Ask HN: Fellowships to work on startup in SF? - <AUTHOR> I'm a student working on a software (education + ML related) startup idea with a couple friends, and ideally, we want to spend our summer working in SF.
We don't need much money -- we just want money for rent -- we don't need to buy equipment, we don't need to pay ourselves, and we're good with eating PB&J sandwiches for the summer. We just want to be living and working together, and in SF, if possible.
We don't want to give up equity, so we've applied to some fellowships, like Lightspeed Venture Parters and Summer@Highland. But these kinds of zero equity fellowship-style programs seem pretty rare.
Any ideas on how to be in SF for the summer? Anyone know of any other programs that we should look into?
We're doing our own research on this, but I thought I'd ask HN in case anyone here had any advice to share. <comment><USER2> Since you're restricting yourself so much, you don't have many options. One opportunity, although a shitty one, is to find a 24-hr gym with treadmills and get a membership, make a platform for your laptop that can hang onto one of the treadmills to use as your work 'desk'(can't get kicked out if you're 'exercising'), you now have a place to work/shower/bathroom, and then you can sleep in your car (which is probably illegal there so find a good parking spot!).

I guess it just comes down to how set on being in SF and not giving up equity you are.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since you didn't mention it, YC has a Fellowship program.

[https://fellowship.ycombinator.com/](https://fellowship.ycombinator.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why SF? It's a pretty expensive place in terms of rent and it doesn't sound like this is the kind of thing that requires a specific location. Without a really good reason, I wouldn't want anyone spending money I'd invested in that way.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope this isn't obnoxious to suggest, but: give up equity. No free lunch.

</comment><comment><USER6> Rent is the last thing fellowships want to pay for. They'll give up a living stipend but they certainly want the money to be used on technical resources.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the reasoning is that we all want to be in the same physical location (because working together remotely is ineffective).

And SF is a nice place to be :)

(Yeah, I agree that it's not critical that we spend the summer in SF. But that's where everything is - it's a good place to be, if possible.)</comment></comment>


Cues of men's upper-body strength account for most variance in attractiveness - <AUTHOR> http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1869/20171819 <comment><USER2> This is actually pretty comforting (at least for me). It means you can significantly alter your attractiveness, and you're not stuck with what you have!

"Contrary to popular theories of men's physical attractiveness, there was no evidence of a nonlinear effect; the strongest men were the most attractive in all samples"

<comment><USER3> They care about things that you cant alter, like the shoulder bone structure and jawline. And of course height

<comment><USER4> You can't (easily) alter the jawline bone, but you can alter the surrounding muscles with physical exercise.

[https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness- exercise/jawline-e...](https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness- exercise/jawline-exercises)

I've personally witnessed a change after six months of crossfit every day.

Maybe it's that all the wrinkly faces you make when you exert yourself. ;-)

<comment><USER5> Wow what a joke of a link.

You know what gets you a defined jawline?

Getting down to a legit 7% body fat. Your jaw will have no fat to hide behind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> But in the real world women don't judge men by looking at photographs of their bodies. They interact with them and make an assessment based on many dimensions like handsomeness, physique, wealth, education, personality, etc.

<comment><USER7> Dating apps (e.g. Tinder) are quite popular though.

<comment><USER8> I think you meant Grindr, try posting bare chest pic on Tinder and see how far it gets you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just read this. Here's my biggest objection:

"In both sets of photographs, the subjects' faces were obscured. See figure 1 for sample photographs. Set 1 photos included both front and side views; Set 2 photos had only front views."

So far, it seems like the conclusion should be that upper body strength accounts for variance in attractiveness _when the only available information is visual imagery of a man 's body, with the face obscured._. That's a big enough qualifier that I think the conclusion in the title is misleading, and claims a broader conclusion than can be justified from this study.

The study authors did address this somewhat in question d: "Research on facial attractiveness reveals that some women prefer more feminized and less dominant faces". It sounds like they way they studied this was to see if preference for more feminized faces might translate into a similar preference for bodies, and they found that it did not. However, this doesn't address the possibility that faces might count for more variance if the raters had seen them, right? Again, I may be missing something here, but I'm not seeing it so far from the study.

Lastly, does anyone know how the study specifically controlled for _upper_ body strength? Were there any images of men who were athletic but had most of their strength in their lower body? I'm not seeing it here, may have missed it.

At this point, I do think that the claim in the title is too substantial given then evidence from this study. I'd say that there certainly does appear to be evidence that upper body strength accounts for variance in attractiveness when a rater has access only to non-facial physical features, but even then, I'm not entirely sure the study adequately controlled for other athletic physical traits.

<comment><USER10> Actual Title:

 _Cues of upper body strength account for most of the variance in men 's bodily attractiveness_

So, yes, they were measuring bodily attractiveness. That was the whole point of the study.

<comment><USER9> Arg. Well thank you for posting. The hn title lacked that word and I didn't catch it in the study but it is indeed there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This measures two self assessed factors so it's very well possible that at least some of the correlation runs in the opposite direction. That is, more attractive people, all else being equal, are rated as being more physically strong.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, in that case, I'm off to the gym.

</comment><comment><USER13> Roidrage, here I come!

</comment><comment><USER14> > Lukazsweski

Tehy cpoleetmly wrkeecd his suanrme.</comment>


Saturn ring particles 'fluffy' - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4217038.stm

<comment><USER2> Upmodded for NOT being about Erlang. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Mutiny! PG said specifically not to upvote fluffy links.</comment></comment>


Out of the box, why is Python 3 better than Python 2? - <AUTHOR> http://python-notes.curiousefficiency.org/en/latest/python3/questions_and_answers.html#out-of-the-box-why-is-python-3-better-than-python-2

<comment><USER2> It seems if you are "a Python 2 guy" then 2 is better. If you are "a Python 3 guy", then 3 is better.

