Ask HN: What do you drink? - <AUTHOR> Ethanol optional.  My favorite beverage in the world is a two-shot long espresso with a bit of sugar.  It's like a super-rich, more intense coffee.  Hackers seem to have interesting tastes, so let's hear them. <comment><USER3> Tea is cheap, lasts for months or years, and can be made in the office kitchen. Black and oolong tea in the morning and midday, white tea in the afternoon. Make it loose leaf in a sufficiently large infuser.

You can buy some of the most delicious stuff you've ever tasted for less than a dollar a cup, and often the leaves can be reused. People in my office express skepticism that I'm willing to spend so much on tea, then go down to Starbucks for their bland-tasting $4 daily latte. Right now I have a tin of carmely Yunnan tea with a powerful pepper flavor that really wakes you up. Also, caffeine.

Other things I like: Three Floyds beer, North Shore gin, rye manhattans, dark red wine, Intelligentsia coffee, Dr. Pepper. And lots of water.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps it's because I was just reading some very lyrical poetry to my daughter, but up until the "Other things I like:..." bit, the first two paragraphs read like a lovely poem dedicated to tea :)

But maybe that was your intent? _shrug_

<comment><USER3> Well, thanks. I guess I'm a poet and I don't even know the aforementioned fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Water. I used to drink an unhealthy amount of Pepsi One, but recognized that it was never making me any less thirsty.

It may be boring, but it's cheap (free), plentiful, and effective. The only downside is that I have to rely on willpower for late-night hacking rather than caffeine.

<comment><USER6> Will Power is my friend as well - water here too. I stick away from caffeine apart from the occasional tea.

I figure that if I really need the boost it'll affect me more because I'm not a regular user. Only downside is that 2 teas gives me the jitters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of water. As little soda as I can manage.

Indulgent: a cold glass of organic chocolate milk

When I'm expected to drink an adult beverage: gimlet (gin) or the palest beer I can find.

Nothing on earth beats a glass of Trader Joe's Strawberry Lemonade on a hot day.

<comment><USER8> +1 for Trader Joe's Strawberry Lemonade. I had it for the first time this summer... great stuff!

<comment><USER9> If you're a Trade Joe's fan and are in the mood for a more Autumn-esque beverage, try their spiced apple cider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always have water next to me. I go through liters/day, more on gym days.

I enjoy good coffee. Straight espresso is my favorite, although I will drink regular coffee with just some milk in it. Maybe I'm odd, but enjoy savory/bitter flavors much more than sweet.

Diet sodas. The regular versions are just too sweet. I probably have 1 diet soda/day. The fizz and little bit of sweetness seems to go well with lunch.

Good beers. I love pale ales, but have been experimenting more with darker stouts. A local bar makes a great coffee stout that is very tasty. I also like wine and tend to bounce back and forth between wine and beer with dinner depending on my mood and current weather.

Liquor drink of choice is vodka rocks or vodka tonic.

</comment><comment><USER11> Vesper Martinis. I am a Martini nut, and the vesper, whilst an acquired taste is incredible stuff. If you're not able to make this and are in London, go to the Dukes Hotel Bar in Mayfair and ask for one there. They will only serve you two of them, on account of the strength.

You will need:

1 bottle of Berry Brothers No. 3 Dry London Gin (Tanqueray 10 will do as an alternative, do not use Gordons)

1 bottle of Potocki vodka (a neutral vodka is great, Belvedere or Ketel one will do, Finlandia is ok-ish, Smirnoff is not)

1 Bottle of orange Angostura Bitters

1 Bottle of Lillet Blanc - Do not use Martini Bianco, Noilly Prat can be used but will change the taste substantially. Cocchi Americano can be used instead (in which case don't use Angostura Bitters).

An Amalfi Lemon

To make the vesper, pour two splashes of Angostura Bitters into a classic cocktail glass or Champagne goblet if you have one. Take a shaker, fill with ice and add 85ml of the Gin, 15 ml of Vodka and 25ml of Lillet. Shake vigorously for 10 seconds or stir for 30 (stirring will result in a weaker drink from the melting of the ice, shaking oxygenates the gin and gives it a sharper taste) and strain the resulting drink out into the glass. Take the zest of the lemon, twist it, pass it gently over the rim of the glass and let it settle in the centre. Serve.

At the moment I'm drinking mostly water as I'm trying to shift a bit of weight, although I do love Dr Pepper Zero, or a great Latte. In Reading the best Latte I've had can be found at the Workhouse Cafe near the Oracle.

<comment><USER12> A 'martini nut' would drink actual martinis <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_(cocktail)>, rather than suggesting five different types of vodka.

Nothing wrong with vodka drinks, I'm a big fan of Belvedere Black, but you will get some funny looks from bartenders if you're being that precise with your specifications yet using the wrong liquor for your drink.

Particular the Vesper, whose recipe is very well known.

<comment><USER13> The Vesper is rather vile, but its very well known recipe does indeed include vodka.

<comment><USER11> Heathen!

To be fair, the first sip of a great Vesper tastes a little like Jet Fuel, and I'd never drink one at anything approaching room temperature, but a badly mixed Vesper is pretty much undrinkable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> STAR (Beer) - When I am in Nigeria.

Budweiser (Beer) - When I am in the UK.

Ginger Beer - When I am Bored.

Water - When I have to.

Apple Juice - When I have spare pennies.

Plain Tea - When I want to feel like a Geek.

Milk - When I feel I should add some muscle.

Sprite - When.. When.. Whenever.

Coffee - Never again. Except I want an upset stomach.

etc - When I feel like being random.

At the moment, Water.

<comment><USER11> Wait, you go to the UK and drink Budweiser? Are you mad, sir? There's beautiful fine British ales to be had, not to mention the congregation of the world's finest lagers. Next time you're in the UK, please try a Peroni, a Staropramen or a Schneider Weisse if you're used to Bud and get the opportunity.

Also Nigerian Guinness is pretty tasty too :)

<comment><USER15> This depends on whenever it's american "budweiser" or original Budweiser (Budvar). With original Budweiser being certainly better that anything Staropramen, but you are probably in for a hangover, as it has particularly high sugar content for light beer (the brewery had even financed scientific study few years ago into what caused this).

<comment><USER3> Budweiser Budvar is a fantastic beer, but Busch Budweiser actually came before it. The original Budweiser is apparently sold as "Burgerbrau" in the US, something I've never heard of.

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Budweiser>

<comment><USER16> When talking about specific companies, yes, Busch was first. However, in this case, this is "regional trademark", the beer with this name was brewed in Budweis (Budejovice) long before the company was established. It is a name of the town, after all.

The same way for Pilsner. "Pilsner Urquell" (Plzensky Prazdroj) is brewed in Pilsen (Plzen).

<comment><USER3> The point is the identification of Budvar as "original" is misleading at best. A better word would be "authentic".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Single malt whisky, usually Laphroaig. Neat with a few drops of distilled water. In a proper glass that enhances the aroma and flavour, _not_ a "rocks glass":

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Glencairn-Scotch-Whisky- Glass/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Glencairn-Scotch-Whisky- Glass/dp/B001AW9GYS/)

<comment><USER18> Yes. You're right for serious enjoyment of course but I really enjoy drinking whisky from a cut crystal tumbler for some reason. I like savouring the good ones from a proper glass, but there's something about the weight of a good tumbler...

<comment><USER17> What you need is a whisky glass, not a rocks glass. In terms of size they are between a tumbler (or "rocks glass") and a shot glass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Premium single malt Scotch whiskey. Some of my best ideas have come to me while drinking Scotch. Nota bene, some of my worst ideas have come to me when drinking Scotch.

<comment><USER11> I love a decent Speyside, but tend to prefer Irish single malts. Scotch-wise, I quite like the Balvennie Doublewood. What do you drink?

<comment><USER19> Can't go wrong with the Doublewood my friend. I'm working on a bottle of it right now,

<comment><USER17> Laphraoig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What I used to drink: single-malt scotch, good (NOT Grey Goose) vodka on the rocks

What I sometimes drink: local microbrews, imported pale ales, Trappist beers

What I usually drink now: PBR tallboys, Modelo Especial

I feel like the Benjamin Button of alcohol.

</comment><comment><USER21> I gave up coffee a year and a half ago. My current daily drink pattern:

* 8-13:30 - lots of water

* 13:30-19:30 - steamed milk

* 19:30-22:00 - <USER2>

* 22:00 - 1:00 - wine (usually italian red)

</comment><comment><USER22> Rooibos tea - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooibos>

</comment><comment><USER23> Ah yes my favorite topic. During the day it's just water and 2 cups of coffee (morning and post-lunch).

For adult beverages I enjoy beer and various distilled spirits.

Beer: lately I've been really getting into Belgian and Belgian-style beers. Trappist ales (Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle), lambic and gueuze (my favorite style of beer), most things from Russian River Brewing Company, New Belgium La Folie, etc

Booze: I'm a big fan of scotch, generally peaty ones. Laphroaig quarter cask, Talisker, etc. I also like aged rums (Ron Zacapa 23) and rye.

<comment><USER24> Almost 100% matching my drinking habits. Except the booze. My favorite one is Martini Bianco with the same amount of pure lemon juice. Most people hate it.

<comment><USER23> Are you saying a Martini made with Martini Bianco + lemon juice, or Martini Bianco + lemon juice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> * Coffee - short Italian espresso (always when out) or Turkish

* Red Bull - too much, a lot less than previously

* Beers - again a lot less alcohol than previously, because I prefer being in a productive mode, but Guinness, London Pride and English Ale (Rose n' Crown in Palo Alto, 21st amendment & Gordon Biersch in SF, The Porterhouse in Covent Garden, London & The Dove in Fulham)

* Scotch - as many different types as I can. Usually a compulsory purchase when going through duty-free at airpots. Macallan, JW, Famous Grouse

<comment><USER26> "McCallan"? I hope you mean www.themacallan.com, but probably not.

