame_ at their failure to use capital to _do_ anything.

<comment><USER80> Those "consumer variation bullshit startups" are providing a lot of value to people. It's easy to forget how much less fun day-to-day life was even ten years ago.

I think the main reasons people want to park their money in property in expensive cities are some combination of 1. uncertainty/flight to safety 2. thinking prices will go up, perhaps due to undersupply, perhaps due to genuine value to be produced in the cities 3. for some wealthy foreign investors, an asset that's not at risk of being seized by a corrupt government.

The wealthy are certainly revealing their uncertainty. I'm not at all convinced this is worse than the time when the wealthy had absolute confidence in their grand plans for improving the lot of the unwashed masses.

<comment><USER83> > Those "consumer variation bullshit startups" are providing a lot of value to > people. It's easy to forget how much less fun day-to-day life was even ten > years ago.

I think this is _highly_ questionable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Nothing has changed in the last 20 years. House prices are still high, and salaries are still low. There is no real industry in Vancouver except tourism.

At least the rents are somewhat affordable, tho. The gap between house prices vs rent prices is immense, compared to a place like San Francisco. You can rent a 2 bedroom in the West End for ~$1500.

<comment><USER85> "Direct spending on Film & TV production in British Columbia (BC) totalled more than $2 billion in 2014 making Vancouver the 3rd largest production centre in North America"

[http://www.vancouvereconomic.com/film- television/](http://www.vancouvereconomic.com/film-television/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> i live in a subburb 30km outside vancouver.

have a 3000sqft house with a $600k mortgage.

my yearly income is 90k before taxes/deductions.

my mortgage is $2500.00 a month (a bit more than half months wage).

my property tax is ~5000.00 year

my house insurance is $1200.00 a year

my car insurance is ~$1300.00 a year

my city utilities is about $120.00/month

my car gas is about $400.00/month

my house natural gas is $150/month

my house hydro electric is ~$200/month

that just covers the necessities minus food.

i have friends who live in downtown core vancouver, paying the same as me for 600sqft condo.

that is more than half my gross income, very not affordable. thinking about relocating. can keep same position and just move remote... also had career change opps in dallas, ny, californa, etc at $120k+, better than here... but my whole family is here... my whole life is here.

tough decisions... always thought more money would lead me away, now lack of affordability will instead.

</comment><comment><USER87> This article and thread hits pretty hard for me. I was born in Vancouver and I'm getting pretty worried that Canadian salaries aren't enough to live in Canadian city. To any of you living in Vancouver and working remotely, do you have any advice for getting into that?

<comment><USER88> Not a remote job per se - but my side project which pays me in USD is working out quite well since the Canadian dollar started sliding. The economics of a building small side project have improved dramatically if you can get paid in USD and live in Canada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> The situation is very similar in Norway's capital city Oslo. Single family homes all a round a small downtown. Crammed between the fjord on side and the great woods protected by politicians, it's runninh out of free space.

</comment><comment><USER90> Article summary: Vancouver is expensive, their young, creative and fun population will leave because they can't afford a house. Let's burn down its antique building restrictions, and build big skyscrapers where no neighbor knows each other, now the young, creative and fun population can live in a gray place and become old, dull and boring.

Hope they can read a little of Jane Jacobs: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities)

</comment><comment><USER91> Vancouver is on the way to becoming the bar from the joke "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"

</comment><comment><USER92> Take note, Auckland. The same dynamics exist there.

</comment><comment><USER93> why don't the young people left Vancouver create a city of their own?

<comment><USER94> ...with blackjack and hookers! As a matter of fact, forget about the city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Monoco s a ghosttown...</comment>


Show HN: Second Screen News - <AUTHOR> This is my site:
http://www.uptopnews.com/
With the auto-scroll feature the news just run over your screen.
I would love to hear your feedback! Could you imagine to use this site everyday? What do and don't you like about it? <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone has experience with pre-rendering angularjs? When I post my site on twitter I get tags like {{title}} in the tweet. I've seen some services that pre-render (SaaS) but I'd prefer an independent solution.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another reason I post this here is to ask for advice how much CPUs and memory you would suggest for a site like that. It's hosted on EC2.

<comment><USER2> If enough people start using it? I'd suggest doing the dynamic part on a tiny instance (i.e. only as big as you need for scraping and generating the updates / trends) and pushing updates to S3. Then the client can poll S3 objects. (With some marker for "latest")

You'd have to cross 1gb/h of transfer before it costs more than running more than t3.small.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great hint thanks. I just created a test bucket with a JSON file, this seems much cleaner. At the moment I still use a node server and the database on the same instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey and you can even make the browser window go over two screens, the window will be full of news cards.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My favorite topic is the breaking news section with auto-scroll on the second screen.</comment>