That's how to work out which is better.</comment>


How I gained access to Amazon EC2 servers from GitHub Search - <AUTHOR> http://blog.appgrounds.com/access-to-amazon-servers-github/

<comment><USER2> Dude thats crazy. GG</comment>


Parsing with Haskell and Attoparsec - <AUTHOR> http://newartisans.com/2012/08/parsing-with-haskell-and-attoparsec/

<comment><USER2> So the Haskell's not actually fully parsing the data, it's returning a lazy value that will do some of the work later? It's a perfectly good approach, but it means the performance comparison isn't really fair - the Haskell approach would slow down the rest of your program if you were actually using the value you parsed.

Comparing the line count between a program that uses a library and one that parses by hand is also somewhat unfair.

<comment><USER3> He is only parsing the headers in the final Haskell version, and skipping the body. In the C++ version, he also seems to check the MD5 and/or SHA1 hash (if a hash of the body available and OpenSSL with SHA1/MD5 support is available).

So, it's not exactly clear to me if the C++ and the Haskell version are still doing the same thing. Also, in the C++ version he is parsing stuff by hand, it will probably a lot faster when using a proper lexer (you usually can't beat an optimized finite state machine ;)) and parser.

Unfortunately, the emphasis on performance distracts from the main point: parsers written with attoparsec or parsec are usually understandable, type- safe, and pretty, while offering performance near to that of a C/C++ version.

In other words, if you have enough time, you can probably come up with a C or C++ parser that is as fast or faster than a Haskell-based parser (assuming some overhead of boxing/unboxing, garbage collection, more difficult optimization, ...), but would you care if the Haskell implementation had 80% of the performance and was far more maintainable?

<comment><USER4> Can't just make up a number though. What if the Haskell has 10% of the performance and uses 10x the RAM?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you have non length variable ASCII would you still want to use Attoparsec or Data.Binary?</comment>


Dynamic image/video as background - www.bing.com - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Wow. That took forever to load (the first time), then locked my browser for about 5 seconds.

I can't help but think that one of the things that catapulted Google early on was the quick load times and simple entry point.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clicky - <http://www.bing.com> (Can't submit this as url as it takes it as a dupe of original bing.com submission)

</comment><comment><USER3> As with many things, not available in Canada (bing is, just no video background).</comment>


Facebook's So-Called Pivot to Privacy Is a Diversion - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/facebook-privacy-pivot-zuckerberg-messaging-whatsapp-instagram-merging.html <comment><USER2> That was kind of obvious from Zuckerberg's statement. It's all about messaging privacy. All this is to push for Federal preemption of California's new privacy law, which takes effect January 1, 2020, and is a lot like the GPDR. Facebook is screwed if that takes effect.

<comment><USER3> It still baffles me that people don't realize Facebook messaging is unencrypted... How can you wonder why Facebook knows that you want to buy puppy pampers if you have been messaging your friend Karen about it all day.

<comment><USER2> Few people care. Skype was end to end encrypted before Microsoft bought it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It will still sell your attention</comment>


The Whale and the CEO: A Review of the Inventor Out for Blood in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/the-whale-and-the-ceo-a-review-of-the-inventor-out-for-blood-in-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I am unusual but I like the phlebotomy clinic that I go to.

They are fast to get you in and out, very nice people, and unlike the Red Cross they don't have to stick the needle in multiple times.

</comment><comment><USER3> the book was fascinating to say the least</comment>


IPad Screen Burn-in and Apple's Billions of Dollars– The Carton - <AUTHOR> http://thecarton.net/2012/04/06/burn-in-and-billions <comment><USER2> If only they could provide this kind of customer service worldwide. I've been fighting with Apple (Asia) about screen burn-in since 2010 (which I've already given up); I can never ever open iPad keyboard more for than 5 minutes without getting a burn-in since the first day since I bought it. The only thing they ever did was denying the problem. I love Apple products, but never have faith in their customer service.

<comment><USER3> "I can never ever open iPad keyboard more for than 5 minutes without getting a burn-in since the first day since I bought it."

Could you clarify what you mean by this? Not sure if I understand.

<comment><USER2> iPad on-screen keyboard. The burn-in is very noticeable after few minutes especially in landscape mode (for some reason).

<comment> X-Istence That's not how burn in works ...

Burn in requires a static image for a long period of time (months/years). It doesn't just magically show up after 5 minutes of use.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like he's referring to "image persistence", which is similar in appearance to burn-in, but a different mechanism.

Burn-in is more likely to be found on CRTs and can take a long time to occur. Image persistence can happen in seconds or minutes and is what is seen on LCDs. It's usually temporary or reversible. (And plasma owners can experience both, yay! :)

<comment><USER2> Hmm, you're right. I did choose a wrong word, my problem is more of Image Persistence[1][2] than CRT-type burn-in, which in my case, did magically appears after few minutes of use and took a long time to disappear.

This doesn't deny my point of Apple support is awful outside US, though. I also have issue with horizontal line on 2009 iMac screen that they refuse to acknowledge the problem until very recently (October 2011). I'm happy that it's finally fixed, but it shouldn't took two years.

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

[2]: <http://compreviews.about.com/od/monitors/a/LCDBurnIn.htm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Aside from degradation, the difference the poster noticed in the display quality between the two different iPads can also be explained by two other phenomena:

\- "Silent" hardware revs: Apple will frequently rev the hardware to fix issues without actually changing the model number (other than perhaps changing the range of numbers or adding a trailing suffix indicating the new revision). They certainly don't announce these announcing anything. The changes can include new parts, new firmware (which can be rolled out to existing hardware as an update if Apple considers it important enough), or fixed / updated boards. A newer iPad may have several improvements over an older one, even if it's ostensibly the same model.