Drop JW, Grouse, JB, Chivas etc, and start investigating _single malt_ scotch. It's a whole new world. Try Macallan, Ardbeg, Bowmore.

<comment><USER27> I actually had been sticking with Macallan for a while, but went to a JW tasting with friends a few weeks ago, and discovered that I like their Gold about as much as Macallan's single malt.

<comment><USER26> Have you tried the 18yo _sherry cask_ Macallan? I bet it's better than JW Gold :)

<comment><USER27> Ah, quite possibly. I haven't had anything in Macallan but 12 year old. In spite of nearing 40, I only started drinking, really, this year. So I have much study, yet. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I really like bottled iced green tea (available throughout Asia, and often in the US). I used to be addicted to Diet Coke (2-8L/day), but now that I have easy access to bottled green tea for $1/ea, that and water are pretty much all I drink.

When I'm at home, I usually brew green tea and then drink it hot or iced, but for travel, something you can buy on the street in vending machines, 7-11, etc. is definitely worthwhile. I wish a fast food chain in the US would sell it.

<comment><AUTHOR> My fast food tea hack (probably well known): fill cup with half iced tea, half lemonade. A ghetto Arnold Palmer, if you will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Scotch. Macallan 12 or 18, occasionally Glenlivet, and on special occasions Johnny Walker Blue. mmmmm so good.

And coffee, but no soda. Stopped drinking soda many years ago.

<comment><USER30> Man those are the Scotches I _don't_ drink. JWB is good but too damn expensive, I'll take a Laphroaigh or Lagavulin any day.

Or JW Green...

<comment><USER31> Funny you mention JWB. I was at my local liquor shop on friday night grabbing a bottle of JW Black, my normal "non special occasion" scotch. The guy in front of me bought _four_ bottles of Blue, all the stock the shop had.

I felt so jealous of being able to just casually drop a grand on scotch that I spent all weekend working on my startup.

<comment><USER30> I dunno man, I think if I had a grand to blow, I'd buy a bottle of Lagavulin and keep the $930 change...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Whenever I'm home, I usually drink milk: Something about milk makes it way better than water when I'm home.

At times when I'm hacking up something during nighttime, a large cup of black tea and milk. Not the usual hacker-coke/coffee, but it has the same effect.

I usually drink water during studies. Whenever it's getting late or I'm getting tired, we have this espresso-machine not far away which gets quite tempting.

<comment><USER33> I used to guzzle milk until I realized the calorific content of what I was chugging. But Tea with milk gives you caffeine, antioxidants and calcium, and hydrates you quite well according to research funded by the tea industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm a pathetic caffeine addict so the mornings start with a large cup of strong coffee.

Whenever I feel thirsty I make myself a nice pitcher of ice water with a little lemon juice added to it.

At night, for beer I like hoppy West Coast style IPAs. If for some reason I'm trying to get drunk as fast as possible, fill a glass partway with cheap vodka and the rest with cheap beer (a strong beer cocktail, basically).

<comment><USER35> That actually sounds quite nice (the second). How do you do it, just squeeze fresh lemon juice into it or some sort of bottled stuff?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> From my time at essentially an internship, we've invented a new drink. We call it the quad, which is 2 2*espessos from the coffee machine. It has a real kick to it and is good to start off those slow mornings.

Other than that, pretty much tea (Generic black tea). I never drank tea before starting, now I have a couple a day. I like the comfort of sipping a hot drink while coding.

<comment><USER37> upvoted for the quad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Water definitely, unless I feel so sick of the taste(lessness) of water I'd get an ice lemon tea. By the way I hate energy drinks but at times they can be life savers...

Here's another post for discussion about the best hacker food <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1825811>

</comment><comment><USER39> Gimlets <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimlet_(cocktail)> They cut through like a knife.

Gin Hemingways [http://www.liquoranddrink.com/Drinks/344-Hemingway- Daiquiri-...](http://www.liquoranddrink.com/Drinks/344-Hemingway- Daiquiri-\(Original\)/) Warming on a cold day.

Hefeweizen

Coffee

</comment><comment><USER40> 1) Buy green coffee from <http://www.sweetmarias.com/>

2) Roast it in a Hearthware i-Roast 2* .

3) Pull a ristretto [1] shot from a Rancilio Silvia* .

4) Enjoy!

I highly recommend home-roasting. It's fun to geek out about it and completely control the process, experiment with different roast levels and curves, etc. You get the freshest coffee in the world. If you drink coffee with any regularity, the roaster pays for itself quickly and then you're saving money on coffee [2].

* Of course other equipment can be used; I mention what I use because after a lot of research, I found these items to be the best bang-for-your-buck for beginners, and I'm quite happy with them after several years.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ristretto>

[2] Assuming you like roasting, or at least don't mind it much. I think it's really fun, so it's a double win.

<comment><USER41> I have the same setup, plus an Macap M4 grinder.

For anyone considering getting into espresso, don't underestimate the importance of a decent grinder.

<comment><USER42> That's some of the best advice for anyone getting into espresso. Good grind consistency is really key to an even extraction. A good rule of thumb to follow is up to $400, spend as much on the grinder as you did on the espresso machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Water, milk, green tea, orange juice. Coffee, occasionally. Soda and energy drinks, I go by an "only if it's free" rule.

Alcoholic: Yuengling is my go-to beer, I'm not exactly picky and I'll drink just about anything if I'm looking to get drunk, which is usually. I love good Scotch and always drink it straight.

</comment><comment><USER44> Smoothies! I bought a blender (after I quit drinking, go figure) and get frozen blueberries/strawberries, go to the farmer's market and get papaya, mango, pineapple, dates, whatever. With or without ice cream, raw eggs, ground nuts, protein. Eating/drinking fruit seems to bouy me up mentally, emotionally and physically.

Cafe Bustello or Cafe Pilon -- bottom shelf grocery store, 1lb vacuum sealed fine-ground espresso roast for $5. I think it's really good. Makes two mugs in two minutes in a $12 Mr. Coffee.

Then I have about half an hour of kickstarted clarity, and an hour of weird chemical jitters. I guess I drink it for the flavor.

Gallons of Brita filtered water from the fridge--tap water here is warm in the summer. I would drink Fiji water, but with the amount I consume I could buy a plane ticket to the South Pacific.

<comment><USER45> I also love to drink fruit smoothies in the mornings. I used to work at a Jamba Juice so I replicate some recipes as best as I can remember.

Try getting a plain yogurt to blend in, if you like the taste of dairy. Also, using a fruit juice as a base to blend into makes a huge difference. My favorite is apple juice because it is just sweet and not overpowering/citrus-y.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Mostly water, with some original formula Gatoraid, made from powder from cans (and a bit more concentrated that per the recipe).

Caffeine is a bad idea for me, although if I could find some decaffeinated Earl Gray that didn't taste like mud I'd drink that too.

Back when I could drink alcohol (interacts poorly with some drugs I must take now), Sam Adams Boston Lager was my favorite (and allowed me to say "Even my beer is political!" :-). I was in the Boston area at the time and was lucky to have a friend who appreciated good beer introduce it to me a couple of years after it came out (up to then I was singularly unimpressed with generic American wimpy downstream beer and couldn't understand why my parents drank it ... and now my father drinks Sam Adams).

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm a big fan of Coffee from Starbucks, going with a venti vanilla latte or a venti iced caramel latte (frappuccino) depending on the weather. When making my own hot drinks, I'll switch hapilly between tea and coffee.

Cold drinks, I do like coke but rarely drink it (except if I'm eating out and don't want to drink anything alcoholic), absolutely love orange juice (with real bits in it, freshly squeezed), the occasional vanilla milkshake goes down a treat, too.

Alcoholic, I'm a big fan of Corona (with lime, of course) when drinking out, and when not trying to get drunk (e.g. while working) I greatly enjoy a good scotch, or a glass of wine.

Oh, and what I drink most: water, all day, every day.

</comment><comment><USER48> I drink a good deal of diet coke, though less than I used to. As I get healthier, I don't need and cannot tolerate as much caffeine. I also keep an assortment of fruit juice in the house. These days, I frequently mix fruit juice with diet coke. I have even begun taking a small bottle of fruit juice to work and mixing with diet coke bought on site (from a vending machine or the cafeteria).

As for alcohol, I don't tolerate most alcoholic beverages well. I do okay with Kahlua but still don't like the taste. I tend towards frozen drinks, like a Mud Slide or Kahlua Cappuccino. If my tongue is numb enough, I can hardly taste the alcohol. :-/

</comment><comment><USER49> All day - water, tons

6am Coffee

9am More coffee

12pm Iced green tea

1pm Coffee

3pm More coffee

6pm-9pm Wine, sake, or a few Manhattans (beer when I was in my 20's, but no longer)

Hangover hack: set a time cutoff and NEVER drink past that time, no matter what. That time can be > midnight when you're young, but move it back by an hour every few years.

</comment><comment><USER50> Usually during the day, I try to drink cups of hot water, rather than coffee. It's a little strange at first, but satisfies my need for a hot drink while keeping me away from the caffeine monster. Just lately, I've been having the odd coffee to keep me going, as my wife and I have a new born baby and sleep doesn't come as easy as it used to.

Cherry coke with lots of ice. I'm addicted to this stuff, but I know it's really really bad for me, so I try to keep my consumption to a minimum (I still usually get through a couple of 2 litre bottles each week).

I don't really drink much anymore but when I do, I like a long Jack Daniels and coke with ice.

</comment><comment><USER51> I drink mostly water... A few days ago I drank my first pepsi from a can.

I'm drinking beer right now..(Budweiser)

If I drink the hard stuff or too much I have been known to effectively walk to the police station and ask to be arrested.. literally in one case.

</comment><comment><USER52> I prepared this morning two liters of fruit and vegetable juice. It is made of (in descending order) Carrots, Apples, Fennel and Cabbage. It took me a little more than half an hour to prepare. I drank one glass right out of the juicer and took the rest to work in some reused water bottles. (reuse is much better than recycle) I also took with me three large ripe bananas - ones with spots on their peel. I don't do this every day, but sometimes I summon enough will power to do it. I once managed to drink vegetable and fruit juice for 10 days straight, maybe I will do a 90 day juice feast someday.

</comment><comment><USER53> In the morning I usually have AeroPressed coffee, sometimes with milk, sometimes not. And then during the day I just drink water or teas (green, white, black). I tend to forget juices in the fridge so I rarely get any.

As for alcoholic beverages, I discovered a cucumber variant of the Moscow Mule to be my absolute favorite drink. Smash 2-3 slices of cucumber in a glass, add 3 parts ginger ale/beer (beer is better, but hard to get), 1 part good vodka and a little lime juice, decorate with some more cucumber. The cucumber adds a fantastic fresh taste to the cocktail and makes the ginger ale sparkle even more.

</comment><comment><USER54> One of the best meals I've had in a long time was in Singapore. I stayed in "Little India" which is chock full of tiny little Indian restaurants. The best dish was the mutton masala. Absolutely delicious, but the finishing touch that made it amazing was the simple ginger beer. I want to go back to Singapore, just to eat some mutton masala and drink ginger beer...

EDIT: And, on a hot summer day, my absolute favorite drink is this, with ice: [http://www.rwknudsenfamily.com/products/natural_juices/hibis...](http://www.rwknudsenfamily.com/products/natural_juices/hibiscus_cooler)

</comment><comment><USER55> I used to drink 3 cups of coffee a day. I've now brought it down to twice a week, and it's stayed that way for almost a year. I'm very happy about that.

When I do drink coffee, I prefer french press coffee. I live in Seattle and there are plenty of great coffee shops within a couple of blocks of where I live.

I've also started running quite a bit recently, and I drink Nuun when I crave salt/electrolytes. It's refreshing (I pick lemon-lime flavor) and super low- calorie drink.

I've learnt to drink water (instead of carbonated drinks) when I'm thirsty at work.

And finally, I love port wine and have a glass of really good port once or so a month.

</comment><comment><USER56> I was pretty much addicted to Mountain Dew for the better part of 12 years. In early 2009 I finally switched to Diet Dew and then late 2009 I switched over to Diet Coke. Not sure if that's any better for me than Diet Dew, probably not. I try to incorporate water as much as I can and Iced Tea as well. I tend to drink Chocolate Milk in spurts as well, such as getting it 3 or 4 times a week in the mornings for a couple months and then not getting it again for another couple months. I just get tired of it after a while because it's so _heavy_?

</comment><comment><USER57> Was never much into coffee, so only drink not strong coffee with milk in the morning.

During the day I drink pure water and black tea with strawberry of maybe fruits, something like that.

In the evening I drink fat-free kefir (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir>).

About two months ago I started adding as less sugar as possible to coffee and tea and one month ago I drink tea and coffee without sugar at all. I have a feeling that digestive system started working much better after this change.

</comment><comment><USER58> I always keep my water bottle with me, and refill it as soon as it's empty. I completely stopped drinking soda (except for social purposes) about 5 years ago for health reasons.

</comment><comment><USER59> Morning: Normal Coffee with cream - The bolder the better.

Meals: Sparkling water- I am completely off of soda now. Usually flavored but sometimes not. I don't like the taste of drinking flat water so this was a middle ground that let me have a drink with lunch that didn't feel/taste odd. I usually drink this : <http://s7d5.scene7.com/is/image/Staples/s0217240_sc7>

Alcohol: Smokey single malt scotch on the rocks

<comment><USER26> You don't put ice in single malt scotch.. a few drops of water is fine, according to your personal preferences, but no ice.

<comment><USER60> I cringed when I read that. A splash of water is ok, but scotch is only drank on the rocks if it's mixed. If you really want to have it _cold_ put a glass in the fridge serve your ambient temp scotch in it and let it stand for a minute or two.

<comment><USER61> I really never agreed with the whole philosophy that you are never to drink scotch with ice. It brings out an interesting flavor that you cannot get when drinking it neat.

I also don't think it is such a cut-and-dry issue as some people make it out to be. Macallan even produces this: <http://www.notcot.com/archives/2010/01/the-macallan-ic.php>

<comment><USER60> I meant mixed as in blended. Sorry or the confusion. Blended scotch is ok to drink on the rocks... sometimes it's the only way actually. Single malt is in a whole different class though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Tropicana fruit juice at home - best juices I've ever tasted, by miles. I'm also getting into Fentiman's Ginger Beer.

Water at my day job, which I've always found really refreshing.

<comment><USER63> Agreed on Tropicana fruit juice, including their orange and also their 100% fruit juice blends.

For apple, I like Simply Apple. It has a noticeably different (and better) taste from the standard juice aisle apple juices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Coffee (home-ground, moka pot) in the morning and throughout the day, Tea (herbal and/or earl gray) in the evening. Water every now and then (but not enough).

Rarely I drink a glass of orange juice with my breakfast. If I get the chance (i.e. come close to an organic store) I'll get a large pack of coconut water and drink it all up.

I used to drink a lot of beer, but lately I've been switching to red wine and at the same time lowering my overall alcohol intake.

</comment><comment><USER65> Water

Lattes

Blue Moon, or any other hefeweisen on tap

Gin and tonic, either Hendricks or Tanqueray

I only got addicted to caffeine 2 or 3 years ago, but now I feel tired without it. And the sheer variety of beers astounds me.

<comment><USER66> I like your style. I don't know of anyone else personally who drinks Hendricks, but I'm pretty confident in saying it's the best gin in the world. When we're feeling frisky and just happen to have all of the ingredients, we make G&Ts with a little pomegranate syrup and a slices kumquat. As you might imagine, the stars don't align like that too often. :)

If I'm traveling I'll drink whatever local beverages I can find (teas, coffees, beers, wines, liquors, juices), but at home it's mostly water, one cup of coffee (half-decaf) in the morning, and lots of herbal/green/white teas in the cooler months.

<comment><USER67> I like Hendricks but it's very expensive here, so I might only get one or two bottles a year. I tend it drink it straight on ice - it's the only gin that I do that with.

<comment><USER61> I too enjoy Hendericks over all other gins. Next time you are drinking your hendricks on the rocks, try muddling a slice of cucumber first and then add your ice and gin. It's great and refreshing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Lately I've been making a big smoothie 2-3 times a week in the blender and just keeping it in the fridge.

yoghurt/milk/2 apples/2 oranges/2 bananas/cinnamon and vanilla extract.

The trick is that the bananas and oranges cancel out as base and acid while the apples are neutral. So you can substitute pineapple for the oranges or grapes for the apples for example. But I always keep that base and acid balance.

That and I love Simon Levelt Smokey Earl Grey.

<comment><USER69> If you like Butterfingers, try 2-3 scoops vanilla ice-cream some carrot juice, and some peanut butter, it tastes very very similar to the inside layer of a Butterfinger candy bar, but is much healthier. I don't know exactly how much I add of carrot juice or peanut butter, I add to taste and consistency, after you make it 1-2 times it's really easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Lots of tea (mostly english breakfast), lots of water, and I buy the odwalla super food (or similar) things in the big jug and drink one a week or so.

For booze, I like a good beer, paler in the summer, darker in the winter.

I fucking love bourbon, knob creek especially. Saphire martini (up), knob creek manhattan, easy on the vermouth, extra bitters (also up), or a shitty gibson martini on ice with lots of vermouth and lime.

</comment><comment><USER71> Mostly water, often chai masala (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masala_chai>) or earl grey, more rarely Pespi Twist, espresso macchiato, rooibos (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooibos>), green tea, gin + tonic.

On hot days: relatively lots of squeezed lemon juice and ice + water.

</comment><comment><USER18> No-one talking about tequila? A good tequila is next on my purchase list for my spirits cupboard.

Generally, I'm a whisky man. Islay and Speyside particularly (Ardbeg or Caol Ila would probably be the desert island whiskies, though my guilty pleasure is a 12 y.o. Glenlivet).

Obviously, I mainly drink water. Whisky isn't what you go for when you need refreshing.

Also, is there a correlation between black coffee drinkers and whisky drinkers?

</comment><comment><USER72> Lots of water. I have two containers of lemonade mix that I never use because I'm usually too lazy to mix it up. Water is cheap and I'm on a budget!

As for alcohol, I usually have rum with coke, or scotch if I'm not paying. Beer and wine are both awful. But I rarely ever drink as I'm the driver 99% of the time I might otherwise have the opportunity. I don't mess around with that.

</comment><comment><USER73> I have a small stockpile of non HFCS dr. pepper....

At work, it's Pu-erh, Jasmine, or Oolong in the morning and water + a diet soda or two during the day.

</comment><comment><USER74> Laphroaig. But not everyday!

</comment><comment><USER75> First thing in the morning, two squeezed oranges, then some tea (two mugs or more, black, no sugar, no milk). Sparkling water at lunch, usually. One espresso after lunch (black, no sugar, no milk). Some more tea at 5 o'clock. Water at dinner, maybe some wine, and soup in winter. Herbal tea at night. Total liquid consumption: between 2 and 4 liters, every day.

</comment><comment><USER76> \- tap water

\- coffee w/1% milk, frothed.

\- usually gin (Hendricks is a fav), lately I've been exploring american whiskey/rye. Holy cow is this stuff amazing: <http://whistlepigwhiskey.com/>

\- at the office our senior geek keeps a bottle of santa teresa 1796 rhum. That's a staple on chilly Friday afternoons in the later part of the year.

</comment><comment><USER77> Until the last few months, it would have been Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew, and Mountain Dew. But I've given up the HFCS for now. 1 cup of coffee in the morning, not particular about what kind, but only drink it black. Ridiculous amounts of water.