\- Multiple suppliers for the same production runs: even within the same revision, you can get two different instances of the same hardware with two different manufacturers for the same part. You could go to the store in a single trip and pick up two iPod Touches and end up with one that has a Sharp LCD and another one that has a Samsung LCD.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love Apples customer service, they are a shining example, just like Nordstrom.

Their misuse of the word "genius" is beyond irritating.

My wife's solution...

main = putStrLn $ "The Genius Bar" ++ "f"

</comment><comment><USER7> I've had several similar experiences: (1) iPhone replacement for uneven LCD edge lighting, (2) iPhone replacement for quirky physical button problem, (3) Replacement of white Macbook due to malfunctioning iSight camera (even got away with newer unibody model).

Sometimes you've got to know how to approach the situation to skip past the standard questions and get the ~5min response time. As mentioned, you pay for it up front. With other brands, these sort of things aren't even considered issues.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have this problem with my Macbook pro screen described here: [https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2793446?start=0&tst...](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2793446?start=0&tstart=0), and the laptop is about half a year passed warranty. Do you think they will fix the problem as easily and for free?

<comment> X-Istence I had an issue with the nvidia graphics card that wasn't technically covered by the nvidia warranty replacement program, Apple replaced the motherboard 3 years after warranty ran out on it. No problems, just ran their little diagnostics (or tried to, the machine just wouldn't boot anymore).

They ended up shipping it off, came back as good as new besides the screen being off (there was a line going down the middle now that wasn't there before) that would show up sometimes when you would tilt the screen a certain angle (no, I wasn't trying to bend it too far). Sent it out again, got it back, brand new screen.

Yes, being without it twice kinda sucked, but it was my secondary machine. In the end Apple fixed everything that was wrong with it long after the warranty ended.

Now, one thing I would say is that all of my laptops always get checked in under my personal business name, so each time I get a "Apple's business department is here for your business" spiel and a business card attached for when I want to upgrade.

Couldn't be more happy with Apple, I have been extremely satisfied with my purchases to date and enjoy using their products daily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One more thing to note is that Apple earns a lot (more ) from the services on the iPad. The apps you buy, the books you buy etc. So it is also in their interest to make sure you are back to buying these as soon as possible.

<comment><USER10> I think you dramatically overestimate Apple's profit frm apps and content relative to hardware sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice story, but try getting them to fix a MacBook after you spill a soda on it.

Edit: well after a second of reflection I guess that's not really comparable. Screen burn-in is at least arguably a defect in the product. Spilling a coke on a MacBook is your own fault (even if accidental).

<comment><USER12> I just did. Cost a couple hundred bucks. What went wrong for you? I had mine back in a couple days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> you should understand that they just push cost around, and put a better face forward by focusing on the 'valet' type service model. you actually pay for this, for eg. when you pay an extra $100 for 16gb of ipad memory; which should really cost you $15 as an sdhc expansion.

<comment><USER14> You absolutely pay for it. And I totally expect to pay for it. Its not free.

When I bought my first MacBook, I wanted someone to stand behind it and just handle complex, hard-to-diagnose problems.

Downtime can be very costly. You pay for that too.

<comment><USER15> Yup. Upfront cost is of negligible importance. Reliability and support have far greater financial impact.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Using Twine and Twitter For Ambient Social Invitations - <AUTHOR> http://lcusack.tumblr.com/post/64615306223/using-twine-twitter-for-ambient-social-invitations

<comment><USER2> Great stuff! I've been working on an app to help solve this same problem more generally. Here is a blog post I wrote talking about the problem from my perspective [https://medium.com/look-what-i- made/4e667ad7a098](https://medium.com/look-what-i-made/4e667ad7a098)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome.

For two years, my roommate and I hosted drinks at our house every Wednesday night; the effort of continually remembering to add people to an email list + calling + texting was a drag. We were always trying to find ways to reduce friction for the event, and a similar setup would have been fun.</comment>


Ask HN: do you feel Google search result quality has gone down? - <AUTHOR> Yesterday I was surprised to find myself trying Yahoo search because I couldn't get satisfactory search results in Google. It was the first time in years. I started thinking about this, and I realized that in the past few months I haven't been getting particularly good results from Google. I don't get spam or anything, but a lot of times I don't get useful results.
The thing is, I'm not sure if it's because I do a lot of very specialized stuff these days, or because the search quality really has gone down. Consider these two examples:
Search for "Linux asynchronous IO". You'll get a lot of articles, but most are four years old (which is an eternity in the Linux world). These results aren't very good - posix AIO is implemented in userspace threads, and io_submit and friends don't work in many cases. Which cases? Hard to tell - I couldn't find any information in the results no matter how long I searched. I couldn't find any benchmarks either.
Perhaps it's because there is no good info on this on the web (hard to believe). So let's try something else - search for "concurrent hashmap in C". After hours of searching and playing with keywords, I got almost no useful results (other than Intel's libs, but not too much info on that either). It's difficult to believe that there are no good implementations out there.
So, is it the specialized nature of my searches, or is it Google? What do you think? <comment><USER3> I've used google since it was google.stanford.edu, and it's clear to me the results have suffered. My feeling is that two of the problems are SEO and feedback effects of google's own popularity.

SEO: When you cut through all the BS, the entire goal here is to make a less good match come first. And it works (sorta). Just consider crap sites like Experts Exchange that we've only learned about because they pollute many searches.