Alcohol- 7 & 7 is my cocktail when out. I go through phases of wine. Sauvignon Blancs at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER78> Intelligentsia coffee when I can get it. These days we've been using the "toddy" for cold brewed coffee. It results in a quite nice cup of hot or cold coffee and takes about as much time to make a single serving as instant would, but doesn't taste foul. In the past I've used a moka pot on the stove and still do on occasion.

</comment><comment><USER79> 2 liters of water a day.

White tea. Clears the mind and raises energy smoother & better than coffee, without later energy drop. Remember that as for any tea you cannot pour it for more than 3 minutes, otherwise it will make you more sleepy, not less.

Czech & Slovak beer.

White vodka - the healthiest of alcohols, if you know when to stop and don't mix with other booze.

<comment><USER80> What do you mean 'cannot pour it for more than 3 minutes'?

<comment><USER81> I think he means let it steep in the water for at least 3 minutes before pouring.

<comment><USER80> I thought that, but ideal steeping time varies greatly on the tea. He may be referring to white tea specifically? And why will it make you more sleepy, not less?

<comment><USER82> Tea contains tannin as well as caffeine, the tannin is a relaxant the caffeine a stimulant, the caffeine comes out first. According to fmltea[1] the caffeine will all be drawn out in the 1st 2mins and the tannin in 5mins. I have previously heard that the greatest caffeine hit is obtained by leaving the teabag in for 30 seconds, I imagine it will depend greatly on the type of tea and how you brew it.

It does however tell you that with tea unlike coffee, stronger flavor does not mean stronger caffeine.

[1] <http://www.fmltea.com/Teainfo/caffeine-tannin.htm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> _Office Hours (05am - 16pm)_

Water, Tea and Coffee, no particular order, just get up from the chair every hour or so and make myself a cup of hot beverage (Tea or Coffee) and a cup or two of water.

At home, water only.

 _On Weekends, (evening standard):_

I treat myself with a double shot of single malt (Glenmorangie) or cognac (Remy Martin), and/or very few beers on the after noons.

</comment><comment><USER84> Green tea (mainly, other teas as well), and Blueberry/Bananas/Whey Protein and Soy milkshakes. No alcohol for me! :)

</comment><comment><USER85> I used to drink ungodly amounts of Red Bull which I stopped doing.

I drink a lot of water and a lot of tea (usually Earl Gray, Gunpowder or Pu- erh).

Once a week I make three infusions of Mate and about three times a week I get a mug of hot chocolate.

When the mood strikes, I enjoy a green tea (usually the ones from Japan) or Rooibos.

No coffee and no alcohol. Never liked the stuff.

</comment><comment><USER86> Casual : Coke (vanilla and Cherry) Late work : Redbull Tired : lemon tea Morning : cold coffee Night : cold water

</comment><comment><USER87> Water and Cocoa. By cocoa I mean Undutched (non alkalized) pure unsweetened cocoa powder and water.

I used to drink a lot of tea, but cocoa actually has way more antioxidants and I much prefer its effects to nearly every other psychostimulant.

[alcohol for socializing: context dependent. alcohol for hacking: whiskey+matcha green tea ]

<comment><USER88> Do you simply mix cocoa with cold water?

<comment><USER87> No, hot water. Plus Honey if you need a sweetener. Milk works too. Also if you'd rather eat cocoa than drink it, I would order bulk organic cocoa nibs rather than processed sugarified chocolate bars.

[ If you want to get fancy I'm sure you could order raw cocoa beans and roast them like you do coffee beans ]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> LaCroix flavored water is my daily standby. No calories, caffeine, or artificial sweeteners.

Usually a large (3 shot) iced Americano (unsweetened, black) a day... smooth, delicious, and energizing.

Intensely hoppy beers without much malt are the call of the evening, or maybe a decent gin with the aforementioned LaCroix as a mixer.

</comment><comment><USER89> Water: tap, a lot

Coffee: whatever I get at my local bakery. It's good. 3 cups a day.

Beer: mostly cheap stuff, PBR, Budweiser, High Life, etc.

</comment><comment><USER90> I have a french press on my desk at work. Without coffee, how can you save the world?

Other times: OJ and water. I average less than 1 alcoholic drink per month: I don't like the taste of most alcohol and I intensely dislike being drunk. I do like a glass of cabernet now and then.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I made my own coffee I used an AeroPress: <http://aerobie.com/products/aeropress.htm>. Incredibly smooth coffee, no bite at all to it. Buying fresh beans and grinding them became too much of a hassle and expense eventually though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> 1.) Water 2.) Black Tea with Mint instead of morning coffe 3.) Red wines (semi dry) 4.) White wines (dry and sweet) 5.) Occasional beer 6.) Coffee 7.) occasional liquor

I'm actually drinking less and less coffee and beer. Both are being substituted by tea and wine respectively.

</comment><comment><USER92> Water

Lemonade/Lemon juice

Mountain Dew - I like it, but I could live without it; in fact I haven't been drinking it for a long time now.

Tried coffe for a while; the taste is just horrible, although it does help wake up your brain.

Chocolate - although not exactly a drink, but sometimes I 'consume' it in liquid form.

</comment><comment><USER93> I like peach juice. Or even peach/white cranberry. I also like Tea, though I don't drink it regularly. Except when I'm eating at an oriental type restaurant. I have a stash of English breakfast tea for mornings when I am really tired.

</comment><comment><USER94> 7 litres of water a day. I started drinking more and more, and now I just sit there constantly sipping water all day (well, when I'm not in the bathroom....)

Also green tea, coffee if I'm real tired, V if I'm even more tired, and Vodka/Scotch on weekends.

<comment><USER95> Why 7 litres? You could be damaging your kidneys if you drink too much.

<comment><USER96> >Why 7 litres? You could be damaging your kidneys if you drink too much.

Also a [mild?] effect from water toxicity could occur - basically watch you're not flushing away all your electrolytes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Water (Probably about 1.5 liters a day) Beer (Cases of Stone IPA from costco are nice) Kombucha and Ginger beer that I brew myself Mexican Coke (Sometimes with whiskey) I try to get iced tea at restaurants (with lemonade if they have it)

</comment><comment><USER98> Good thread. I don't have much dot add, but: water water water. I've got a weak spot for a big glass of orange juice in the morning and go through phases of making yogurt/banana/frozen berry smoothies. Favorite drink is a gin tonic.

</comment><comment><USER99> Club Mate when in German speaking lands is a favorite. My other favorite non standard staples are tap water + a few tablespoons of juice, microbrew beers, soy chai with a double shot of espresso, coffee made with Moka pots, and gin.

</comment><comment><USER100> In no particular order, what I drink day to day I vary with no set routine. For personal health reasons I've cut out fats/simple sugars/alcohol/carbs from my diet so this list is much smaller then it used to be.

* Iced Tea and Arnold Palmer's

* Americano's

* Diet Barq's

* Water

* Fat Free Milk

</comment><comment><USER101> i'm in the imperial IPA capital of california, san diego, so i tend to fill a lot of growlers. ballast sculpin (2010 world beer cup winner), port brewery's swami (first imperial ipa in the california style) and booya steez, alesmith's wee-heavy and speedway stout, and we must not forget green flash and all their wares...their imperial ipa probably being the best.

when i'm not drinking that, i drink lots of water. a moderate amount of coffee, some laphroaig or lagavulin (i like the peaty stuff), some noah's mill micro-batch bourbon, and lots of mugicha.

</comment><comment><USER102> Chai, chai and some more chai. It is kind of milked tea but uniquely special to North Indians. In India, coffee is almost non-existent -- tea / chai rules the day.

Beer or vodka, mostly on weekends only (with friends).

<comment><USER11> I loved Chai when I was in Gurgaon. Great stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> Water

Fruit juices: Orange, Apple, Carrot/Orange blends

Ethanol: A home concoction I dubbed "Blood of the Kraken"- two parts Old Monk rum, one part Teacher's scotch, a full lemon squeezed in. Never, ever, more than a double peg.

</comment><comment><USER104> I started juicing (organic) about 6 months ago and love it! My current fav juice is carrot & apple. If you want the freshest and most natural juice try juicing your own.

Also, love me some Ice cold coke!

</comment><comment><USER105> Sweet tea. Not tea with sugar in it, the Southern drink. And no ice.

<comment><USER106> When I go down to Miami, I often forget and ask for sweet tea, and get unsweet with sugar packets. It's not the same!

Also, how do you get it with no ice? Most of the sweet tea I get here is brewed very fresh, and without the ice it would be hot.

<comment><USER105> I only wish I routinely got it that fresh. Rarely is that a problem, and when it is, I use a bit from the water glass.

Regular with sugar is definitely not the same. In a pinch, I've ordered hot tea, and made my own at the table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> Water. I quit drinking coffee three years ago and never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER108> Coffee in the mornings, I've started mixing a pinch of mate to add some extra flavor.

Alcohol of choice is russian river's pliny the elder if I can find it--or stone brewery's russian imperial stout.

</comment><comment><USER109> Coffee (Higher Ground at the office), Green Tea, Beer (Great Divide DPA or IPA; Paulaner Hefeweizen; Sam Adams) & 10-12 glasses of water throughout the day. No soda or juice.

</comment><comment><USER110> Water, coffee, protein-things as I'm lifting

Alo Drink: <http://www.alodrink.com/> The citrus, melon, and wheatgrass flavors are the best.

</comment><comment><USER111> Water here.

And a Diet soda or two a day. Whatever is deeply discounted at Safeway I get. My favorite drink of all time is Diet Cream Soda, but that doesn't seem to be sold in the Bay Area.

</comment><comment><USER112> Water, diet coke, coke. Beer: standards are fat tire and heinekens. If a recent trip was made to wisconsin, spotted cow beer(I'm in Illinois so it's not available here)

</comment><comment><USER113> Water and Coffee. Occasionally a diet coke. I used to be quite anti-coffee, but it really does make me sharper and more productive. That, and it tastes delicious.