Feedback effect: Thanks to google, less people do less collecting of good links. Why bother when you can google for it? So there's less good information for google to use in ranking links. Bear in mind that when google started, nearly every home page had a long list of links to all the pages that particular user liked and frequently used. I used to have one; I've long since deleted it; my blog has some outgoing links that I like, but relatively few. If I twittered, I'd probably post a lot of outgoing links, but of dubious value; there's no gardening of just the perfect page of 100 links going on anymore.

(I think this also partially explains why some (generally more specialized, so less effected by other things) results feel dated -- legacy links that are still hanging around from days when links were still used that way.)

Feedback effect: Thanks to google, ten sites tend to be more important than any other sites on any given topic. This results in certain sites becoming increasingly important. Wikipedia is the chief example here. Why is there only one Wikipedia and not a dozen? Chiefly because it's gotten all the google juice. If you want your wiki article on foo to show up in google, you naturally write it on Wikipedia, not Fooipedia. The result here is that all google searches feel increasingly the same -- of course Wikipedia is always in the top ten, or maybe something like Stack Overflow for a technical search.

\----

So, these days, if I don't see something interesting in the top ten, I often click on the link to page 10 (or 20, or 100) of the results. Often more interesting. For example, google for "mashed potatos".

Top 10 results: "Perfect mashed potatoes" (SEO), allrecipies.com (always in top 10 for any recipe search), foodnetwork.com, Wikipedia, about.com, nytimes, etc. Pictures of mashed potatos. All generic and useless.

Page ten results: Dairy-free mashed potatoes. _Potato_ free mashed potatos! Caramelized Onion Horseradish Red Mashed Potatoes! A poem about eating them. At least marginally more interesting and quirky. What I would have expected out of google circa 1997.

<comment><USER4> The results from Experts Exchange are typically useful, but you have to scroll all the way down past the ads and other crap to see the actual answers.

<comment><USER5> Last time I checked, EE was hiding all actual answers to visitors. It doesn't really qualify as a useful link, then.

<comment><USER6> If you come to the page with a google search result referral, the answers are all at the bottom of the page. This is called first click free: [http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=...](http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=40543&topic=11707)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes.

One thing I noticed is that searches no longer require that all words in the query be present in the search results. Adding a + before a word is now required to ensure that it's present in results. That frequently results in me having to do 2-3 searches to find something that could previously be found with one.

<comment><USER8> I have noticed this too and find it very irritating. I expect ALL words to be present. Why did they change this?

<comment><USER9> I have no idea why they changed this, I noticed it recently and I can't figure it why.

User testing must have somehow played a role, I hate to blame non-technical users but... still I can't believe anyone gets better results when the keywords are optional.

The odd thing is I remember switching from AltaVista to google, before google you always had to discount the first bunch of results, but google was just so amazingly accurate. And yet now I find myself skipping the top results in a google search.

I remember when google bombing first started, it didn't bother me much, but then google tried to counter it and I could swear searches got a bit worse. And recently they've gotten even worse.

It's a shame this seems to be destiny of all truly great things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yep. I never used to use search operators unless I was looking for something really specific. Nowadays I get completely irrelevant results and I am forced to quote strings and explicitly specify term precedence, conditionals and other regexy stuff.

Last night I was searching for the syntax of DEFTYPE when used with various types (i.e. MEMBER, SATISFIES, OR, etc.) and the #1 his for "deftype member" was the personal MySpace page of some guy.

I think they're optimizing for "social" results now.

<comment><USER11> They'd probably do well to have a seperate 'technical search' for searching for things related to technical matters, eg programming languages, physics, chemistry, medicine, engineering, etc. And remove the casual stuff (facebook, myspace, pages that are clearly not about a technical subject, etc) from that index.

It would probably be a highly praised feature to seperate off a second index like that, as specifically searching for programming language concepts and documentation can be difficult (the C# and .NET problem).

<comment><USER12> Having separate indexes and separate searches for sub-domains of knowledge is an interesting idea. The original idea of PageRank was that each link constituted a 'vote' for a page. Perhaps different epistemic communities on the internet use links to mean different things. So, the _meaning_ of links on technical webpages is slightly different from the meaning of links on social websites. Interesting idea to play around with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes, and this is why I started Duck Duck Go: <http://duckduckgo.com/>. Thanks for posting specific cases--they help me immensely. Anyone else have more?

<comment><USER14> I've used Duck Duck Go a bit and the results are okay. Maybe just a shorter URL would be awesome (such as ddg.com ddgo.com, etc...).

Here is a search that I have had problems with :

octave "--eval"

Your site does pretty well with this (fourth link is somewhat relevant).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It has certainly gone waaaay south since day 1, that much is undeniable. Of course, a large part of that is that the internet has gotten a lot more useless filler in those years, and this has of course made 'relevant search' an astronomically harder problem than it was in 1998.

On the more important metric of 'has quality gotten worse in the last couple of years', I would say 'sort of'. The direct quality of results HAS suffered, but on the other hand, google have implemented the user-wiki thing that allows you to modify, to a degree, which sites are less relevant.

I will add that I think google needs to rethink it's keyword fuzziness, in the past it used to be acceptable if the results didn't exactly match what you were searching for, but these days that is becoming more of a problem. If I search for a bunch of words, I typically know I want those words, by all means suggest 'did you mean ... ?' but the fuzziness in the results needs to be pulled back.

</comment><comment><USER15> Back to the Altavista days of +search +must +include +plus +signs +"and quotation marks"

Seriously, the problem is advanced users get unexpected results with the query expansion and refinement layers they've added on. While dropping obscure words is helpful when grandpa has misformed queries, it's maddening for a technical user looking for a very specific, infrequent keyword. However for grandpa, it's probably a better experience for a generalized result.