</comment><comment><USER114> I never drink coffee (no tolerance for caffeine), and rarely drink tea. I usually drink water during the day.

As for alcohol: wheat beer, port wine, and single-malt scotch.

</comment><comment><USER115> * Plenty of Water * Carbonated Drinks - Pepsi, Coke, Thums Up, 7up and M.Dew * Green Tea, Coffee (black preferred) * Haven't had alcohol in my life!

</comment><comment><USER116> Tea, then a large cup of coffee, then water in the afternoon. If I take coffee after 16:00, I'm awake till 2:00 in the morning, so I stick to water.

</comment><comment><USER117> Coffee with sugar and cardamon.

Also, Kava.

Those two in addition to lots of coconut water

</comment><comment><USER118> 2-3 liters of unsweetened tea, mostly green and some wulong

2 liters of water

0-4 liters of beer, mostly Tsingdao, Yanjing or imported stuff from Japan or Europe

an occasional coffee

No milk, no soda and no juice

</comment><comment><USER80> I'm addicted to beer with coriander, most notably Franziskaner, but also ones like hoegaarden.

Otherwise water is good, or a 1/3 tomato juice 2/3 water blend.

</comment><comment><USER119> A lot of water, some oolong/green tea, some coffee(very selective), Single malt whiskies and South American wines.

Oh! And Ice COLD Beer anytime of the day!

</comment><comment><USER120> Twinings Earl Grey and San Pellegrino do it for me.

<comment><USER121> Seconded twinings Earl grey... Tried a few other Earl greys, and they usually don't taste right

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the Earl Grey Bravo from Adagio Teas: <http://www.adagio.com/black/earl_grey_bravo.html>. It's definitely the most perfumey and citrusey Earl Grey I've had, which may not be to every person's liking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tereré> when working and with friends :)

</comment><comment><USER123> Previously: Obscene amounts of coffee. Now: Mate tea :), and coffee but just 1, or 2 tops a day.

Also, replaced coke/diet coke/mtn dew with water.

</comment><comment><USER124> in order of frequency: * water * green tea, preferably 'tie guan ying' (chinese green) * juice

i've outgrown alcohol but my taste for beer never left me, so in bars i now drink alc.-free beer when available.

i don't drink coffee. i sometimes grab a redbull to keep me awake at nights, interesting how well caffeine helps with that if you have barely any tolerance to it.

</comment><comment><USER125> Water, Water with lemon, Water, some wine and then some more water. and NEVER corn water (i.e. pepsi, coke, snapple, etc...)

</comment><comment><USER126> Coke Zero for programming and for relaxing, a good rum and coke. I found a nice rum called Barcelo. It has the best taste.

<comment><USER127> Another good rum for the price is Flor De Caña from Nicaragua. Usually around $20 a bottle for the 4 year aged rum, but the 5 yr, and 7 yr are affordable as well.

<comment><USER128> I drank Flor De Caña when I was in Nicaragua in '96. Haven't thought of it since until you jogged my memory. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER129> Yerba Mate: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerba_mate>

</comment><comment><USER130> Switching from coffee to white tea is one of the best things I've ever done. I typically drink several litres a day.

</comment><comment><USER131> \- Morning: soy milk

\- During the day: tap water (excellent here in Vienna)

\- Once a day: fresh pressed juice (mostly either orange, kiwifruit, or banana)

</comment><comment><USER132> ITO EN Green Tea - unsweetened and pre-made. <http://www.itoen.com/>

</comment><comment><USER133> Dr Pepper, Tea and Water. My holy trinity.

</comment><comment><USER134> Espresso, SuperPump 250 for workouts/energy, Lots of water, juice with Greens Plus. Ocassional diet soft drink.

</comment><comment> T-R Anything with Kirin's 小岩井(Koiwai) branding on it, Martinelli's apple juice, Earl Grey or medium roast coffee.

</comment><comment><USER135> Cold green tea. Just put the 3 tea bags in a liter of cold water. Wait half an hour and your ready to go.

</comment><comment><USER30> In order of frequency from most to least Water Coke Cabernet or Malbec Laphroaigh or Johnny Walker Green

</comment><comment><USER60> Double shot of freshly ground Kotowa Red with a splash of half and half an one fifth of decent bourbon.

</comment><comment><USER136> In order of quantity:

-Water

-Whole milk

-Straight gin/whiskey

-Lemonade

I'm beginning to integrate coffee into my beverage intake, it falls between water and milk.

Sorry for the not-so-interesting tastes :)

<comment><USER137> straight gin? gin+tonic is somewhat drinkable, gin straight up is the worst drink I can think of.

To each his own, I suppose :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER138> Hot tea in the Winter. Sarsaparilla in the Summer. Outside the house it's the one and only Coke.

</comment><comment><USER139> Coca-cola. It's bad but I loves it.

</comment><comment><USER140> By intake volume: 1\. Water 2\. Beer 3\. Fruit juice 4\. Coffee 5\. Other (Soda's, Wine etc.)

</comment><comment><USER141> Tap water, Gerolsteiner mineral water, Bell's beer, loads of coffee, orange juice.

</comment><comment><USER142> Bourbon, water, and coke. Often times separate, sometimes in combinations.

</comment><comment><USER143> 3,5% milk

</comment><comment><USER144> Orangina.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love Orangina. I had it in France when I was a young boy, was stoked to find it here in the states at Whole Foods.

<comment><USER100> There are a number of places that carry Orangina these days, Trader Joes for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER145> Cappuccino and Red Bull. We don't get good coffee in my current city :(

</comment><comment><USER146> Coffee: Stumptown (recently moved to SF from Portland)

Tea: Peet's Assam Extra Fancy

</comment><comment><USER147> as i am surprised that no one has mentioned it: when ever i am in the uk or ireland i get a nice cold pear cider (bulmers, magners...). just love to drink it instead of a beer!

</comment><comment><USER148> water, diet Dr. Pepper, trying to replace that with lemonade because it's cheaper/healthier and I still get the sweet taste.. but I do love soda. (: Also Yuengling, PBR.

</comment><comment><USER149> Daily: Sparkling Water and Tea.

Leisure drinks: Frappucino, Iced Tea, Diet Coke.

</comment><comment><USER150> ~10 glasses of water/day . ~2 coffee/day. 0.5 Redbull/day.

</comment><comment><USER151> caffeine: mocha or diet soda

ethanol: [vodka|rum] + diet soda

ethanol when there's an open bar: good scotch

I occasionally start drinking a lot of water instead of caffeine, but that only lasts a month or two.

</comment><comment><USER152> Rockstar energy drinks- it's like my coffee for the day.

</comment><comment><USER153> Fighting a four-year addiction to Vitamin Water :)

</comment><comment><USER154> Coffee, milk oolong tea, and water. Mostly water.

</comment><comment><USER155> whole milk, dark beer, and port

Port is probably my favorite drink.

</comment><comment><USER156> Ridiculous amounts of green tea, all day long.

</comment><comment><USER157> Chinese puerh tea

</comment><comment><USER158> 20oz Cokes and water (sometimes seltzer).

</comment><comment><USER159> Lots of water and on occasion red bull.

</comment><comment><USER160> 21st Amendment Back in Black IPA.

</comment><comment><USER160> 21st Amendment Monk's Blood.

</comment><comment><USER161> Water | Coffee | Bitter Red

</comment><comment><USER162> Blood.

</comment><comment><USER163> IPA

</comment><comment><USER164> water, tea, fruit juice. when I'm out, an occasional glass of wine.

</comment><comment><USER165> _In no particular order:_

* Water only when I'm thirsty

* Orange Juice

* Coffee in the mornings

* Raw whole milk

* Homemade beef broth

 _Alcoholic wise:_

* Craft beer

* Wine

* Vodka

* Scotch

And that's about it.

</comment><comment><USER166> Club-Mate, Milk (3.8%)

</comment><comment><USER167> cheap cola light and energy drinks. it's a bad habit.

</comment><comment><USER168> Tea, lots of tea.

</comment><comment><USER169> hot south indian coffee every 3 - 4 hours

</comment><comment><USER170> 5 Hour Energy

</comment><comment><USER171> Water.

</comment><comment><USER172> Coca cola.

</comment><comment><USER173> Pepsi Max

</comment><comment><USER174> milk

</comment><comment><USER69> Non-carbonated: Water, milk, iced-tea

For water, I refill an old glass apple juice container and fill it with Brita water and make sure I always drink about 3 liters a day.

Carbonated: Coca-Cola, Sprite, Diet-Coke (is it just me or does Diet Coke never seem as cold as Coke even if kept in the same spot of the fridge?)

Beer: Alaskan Amber Ale, Bluemoon, or a microbrew pale ale.

Rarely: Earl Grey tea, but usually with sugar or honey

No wine, no hard alcohol, no cocktails, no coffee. Not sure why but not really into them.

</comment><comment><USER175> 2 2liters lemon soda with 4 to 6 green tea bags brewed in..

or

2 2liters lemon soda with hot coca mix with cinnamon mixed in

</comment><comment><USER176> I'm borderline addicted to Crystal Light.</comment>


Makefile Assignments are Turing-Complete - <AUTHOR> http://nullprogram.com/blog/2016/04/30/ <comment><USER2> Well, if you want to do computation inside GNU make there are tools like the GNU make Standard Library: [http://gmsl.sf.net/](http://gmsl.sf.net/) and I wrote quite a lot about GNU make stuff here ($$$): [https://www.nostarch.com/gnumake](https://www.nostarch.com/gnumake) and here (free): [http://blog.jgc.org/2013/02/updated-list-of-my-gnu-make- arti...](http://blog.jgc.org/2013/02/updated-list-of-my-gnu-make- articles.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't Turing completeness require the ability to modify an arbitrary amount of memory? (because the length of the tape on a Turing machine is unbounded).