Using +'s works well enough, but it's disappointing we have to use a less efficient method of querying now.

<comment><USER16> More generally, I think that we don't have a good mental model of how Google is searching. It used to be straightforward, almost like Git, which won't make any "clever" merges. Google, as a tool, is on the decline because it's not comprehensible (even to us advanced users!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Quote from Google employee:

 _It does work as described! - which may very well not be as desired. If you want a more mathmatical-logical use of operators then you need to go find another search engine._

[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=1327f6fc2f6238e3&hl=en)

I am afraid that Google is now more of a 'social search engine' than a 'hacker search engine'.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the the results quality on Google has been the same or better over the last few months; one thing we have been looking at is helping less savvy users who might mistype a word or type extra words that they don't really need in their query. That can be a little more annoying for power users, but on the other hand the power users pick up tricks like "Use a '+' in front of a word to require Google to match that word."

Regarding the query [Linux asynchronous IO] returning older results, here's a tip. Above the search results click the "Show options" link to open up what we call "toolbelt" mode. From there, you can click to show only results from (say) the last year, or in a certain date range.

Toolbelt mode is really handy, e.g. if you search for a product, you can click "Show options" and then click the "Fewer shopping sites" link to get more reviews and manufacturer pages instead of comparison shopping sites.

</comment><comment><USER19> Did you try <http://www.google.com/linux>

?

Although I alternate search engines regularly, I do think the way Google indexes for specialized searches is pretty smart.

<comment><USER20> Is there a list somewhere of all the specialized searches?

<comment><USER21> <http://www.google.com/options/specialsearches.html>

Only 5 topics, unfortunately.

<comment><USER20> Oh, that's a shame! I was looking forward to seeing a big page of specialized searches. Oh well.

Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There was a comment on LessWrong where a poster suggested using Yahoo over Google for non-quoted search. I tried it myself (I need to find an article based on several words mentioned in it) -- and was pleasantly surprised. Yahoo seems to be doing much better job than Google for non-quoted search requests.

</comment><comment><USER14> We had the exact same discussion on reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9s6p2/google_is...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9s6p2/google_is_turning_into_cuil_since_when_did_quotes/)

It is starting to get incredibly difficult to do specific searches (such as for documentation). It also seems that SEO have become incredibly successful in gaming Google.

It would actually be good if there were some competition.

</comment><comment><USER23> I tried Bing the other day out of curiosity, and the results where _incredibly_ dissapointing compared to Google's.

<comment><USER24> Did you try their image search or product search? I've almost completely dropped those two parts of Google due to Bing.

<comment><USER25> I definitely agree with the image search. It's lightyears ahead of Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've actually noticed the inverse problem with some non-tech-related searches. Politics is a fine example: try and find an article about a 2002 House vote on Social Security and there's no chance you'll find it; the results are all present day.

Strange that with regard to current events the web seems to have little historical memory, and yet with regard to current technology it has too much.

<comment><USER12> Google News has an archive search that is useful for that type of query.

[http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=2002+house+vote+socia...](http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=2002+house+vote+social+security)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The autocorrect is maddening. I've been researching Riak recently. It's new so there isn't a lot available. Paired with another search term I frequently get results only for "risk." Let me know if I might have made a typo, but don't assume I'm an idiot and do something different than what I told you to do.

Dropping keywords also annoys me. If the keywords don't exist then tell me that so I can adjust my search. Don't give me a long list of results that I have to click through before realizing you screwed up the search.

The only reason the google search bar is still my default is because I use it as a quick and easy calculator.

<comment><USER20> If you're using a Mac you might find it interesting to know that the spotlight search bar can be used as a calculator almost exactly the same way as Google can... Unfortunately it can't do conversions (at least not on Leopard). Also, the shortcut for spotlight is CMD + Space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Absolutely-- especially when you drift out of the world of technology. Google is based on the "linkerati" (hat tip to SEOmoz) - geeks and bloggers who link to stuff aggressively. That works great in the worlds where people link (social media) but poorly if you're searching for non-geeky stuff.

I've been doing home remodeling a bit lately, and it's clear to me that there are NO home remodeling linkerati. But there are plenty of SEO guys out there and it only takes a few low quality links to top a lot of searches. So search for home remodeling stuff and you see plenty of adsense spam.

</comment><comment><USER29> its more the internet has gotten worse I think

They should drop yahoo answers, any site with an affiliate link, and any of the internet marketer sites ( like ezinearticles.com ) from their index

<comment><USER30> that's funny, I was about to suggest dropping Yahoo answers too.

My friend had an idea to make search rankings go by the number of ads on a page, the less ads the higher the ranking. I guess Google would never do that because of their adsense program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> See also the discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=803201>.

</comment><comment><USER32> Not overall, but I have found Google frustrating for things that are very recent. For instance I wanted to watch Obama's speech to the schoolkids on YouTube (the day after he'd given it), but the only videos Google would bring back were from his race speech in Philadelphia. I tried all the operators and keywords I could think of, and couldn't get what I wanted.

FWIW, Bing nailed it on the first query.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's eye-opening to try "Blind Search", which submits your query to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing simultaneously, and displays to you the three sets of results without (at first) identifying which is which:

<http://blindsearch.fejus.com/>

I was amazed to discover that I was consistently choosing the blind results from Yahoo! as best for my own searches.

<comment><USER34> First two attempts I picked Yahoo and Bing, heh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think you picked two bad terms. "Linux asynchronous IO" has meaning more than just "IO under Linux that's not blocking". That's what most pages using those terms are referring to, so it makes sense that that's what Google would give you.