However, if I understood correctly, the size of the Game of Life grid is fixed in the Makefile and cannot be extended arbitrarily at runtime, making it not Turing complete (cool nonetheless!).

Although, maybe a Makefile that generates a Makefile with an arbitrary number of cells...?

<comment><USER4> > Doesn't Turing completeness require the ability to modify an arbitrary > amount of memory?

Why would it? Lambda calculus is nothing about modifying anything.

And GNU make (though with GNU extensions) is certainly Turing-complete: [https://github.com/shinh/makelisp](https://github.com/shinh/makelisp)

<comment><USER5> In case of lambda calculus the equivalent condition is being able to evaluate arbitrarily large expressions. This sort of a Makefile-based evaluator could only do strings up to some hardcoded finite length.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice hack

</comment><comment><USER7> OHHH! That is so sick. 174Kb of macros to implement a Conway's Game of Life

</comment><comment><USER8> I would say that this is a good argument against using such a complicated spec. This kind of constructs should be explicit - if in a build system at all. I hate Make because of all the crazy "build systems" that should have been written in a more readable language, but ended up as a Make kludge.

<comment><USER5> The point is that, as mentioned in the article, the POSIX make spec is positively barren! Indeed, this is another example of very _simple_ substitution systems turning out to be emergently Turing complete.

<comment><USER8> So you'd say that it's a good thing? How is hidden complexity good?

<comment><USER5> It's not necessarily a good thing. It's definitely _interesting_ , though. It's difficult to come up with systems that are simultaneously useful and don't have emergent complexity - and it's not clear to me if it's worth the effort to even try in the general case!

For what it's worth, in my opinion build systems should definitely be intentionally, not accidentally, Turing complete.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What you should know about Angel Investors and Convertible Notes - <AUTHOR> http://venturefizz.com/blog/what-you-should-know-about-angel-investors-and-convertible-notes

<comment><USER2> Linkjacked: [http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/03/what-...](http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/03/what- you-should-know-about-angel-investors-and-convertible-notes.html)

<comment><USER3> Wow. Shameless linkjacking. That's straight-up plagiarism. There's 0% original content. Seriously, where's my pitchfork?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's also discounts and warrant coverage that can be used to make a convertible note a better option for angels, but it seems like most of good angels don't like convertible notes for the reasons outlined in the post...

More here: <http://venturehacks.com/articles/debt-or-equity></comment>


The Queen and I - <AUTHOR> http://harpers.org/archive/2016/02/the-queen-and-i/?single=1 <comment><USER2> Preface: I'm British.

It's very trendy to hate on the monarchy, rationally it makes sense but if we look at the numbers they bring in more money to the country than they take out, Elizabeth evokes a sort of stability in our politics and it's not certain how those affects are felt.

To take the words from Stephen Fry: "It is rational to assume that countries without a constitutional monarchy are freeer, however, the countries which are freeest are Denmark, Norway, Sweden- and they have a monarchy."

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eJQHakkViPo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eJQHakkViPo)

<comment><USER3> Define free. What's the exact metric for this ranking? It sounds quite a bit more complex and even nebulous than who makes the best butter.

I do like this part, "Mrs. Tony Blair was raised in a working-class family in Liverpool and became a successful barrister. Snobbery: the British disease." There's something weirdly similar here, where a fairly huge chunk of working class voted for the person born with $million in his pocket, and quite literally hate the woman born into a working class family and actually worked for most of her life (and was the bread winner) up until heading to D.C. It's almost a kind of self-hate variety of snobbery.

<comment><USER4> That part isn't true though - Blair went to private schools, notably the elite Fettes College as a boarder.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair#Education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair#Education)

The idea that anyone typically "working class" went to Fettes in the late 1960s is rather amusing - it is still rather grand to this day.

Edit: The reasons for the widespread hatred of Blair in the UK have _nothing_ to do with his background.

Edit2: Apologies - I misread, not used to reading "Mrs Tony Blair"....

<comment><USER5> The quote is referring to Cherie Blair, not Tony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the author is trying to say-- in an entertaining way-- that while everyone is getting sentimental and nostalgic about the longest reining monarch of Britain, do not forget that monarchy is useless and antithetical to modern ideas such as meritocracy and sexual equality.

Queen Elisabeth grew up in a time when the monarchy was far more threatened because of the political changes of the 1930s and the actions of her uncle. Knowing how precarious her situation was she tread very carefully. All it will take is one foolish ancestor to expose monarchy as an expensive and useless anachronism.

It is probably good for tourism though!

<comment><USER7> >It is probably good for tourism though!

As an Austrian I'm not buying that argument. It's not as if you need to tear down all the royal palaces when you abolish monarchy. If anything you can give tourists deeper entry, since no one lives there anymore. Just take a look at Schloss Schönbrunn, the Imperial palace in Vienna, which has way more visitors than Buckingham palace for the simple reason that it is open the entire year.

<comment><USER8> Good point. But you also need to take into account events like Royal weddings, which are huge for tourists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Blair example in the absence of monarchy is wrong - the person said that because Blair is hated, not because they are a snob.

Agree on the insane lies about their thrift.

Bit of a waste of an article. The author is clearly against the monarchy yet fails to enumerate many points in spite of the length.

What amazes me most is Americans. They profess a love of freedom and equality yet love the royals.

<comment><USER10> >They profess a love of freedom and equality yet love the royals.

Why would this amaze you? We're free to love the royals because for us it's consequence-free.

<comment><USER9> I guess I'd hope for the mental leap a child could make that one should not support those who enslave our fellow man.

<comment><USER10> That's beyond hyperbolic. The royals exist on the sufferance of the British electorate - you could get rid of them tomorrow if it strikes your fancy in the same way you got rid of hereditary peers in the House of Lords.

And while they're not technically completely without power, if the royals tried to actually _exercise_ power it would be stripped from them immediately. And they know it.

These days, for the most part the royals are a show for tourists.

<comment><USER9> They are in hock with the press. Recently they upped their share of crown land rent. Barely discussed. The power structures are more complex than simply what is possible in theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Today we have modern dynasties based on money - even at the micro-level, wealth promotes greater power and wealth for its descendants.

A large segment of society hate the very concept of a monarchy, but their inheritance is actually far more constrained than a typical dynasty's, as the state retains ownership of all of the monarchic portions (they of course have significant private wealth as well).

I, personally, feel we would be hypocritical to dismantle the monarchy before we dismantle inheritance wholesale. i.e. 100% inheritance taxation (though I don't propose this is absolutely straightforward; there are many complexities).

This is a deeply unpopular view, but if we hate this kind of power and wealth inequality, we should really deal with it, not make some silly gesture about an artefact of history.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like Harper's. I've had a subscription for many years. One of my favorite things is the Harper's Index, the juxtipositioning of seemingly (and often actually) unrelated things is an entertaining mind fuck.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not sure what I just read, but it was pretty entertaining

</comment><comment><USER13> This is so good.</comment>


Unix Administration Horror Stories (1993) - <AUTHOR> http://www.yak.net/carmen/unix_horror_stories <comment><USER2> I started out with no experience working for a company that provided services for telephony.

Our company bought out a telephony billing software company (we were leasing that previously). The deal included the guy who wrote the first release and subsequent, by himself, for years. This matters as it explains the mindset - there was low level of trust between us.

So that guy who wrote the software didn't want us messing with his servers/workstations. His solution? To remove the default route. As we were located in different cities, it meant we could only access his systems when he would add routes, which he would remove afterward.

My company needed access to a server one day, and they asked if I could remotely get that going.

Since we paid the bills, we owned the internet router, and I realized I could hop from that router to his servers and add the default route at will.

This worked great and everyone was happy (or didn't know we were doing it), except for me. I was determined to automate that.

So I wrote up a script that would log in to the router, then the server, then add the route, and logoff.

However what I didn't understand was that without wait states between commands it was possible under the right circumstances to overflow a router. This was exactly what happened while I was testing my script... A bunch of garbage flashed across the screen, my telnet session disconnected, and suddenly I could no longer ping their router.

Now we had to tell that guy what happened, so he could meet the phone company engineer on site to reprogram the router.

Just because something works a few times doesn't mean it's good to go...

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the first things they told me on my first day as an operator in the data-center of a big phone company was: "Remember, in Unix it is not Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V but Ctrl + Insert, Shift + Insert".

One night, in my second week there, I saw some errors on the console coming from a billing process that was running since a couple of days before. I called the on-call engineer in charge of that process and he asked me if I could copy-paste the errors and email them to him...

That month, about 2 million clients received the bills one day too late.

<comment><USER4> I'm so used to X11 remapping it to Ctrl+Shift+C, Ctrl+Shift+V that I didn't know about this.

This is unfortunate, because Chrome will map Ctrl+Shift+C to the developer console, meaning I open the page inspector instead of copying the line, leading to much pain and consternation on my part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not rm related, by I was recently trying to revive a NeXTStation and inatalling from cd left me with a system that booted to single user with a read only file system. The /etc/fstab had been written with the CD as sda and the hard drive as sdb. I couldn't create a mount point, like /tmp/foo because of the read only file system. (I tried to mount a floppy on /tmp, but got the same read-only-file system error.

On a whim I dumped the strings from the mount command and noticed two hard coded paths: /tmp/mnta and /tmp/mntb. Sure enough I was able to mount the root file system (again) read-write to update the file.

No emacs at this point but I did have vi, but it creates a /tmp/file and that directory isn't writable... So I ended up writing usomg sed to mangle my fatab..

Out of curiosity, how would windows deal with a similar problem (corrupted registry?). Any windows stories of triumphs?

</comment><comment><USER6> Could someone explain what the sccs account does on DEC?

On creative uses of rm(1) I will never forget my first IT job. I was sitting next to the huge vault door that led to our servers. The boss was in the room next to mine. Small operation of just 4 people and I was 19 years old.

Suddenly the boss comes running past my desk and into the server room, seconds later one of our FreeBSD web servers goes down.

After some panting and insistent question asking I find out that he accidentally ran rm -rf /home &. Apparently he hit the ampersand instead of typing out the users directory that he wanted to remove. So his solution to this was to run to the server and pull the power. :)

Not going to debate on whether his solution was better than killing the pid because we had to recover some user dirs from tapes anyways so it was inevitable.

And before anyone mentions it, yes it had HW RAID with a battery. ;)

Edit: Ok I immediately realized sccs could be source control but the poster in the thread doesn't really make it clear how it affected the system so I wasn't sure.

<comment><USER7> >Apparently he hit [something else] instead of typing out the [...] directory that he wanted to remove.

This exact reason is why I always and without fail type

      rm /some/directory/^A^[[C^[[C -rf

(where ^A means Ctrl+A and ^[[C means right arrow key)

instead of

      rm -rf /some/directory/

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I once typed something like:

echo "test mail message" > /usr/bin/qmail

instead of:

echo "test mail message" | /usr/bin/qmail

and went on holiday. Many lessons learned.

<comment><USER9> why would you use absolute path for qmail?

<comment><USER10> Not trusting root's path is defensive practice.

What's 'qmail'?

<comment><USER11> If root's PATH environment variable can be compromised, then you might as well ditch the whole system.

<comment><USER10> It may not be _common_ practice (I _typically_ rely on $PATH). But it _is_ , as I noted, _defensive_.

There are numerous ways in which $PATH can change. Shared profiles and other users modifying root's init among them. Intent isn't necessarily malicious. It can still be unexpected.

<comment><USER12> There was a Steam script that had a nasty habit of running '# rm /*' due to an empty script variable.

<comment><USER10> I _do not_ trust vendor scripts.

Really fscking annoying: scripts that include inline binary data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of my first jobs was as first, second and third line support at our university. The support group had an ethos of being pro-active and creative - so when I saw a zero-day for local root on Solaris 5.8(?) posted to bugtraq - my first inclination was to a) test it b) test if the sys.admin group was aware/had patched the servers. Since we ran just our own linux boxes, I reached for the first Solaris box on hand, the employee file (and maybe mail?) server. With some 2 (two)-10.000 user accounts. Exploit compiled, ran... and the box crashed.

Thus I learned that exploits can be unreliable - not binary get root or nothing. The phone call down to the sys.admins was a fantastic serving of humblepie. At least they were happy about the heads-up about needing to patch the servers...

I know _also_ know not to run random code from the Internet (even if I had at least read through it) - and that some people kiddie-proof their public zero- days in order to save busy sys.admins some time putting out fires lit by naive support staff and users...

</comment><comment><USER14> My own horror story: I mounted an NFS share to /tmp while working, and forgot to unmount it later.

Think about it.

Keep thinking about it.

Still keep thinking about it.

Still not sure why that's dangerous?

Give up?

tmpwatch removes files from /tmp with a modification time over a certain amount of days.

I owned up, but a colleague _swore_ he had evidence to prove it wasn't me, even though I was sure it was.

<comment><USER15> Sorry to hear it! Did you mount it to /tmp directly, or a subdirectory under /tmp? The reason I ask is the manpage says that tmpreaper should not switch filesystems, so I would think it shouldn't ever descend to /tmp/mountpoint :/

<comment><USER14> /tmp/mountpoint. IIRC it was tmpwatch ON RHEL 4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In the rm section of horror one story hints towards, and another explicitly notes,

> .* expands to ../*

Not on my box it doesn't. Was this true in some (rather cruel) past?

<comment><USER17> Actually it simply expands to .., so rm -rf .* happily deletes ../, therefore ./, etc. If you're in /tmp at the time you're making this mistake, it will clobber /. Current GNU rm may be more careful, though, and warn you of unintended consequences.

<comment><USER16> Actually, that was my point: for me, .* does not expand to .. or .; the special entires "." and ".." appear to not be considered during globbing.

After closer inspection, it turns out that this is because I'm a zsh user:

      % zsh -c 'echo .*'
      zsh:1: no matches found: .*
      % bash -c 'echo .*'
      . ..

Indeed, zsh's manual states:

> _No filename generation pattern matches the files `. ' or `..'._

… and I've just added another entry to my list of reasons as to why I love zsh.

<comment><USER14> Same safe behaviour happens when using bash and BSD rm (OS X):

        $ mkdir foo
        $ cd foo
        $ touch 1
        $ touch 2
        $ touch 3
        $ rm *
        $ ls -la .
        total 0
        drwxr-xr-x   2 mike  wheel   68  3 Sep 14:41 .
        drwxrwxrwt  18 root  wheel  612  3 Sep 14:41 ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you'd care for some fiction, the BOFH [0] series is tangentially related.

[0] [http://bofh.ntk.net/BOFH/index.php](http://bofh.ntk.net/BOFH/index.php)

</comment><comment><USER19> I see a lot of `it bites if you forget this very simple glob thing' on Unix.

Do such horror stories exist for Windows ?

</comment><comment><USER20> Tangentially, the fellow who set up yak.net was my (an many other GaTech students) first Unix mentor in the mid-80s. I owe him a pretty big debt.</comment>


Puerto Rican Website Dances the Harlem Shake - <AUTHOR> http://compraymudate.com/#harlemshake

<comment><USER2> #harlemshake on any of the site's urls activates the moovweb harlem shaker.. It was fun for some of the brokers sharing their dancing listings. :)</comment>


Mobile Cross Platform Beats Native When Done Right - <AUTHOR> http://codenameone.blogspot.com/2012/04/cross-platform-beats-native-when-done.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The holy grail in Mobile is being able to support the major mobile platforms with one codebase. HTML is not (yet) the answer. Codename One has a few examples of high quality Apps built with their toolchain, so it is definitely worth looking at.

</comment><comment><USER2> Has anyone used this framework in anger? No support for sqlite would stop me from porting my Android app to this. It looks like they have focused on the UI only so far (to good effect!)</comment>


The Oldest Company in Almost Every Country (That Is Still in Business) - <AUTHOR> https://businessfinancing.co.uk/the-oldest-company-in-almost-every-country/ <comment><USER2> Hainan (the biggish island East of Northern Vietnam) is part of China. It's not the first time I see a map that leaves it out on its own. Strange.

The 'Monnaie de Paris' is said to be the oldest mint in the world (sorry, Royal Mint).</comment>


Genome Jumper - <AUTHOR> https://genome-jumper.sib.swiss/ <comment><AUTHOR> Genome Jumper The mobile game to discover your genes!

Genome Jumper invites you to explore the human genome and its variations on your smartphone. From skin and eye color to food preference or disease predisposition - countless features (phenotypes) can be influenced by small changes (variants) in our DNA. Play the game to discover the effects of such changes on your avatar...

How do I play? Run along the sequence of over 30 genes to collect unique variants and watch your character change accordingly… often with surprising results! The levels of increasing difficulty will require all your dexterity to avoid dangerous falls into non-coding regions and to jump over secondary structures, while collecting as many points as possible.

Download links for Android and iOS [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.sib.genomej...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.sib.genomejumperfinal) [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/genome- jumper/id1358313036](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/genome- jumper/id1358313036)</comment>


New Horizons Update: Methane Detected; New Images of Pluto and Charon - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-update-methane-detected-new-images-of-pluto-and-charon-sunrisesunset

<comment><USER2> Today I learn that Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other.

        > Charon always presents the same face to Pluto, and
        > Pluto always presents the same face to Charon: from
        > any position on either body, the other is always at
        > the same position in the sky, or always obscured

[http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/8427/are- there-...](http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/8427/are-there-any- known-objects-in-a-dual-tidally-locked-orbit)

<comment><USER3> Just to be clear: this is not a new discovery. The mutual tidal locking has been known experimentally for quite a while, and can be predicted with high confidence based on their sizes and distance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A couple of other updates from yesterday:

"NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Stays the Course to Pluto"

[http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News- Article.php?page=20...](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News- Article.php?page=20150701)

"New Horizons Color Images Reveal Two Distinct Faces of Pluto, Series of Spots that Fascinate"

[http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News- Article.php?page=20...](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News- Article.php?page=20150701-2)

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow! The imagery is very quickly getting better now.</comment>


All is Not Well in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/all-is-not-well-in-silico_b_113226.html

<comment><USER2> In the long-term, we will get out of this funk with technological leverage. Firing bits over the wire costs zero. Inflation hits us by oil and food, but costs only continue to decrease on the tech end.

I'm sure firms are going to start making investments in green tech, but I'm not worried that those of us that enjoy the business of hacking are going to be employeed for a very, very long time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess this is relevant enough to not flag it as !HN, but... huffington post == politics, and they probably have a vested interest (getting Obama elected) in the doom&gloom type of stories painting the current economy badly. Not to say that it's all "roses and flowers" as they say in Italian, but extra grains of salt are required for articles like that, IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't take orders from the Huffington Post people, so I write about whatever I want (which in the past has included such topics as autism, politics, and business--but nothing in particular supporting Obama). Also, the piece isn't predicting doom and gloom. It's saying that doom and gloom is already here, and we in Silicon Valley aren't doing much to help matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm no fan of Zuckerberg, but this guy's envy of him is a little conspicuous.</comment>


Slinky – An easy way to query your PostgreSQL data - <AUTHOR> https://www.slinkydb.com/

<comment><USER2> We use redash. This allows forking of queries, charting, and some light dashboarding. Also it supports full text searching of queries and descriptions. It's also stand alone and easy to launch on ec2.

[https://github.com/EverythingMe/redash](https://github.com/EverythingMe/redash)

<comment><USER3> That looks great! I very much prefer the canonical SQL for querying data in a visual way, rather than a "generic" custom querying language. Does it send the query directly to the db? Is there any transformation? Does it mean it only works with sql databases?

<comment><USER4> Yes, Redash sends the query as is to the database. It currently supports PostgreSQL (& Redshift), MySQL, BigQuery, MongoDB, Graphite and Python scripts. Also someone currently working on ElasticSearch support.