"Hashmap", the term you searched for, is a term popularized by the Java world; I think most C programmers still call them "hashtables". (Hash map is a better term, as many excellent map implementations aren't actually based on hashes; see "Judy" for example.) A search for "C concurrent hashtable" gave me a lot of useful results. (You are also suffering from C's lack of a coherent community here. Lots of people write this sort of thing, but few think to share it. Hence, not many search results.)

</comment><comment><USER36> Hi, My name is Steve Baker and I'm a Software Engineer in our search quality team here at Google. We take these types of complaints seriously and use them to debug the problem/brainstorm solutions.

For those of you who have been forced to use + or quotes to get google to return what you want, we would love if you would post the specific example queries on this thread. (Some people did, but a few of the complaints were vague.) Also, in general you can click the 'Dissatisfied? Help us improve' link in the footer of google search results pages to report problems. We check those out, but if you wanted to include the word "hackernews" in the info you submit, that would let us see all your reports easily.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think the overall signal-to-noise ratio of the Internet has simply taken a big dive since the advent of blogging. I'm sick of seeing the mindless duplication of content in search results from a re-blogger who copy & pastes a summary and link. It's frustrating because there's no easy way to spot it until you've actually clicked the link. Once you see it enough times you can spot the duplication on the Google search summary and skip it. The risk is you might miss the 1% of people who can be bothered to spend a few minutes to add some useful information.

One thing I have noticed is YouTube's search is dreadful. It's embarrassing for a company like Google to not offer an adequate search engine on their own site. The grace period of the YouTube purchase is long over. I shouldn't have to retype my search 5 different ways to find what I'm looking for. These days I've just given up and search for simple terms and look through 10 pages of results or try related videos until I find what I'm looking for. Not super impressed with Gmail's search functions either. My mailbox is mirrored on Gmail and my local mail client (Apple Mail) Mail will almost always find what I want when Gmail gets confused. Apple isn't even a search company. Google can do a lot better.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's google's success undermining the assumptions behind pagerank (!) leading it to perform less well.

Before google got so effective people put more work into maintaining collections of links to other sites; hand-curated omnibus directories like yahoo and dmoz or narrower fields.

As search became better this was increasingly a poor use of time; you could, after all, just go and google stuff to find it again, so why bother maintaining a hand-curated set of favorite links.

A consequence of this is that link-actions-taken-for-reasons-consistent-with- pagerank's-assumptions dropped, and reducing the signal-to-noise ratio insofar as pagerank is concerned; similarly link-actions-taken-for-reasons-contrary- to-pagerank's-assumptions increased (SEO), further dropping the signal-noise ratio.

Even extremely robust SEO-detection techniques can only cut away the increase in noise; now that people are less incentivized to publicly post high-quality hand-curated link collections there's less for the algorithm to go on.

This is why there's talk of twitter and fb vis-a-vis search; twitter and fb are where the info the search engines need currently lives.

(!) I know they use additional techniques these days but whatever they're throwing into the mix doesn't seem to be counteracting the overall utility decay.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wish there were a search engine that was not optimized for the mass-market, but weighs technical oriented stuff a bit higher. So if I search iPhone view, I do not get results like "View all iphone features" but something related to the iphone uiview.

I think in future search engines should lean a particular way depending on your profession - "Google for Medical Personell", "Google for Architects", "Google for Programmers".

</comment><comment><USER40> In my opinion, information can never be retrieved from a single source. It always pieced together from different sources by the person with a task at hand. Google is a tool which can let you jump to different pages quickly and let you develop insights into the data they offer and put together your own judgment. Most search engines used to rely on token matching semantics to retrieve results. This has widely changed in the last few years. The golden hammer today is user-data. Google receives millions of clicks a second. With this, it tones its indexes and cached results to provide "better results". So if many people think Wikipedia is their best answer for "mashed potatoes", you probably also do.

I guess a single keyword search is not going to get anything sensible out. The answer lies in being able to interact with such systems and get what you want. Solving the search/retrieval with a single query is a very hard problem as it depends on the context of the user. Try searching for the word "Execute". Does it show pictures of a person being hung or a how-to for the first hello world program in a terminal?

</comment><comment><USER41> tech has always been hard for me, even with plusses and quotes. searches like "uboot arm cross-compile error xyz" always turned up miles of mailing lists that never amounted to anything.

on a similar note - [http://guillaume-nargeot.blogspot.com/2009/08/think- twice-be...](http://guillaume-nargeot.blogspot.com/2009/08/think-twice-before- naming-your-new_21.html) (probably saw this on HN)

</comment><comment><USER42> There seems to be a consensus that SEO is distorting Google search. I think I can refine that a bit. It appears that Google is using a "don't feed the trolls" strategy in response to link spam. Here's my evidence:

"The Modbookish" is an inconsequential six member Ning social network, but doing a Google search on "Modbookish" is interesting. There are the annoying 'Google thinks you are stupid' hits like the site in which there is a sentence ending with "mod" followed by a sentence beginning with "Bookish". The remaining results are sites that link to the Modbookish. However, the Modbookish itself is NOT in the results. As Google ads are on the site, there is no doubt that the Google bot visited it shortly after it went online. Nonetheless, Google has refused to put the site into its web index for a couple months now. Clearly, (and not without cause), it is assuming that the pages that link to the site are link spam. It is probably waiting for some semi-authoritative link to appear before it indexes it.

So, why is this bad? It undermines Google search purpose: to provide the most relevant results. When Google got started, I recall that when Sergey or Larry were asked why Google search was better they often offered the Harvard example. If one enters the search term "Harvard" with no other terms into a web search box, there is really only one reasonable search result: the Harvard University website. However, in the search engines of the time, the university often ended up on page five or six. On Google, it was search result number one. By the same token, if you enter "Modbookish" (no spaces) there is only one reasonable result, and Google doesn't offer it. In contrast, both Duck- Duck-Go and Yahoo list it in the first spot.

Why is this really bad? Many (Most?) websites do not do their own site indexing; they let Google do it for them. Clearly if Google refuses to index a certain important but only occasionally referenced page, that is a problem.

</comment><comment><USER43> Can't your problem be solved by clicking the 'Web options' link on google's search results page and selecting 'past year'?

[http://www.google.com/search?q=linux%20asynchronous%20io&...](http://www.google.com/search?q=linux%20asynchronous%20io&hl=en&tbo=1&output=search&tbs=qdr:y)

</comment><comment><USER44> I think it's hard with a generic search page to get good results. Like other people commented if it appears in Wikipedia, MySpace, or Facebook those results will be first almost everytime. I built a page in javascript (<http://www.bygsearch.com/>) to aggregate & combine the results from Yahoo, Bing and Google which is sometimes better because of the quirks in each search engine. I was going to add some specific search verticals like /programming or /travel and combine results from different sources. Like maybe use github and google code in programming and combine with certain sites like stackoverflow while specifically blocking any result from experts exchange or a list of other crappy forums.

</comment><comment><USER45> No opinion overall, but here are a couple tips:

'Linux async io' -> select 'show options' and then 1-year view on the LHS.

Sadly for the concurrent hashmap I got to 'concurrent hashmap "c" -java', then saw this very discussion page at #3 and I'm in an infinite loop until further notice.

<comment><USER45> Also, go to stackoverflow and ask about the concurrent hashmap. Someone will be very happy to help you out. After that, you'll find it on Google :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Yes. It's changed a lot recently, to the point that I made a whingey blog post about it:

[http://www.cederman.com/2009/09/google-continues-to- disappoi...](http://www.cederman.com/2009/09/google-continues-to-disappoint- in-search-quality/)

<comment><USER18> Hey Tim, your blog post mentioned the [recency microsoft word misspelled] query. The way I normally check if a word is valid is just do a query for the word, e.g. [recency]. In the top right we show the phrase "Results 1 - 10 of about 2,910,000 for recency" and "recency" will be a hyperlink to a dictionary definition if we recognize that as a valid dictionary word. Looking at the number of results is a good signal too.

Your "Red Room" query is hard in a couple ways. First, it looks like that root page used to have the words on the page: "The Red Room Doors open 6pm $18 Pre- Booked" And it's also tough because it looks like the name changed to the "2nd Degree Bar & Grill" at some point. The fact that you can type [red room] and get a suggestion for [red room st. lucia] is actually pretty helpful in my book because it leads you to the answer that the name changed.

<comment><USER46> Hey Matt -- thanks for investigating and replying, much appreciated.

I actually did a search on "recency" first, and Google didn't correct me and the first hits were a couple of dictionary entries, which is why I searched for the longer query. I don't know why, but I guess I figured there might be a blog post perhaps complaining about Word lacking common dictionary words and marking them as misspelled. In hindsight, including "recency" in the query was silly, but I'd prefer to get nothing back instead of Google assuming I want something else, which is the issue I was trying to highlight.

I agree that the suggestion of "red room st lucia" is a good one, and it helped me find what I was looking for! However the problem I was trying to show was Google's new approach at suggesting a first hit without search terms you've entered. As another example, I was trying to find my old (and embarrassing!) Geocities page recently, so I searched for [tim cederman geocities] and the first hit was my own blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Simple question - simple answer: quality of results is degraded for me (both technical and educational - I am a work in progress home handyman).

In my experience Google has not kept up with the assault of companies trying to beat its algorithms!

</comment><comment><USER48> Yes. I blame SEO :-(.

</comment><comment><USER49> [http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6a1d6250e26e9e48&hl=en)

Let me guess:

1\. Google's Pagerank patent is about to expire, and they have to make something new?

2\. New ranking algorithm adjustment to compete with Bing but failed?

And similar discussions on reddit:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9qro1/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9s6p2/>

<comment><USER15> The pagerank patent isn't really relevant anymore as the search algorithm has so many more components and variants now. Pagerank as it is defined is a much smaller signal than people think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I agree with the points made by others here, about the quality of links being degraded in recent times, lots of SEO in lots of websites that are meant to just play with pagerank, and a general crowding of results with old and irrelevant stuff.

I find myself alternating between google and bing these days, for some technical searches sometimes bing works better (especially - <USER2> unsurprisingly - for Microsoft-related technologies).

Some competition from bing may lead us to a better google (just like competition from apple made microsoft's new OS better).

</comment><comment><USER51> I have always had the habit of quickly editing the query if the top 5 results aren't what I was looking for, up to the point where I don't even really think about it, just adding some more keywords or sprinking a couple pluses, minuses or quotes. So I can't really tell if it has deteriorated in the past years.

However, I do think it could be possible that the pagerank algorithm does not scales good enough for the growth of Web pages, and especially with the "SEOs" out there always trying to come up with new ways to game the system.

</comment><comment><USER52> In my experience, Yahoo really excels in image search and whenever there are structural changes made to websites (for some reason, Google doesn't really handle moved websites / pages well - there was even an article about that a few months back). But overall, there is around 90% overlap between the major search engines as demonstrated by multiple studies.

That being said, I do feel often like Google's search result quality is decreasing. Bias due to using it exclusively perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER53> This may be true when you are searching for blog posts or articles, but when searching for code examples, I find that usually Google gives the best results. Also I have noticed that over time, these results have been getting more accurate. this maybe either due to the fact that the number of "code blogs" may have increased, or that Google's search tech maybe getting better. Personally I'm inclined to believe the former.