The MonogDB & Graphite support is crude, but exists.

I'm the project maintainer, feel free to ask if you have any questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The video on the landing page does not play.

'Video format or MIME type is not supported' on firefox 37.0.2 win 7 x64

<comment><USER6> I experienced the same problem here (37.0.2, Linux).

I also think a few screenshots would be nice; I rarely click on a video when commuting, especially if I don't have my earphones.

With that said I think this is a fantastic product idea.

<comment><USER7> Strange, I have the same Firefox on a Ubuntu 12.04 and the video plays. Did they fix it in the last 3 hours or did I install some uncommon codec?

This is the direct URL to the video [https://d3j28ekqdam5rw.cloudfront.net/assets/slinky_demo-4c0...](https://d3j28ekqdam5rw.cloudfront.net/assets/slinky_demo-4c0f331152d4d9a16534dd2b36152f354515ed559fb8dfc8214b283db3e6ace9.mov)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't get it. What makes this better than simply giving out read-only users and using a local GUI like pgadmin?

<comment><USER9> I have the exact same feeling and question. The copy "Get data yourself. No need to bug engineers anymore." confuses me further. Surely someone who can write SQL queries can setup PgCommander or something similar?

</comment></comment><comment> kot-behemoth This looks pretty awesome! It is also worth mentioning Django SQL Explorer ([https://github.com/epantry/django-sql- explorer](https://github.com/epantry/django-sql-explorer)), which has all of the presented features, as well as handy schema definition by the side. It also allows for parameters in the queries, which is very useful (e.g. leaving the timeframe customisable before running a query). With Django 1.8 now being easier to install/deploy to wherever, this is a great plugin to allow more people data access!

</comment><comment><USER10> Without clicking play on the video I don't find it clear what this actually does / is?

</comment><comment><USER11> I thought that'd be an abstraction layer so people who are not that familiar with SQL but need some basic information can easily get it but this doesn't seem any different than just giving someone access to a view with a regular GUI client or [http://pgcli.com/](http://pgcli.com/).

</comment><comment><USER12> We use blazer[1] which is open source and lets you share queries just like this video demonstrates. It also has other nice features like composing results into charts and allowing interpolated values for generating queries with variable inputs. The demo[2] has examples for the features I mentioned.

1: [https://github.com/ankane/blazer](https://github.com/ankane/blazer)

2: [https://blazerme.herokuapp.com/](https://blazerme.herokuapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems like a pretty dull service at face value. But actually works really well for my co-founder and I. Good work! Sorry for the bitter sweetness =D

</comment><comment><USER14> It would be nice to understand a bit more about how it works before you have to sign up, however looks useful

</comment><comment><USER15> ZenQuery does something quite similar but for a variety of RDBMS: [http://www.zenqry.com/](http://www.zenqry.com/)

It's not limited to Heroku but can be used with any database connection URL. In fact, ZenQuery was modelled after Heroku Dataclips.

(sorry for the plug)

</comment><comment><USER16> How did you guys drop down to a read-only connection on Heroku Postgres? We directly connect DB clients like PGAdmin to a reporting DB on Heroku, but Heroku only seems to support credentials with full access. I don't want an analyst to "DROP TABLES" by mistake.

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't see the video, and without that the landing page doesn't tell me anything. How is this different from periscope.io?

</comment><comment><USER18> Just use pgadmin, ipython+pandas, or pgweb.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds a lot like heroku data clips?</comment>


Consistent Hashing Explained for High Schoolers - <AUTHOR> https://akshatm.svbtle.com/consistent-hash-rings-theory-and-implementation <comment><USER2> This is a really nice writeup! Very clear and easy to understand.

I did notice one conceptual error near the beginning:

> _Computers can pull this trick off too: they take a value, and store it at a > location in memory. Then, given a key, they somehow use that key to figure > out the address of that memory location, go to that location, and return > that value._

> _Figuring out the address is called hashing, and maps that work like this > under the hood are called hash tables._

That definition isn't right. Looking up a key to get a value isn't called "hashing". Hashing and hash tables are just one out of a number of ways that a program could do this.

For example, given the data objects in the first illustration that have Key and Value properties, you could simply use a linear array of these objects. Then you loop through the array looking for the matching Key, and there you have your Value. Hashing is not involved here.

Of course, as the array gets longer, this simple loop gets slower and slower. That's where you start looking for faster algorithms and data structures such as hash tables. But the hash table isn't _fundamental_ to doing a name/value lookup, it's just one way to do it.

Another example is a trie, very different from a hash table but could be used for the same purpose. Tries are often used where you may want to get a list of values that match a prefix (like an autocomplete) but they can also be used for a full match just like a hash table or a linear array.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! And all true, but I wanted to be able to motivate why we generate a hash at all for a hashtable. Disambiguating the purpose of hashing outside of its narrow use case here fell outside the scope of my writeup, and would have involved a needless digression - that is why I inserted a hyperlink for anyone to follow if they wanted to learn more. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am currently a high schooler near the top of my class at what I consider to be a pretty normal public school. This explanation was quite clear for me, but I am already familiar with the topic.

Not to detract from the write-up, but I think the claim that the explanation is "accessible to an ordinary high-schooler" is an overly bold one.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a pity. What would you suggest could be improved?

<comment><USER4> You'd have to improve the ordinary high schooler. A challenging task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought this was an unusually good article. It covered the topic very clearly, with relevant code samples written with excellent and idiomatic style (and useful inline comments too), as well as covering the process of going from theory to implementation.

This is also a great reminder of how incredibly elegant and powerful the basic data structures (hashmaps and binary trees in this case) really are. It doesn't take a fancy implementation to make this stuff work. Just the basics gets it done.

<comment><AUTHOR> As the author: Thank you! That was my intention. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great, although I think these are some pretty advanced high schoolers! It's cool that they are learning this stuff.

However, rendezvous hashing is superior to consistent hashing because consistent hashing gets hotspots if you lose a node, unless you are using many virtual nodes (which then adds a large overhead). Also, rendezvous hashing doesn't require all the clients to know the state of all the nodes.

So maybe it would be good to update the lesson for rendezvous hashing. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Re rendezvous hashing: I would have to understand it better first, and write out an implementation. :) But, yes, maybe in a followup post.

<comment><USER6> Here's a video from a talk I did about rendezvous hashing: [https://youtu.be/x-zwxuIb1lY?t=20m38s](https://youtu.be/x-zwxuIb1lY?t=20m38s)

Might at least give you a high level overview. Then you can read this Python which is pretty straightforward:

[https://github.com/nikhilgarg28/rendezvous/blob/master/_rend...](https://github.com/nikhilgarg28/rendezvous/blob/master/_rendezvous.py)

I think you'll like it! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In a weird way I almost think it's almost easier to explain by looking at what a Distributed Hash Table is and why might you need/want one (in general terms) first, and then looking at algorithms rather than starting from a basic Hash Table and just jumping to Consistent Hashing. (I think consistent hashing is not ideally named, personally.)

That said, I think the author does a good job of doing exactly that.

<comment><AUTHOR> As the author: thank you! The reason why I built it bottom-up is because I understand novitiates learn to reason bottom-up, not yet having had familiarity with the forest to appreciate the trees, whereas experts (those brave woodland explorers) know the lay of the land enough to notice the variations. That's not to say it's not suitable - just maybe not the audience I had in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Those are some unusually smart high schoolers.

EDIT: I am a teacher.

<comment><USER9> Also a teacher, and pretty sure there's maybe 1-5 high schoolers a year that would understand this.

<comment> dj-wonk You say "1-5 high schoolers" based on what population? Students you've taught in your school? How many students? What's something comparable you've tried teaching?

I tend to think students are capable of learning many more things than people will sometimes give them credit for. Maybe they have to do more background preparation, but I would be reluctant to say someone couldn't learn this.

Now, when it comes to applying it in a novel way, I'd be more inclined to think fewer students get to that point.

<comment><USER3> This is not a topic that would ever come up in class at my public high school. Within my school district, there is very little emphasis on technology education in middle and high school; I don't know of any of my peers who would possess the background to understand this article just from reading it. Perhaps the other commenters were referring with students possessing the necessary context/background to understand the article.

I don't know where you went to school, but I've also come to learn that the vast majority of high school students can be spectacularly disappointing with regards to their motivation to learn topics like this, even if they're fully capable of doing so.

<comment><USER10> Imho the lack of motivation is function of the system. The vast majority of the students are taking classes because they have to and not because they want to. Not surprising that students aren't motivated in a class that they didn't pick. Discaimer: I am a high school student.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a nice post, I wanted to point out one minor error:

>"A glossary, too, is a map - given a word, it can take you to the exact page the word is referenced."

I think the author means index not glossary. I know its a nitpick but its such a well-written post otherwise I thought I would mention it. Cheers.

<comment><AUTHOR> This has been fixed. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_hashing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_hashing)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why go through a long discussion of a CHT, and then end with an irrelevant implementation of a binary tree instead of a simple list or library data structure?

<comment><AUTHOR> > "In this post, I have chosen to implement it as a binary search tree. There > are a few reasons, most prominently because I wanted to eschew using > anything more sophisticated than basic Python, and using a sorted list > efficiently would mean resorting to Python's bisect."

Other reasons:

\- Other blog posts about consistent hashing fall prey to favouring 'clever' implementations, which is great for advanced Pythonistas, but serves to obfuscate for anyone else. Similar arguments hold for many existing BST implementations. \- Implementing the custom lookup I sought for this implementation was easier if I went with something hand-rolled, and was fine since I don't expect anyone to actually use this implementation in production (I mean, they can, but there are better implementations out there).

Essentially, my goal was transparency and clarity. This was the best way to do it, all things considered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A little bit of a stretch to say this is for high schoolers for example. Do most high schoolers even know how to program ?

</comment><comment><USER15> Awesome...it really helped!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>