</comment><comment><USER54> Originally, a Google search for some Linux-related terminology would lead to an LKML post or white paper where that technology was explained. Now, most of my searches lead to dozens of user-oriented self-help forums where the questions are never answered. Finding information on actual development now requires knowing which sites/lists to search (like LKML, alsa-devel, kernel subsystem maintainer sites, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER55> Occured to me several times.

And it's duckduckgo.com that helped me.

</comment><comment><USER56> Hate to disagree with everyone here but I haven't noticed much of a change. For me, Google is still the best search out there by a long shot.

My behavior has changed slightly though. Increasingly I'm using twitter, reddit, delicious, & hacker news to search and browse for content. Google site search for Hacker news has also come in handy.

<comment><USER57> I agree with your second thought. delicious' general search and multi-tag search (<http://delicious.com/tag/term1+term2+term3>) is so much more useful because it's essentially edited by humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> So, was Yahoo - or any other search engine - any better? You didn't say how good Yahoo was for your two examples.

It's possible that Google doesn't give you perfect results, merely the best of a bad lot. If so, it suggests the problem is the web, not the search of it.

And the web certainly has changed.

</comment><comment><USER59> I feel that your Google search results are only as good as your query. Sure my results are polluted with some sites that have invested heavily in SEO, but I usually can filter those out by tweaking the query a bit more.

</comment><comment><USER60> Unfortunately yes. Most result sites are built solely to drive search traffic.

</comment><comment><USER61> vldtr is now a couple of months old. Google has about 22 pages in their index, Bing 8.

[http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=site%3Avldt...](http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=site%3Avldtr.com) <http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Avldtr.com>

As long as the Google has the most up to date index there is no good alternative for me.

You mention trying Yahoo. Did it give you better results?

<comment><USER62> Where did you get that weird google.com/#hl... link from? It broke in my browser (the redirect from google.com didn't take it in to account when it bounced me to google.co.uk), but I've not seen URLs like that for google.com before.

<comment><USER61> It's a normal Google url since Google started using ajax. I also get it when I go to google.co.uk and search for something.

See also here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=464393>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Yes. And the evidence is I find my self going to page 2 or 3 to find what I wanted and sometimes Bing!

<comment><USER64> There is actually a perverse incentive for Google to do this since they get another chance to show you more ads. I'm not saying they optimize for this case, but the incentives are there that might encourage this kind of behavior.

Edit: redundancy

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I think it's also a function of people trying to game how Google's engine operates.

</comment><comment><USER66> In lieu of having a poll, I'll say in a comment: Yes, most definitely.

</comment><comment><USER67> Yes, I feel. And the so-called black SEO is the cause. All those sites with keywords in hostnames spoils the result.</comment>


Epilepsy's Big, Fat Miracle - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/magazine/21Epilepsy-t.html?hp=&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> I wonder how many approaches to health that are considered "quacky" now will be mainstream in 15 years.

<comment><USER3> I'd guess the percentage of approaches considered "quacky" which are later proven to work, is fairly constant over the ages. I'd also guess 80/20.

<comment><USER4> Like homeopathy. That one's gotta be real, right?</comment></comment></comment>


Boston Angel Investors - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/06/01/boston-angel-investors/

<comment><USER2> " _[...] what evidence is there that the Boston area has ever been a sustainable place for startups to fluorish?_ "

His thesis is that Boston has an advantage for doing particularly difficult things and the situation there gets ugly when they become easy or at least easier.</comment>


Train Your Brain Like a Memory Champion - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/smarter-living/train-your-brain-like-a-memory-champion.html <comment><USER2> There's a bigger story hidden behind the achievements of memory champions. The groundbreaking result from the past few decades is not that there is a way for a human to memorize a thousand numbers, or that a particular method of memorization (say, memory palace) is the way to do it. It's nice, but not that relevant for everyday life and not applicable to most life problems.

The true achievement is recognition and verification, across many disciplines, that: 1) there are better and worse ways to improve skill 2) anyone can improve any skill [if they do it the right way] 3) mental representations are key to high performance. Some are better than others. 4) one should study how to learn a given skill, or get someone who knows that to teach, e.g. to study people who are best at something - to find out their training regimen, their way of structuring the information/skill/work/memory/... - this is likely to work _everywhere_ 5) If that doesn't help, i.e. little progress is made, one can still figure out, discover, create their own ways of practice to advance. 6) the upper limit of skill is way way higher thank we think 7) Many fields don't have clear criteria for success, so little feedback is available on low- level performance details, which limits the progress of training methods.

If you're interested in all that, I recommend reading the book of a renowned scientist who actually discovered a lot of this stuff and who worked with early memory champions, provoking them to push the boundaries of what was thought possible -- Anders Ericsson, "Peak: Secrets from New Science of Expertise".

<comment><USER3> > At your left, there's a map of Minnesota, dangling precariously from the > wall. You're certain it wasn't there this morning. Below it, you find a > plush M&M candy.

> If none of this makes sense, stick with us; by the end of this piece you'll > be using the same techniques to memorize just about anything you've ever > wanted to remember.

No, it won't ever make sense and it may continue to come as a surprise to many that not all of us have the ability to form visual based imagery in our minds. A common term for this is Aphantasia.

Not everyone thinks the same way. Any attempt at mass producing some means to know something better/faster is probably not going to work on a subset of the population.

I was able to use the Memory Book's number to letter technique a few years ago to memorize short lists of objects, but my recall for that is pretty good anyway so it's not worth the time taken to memorize stuff using the process (which itself requires memorizing certain objects for the numbers). For those who visualize, I would imagine such techniques could be quite useful.

<comment><USER4> I've had stronger and weaker Aphantasia at different points in my development and in different learning/work situations.

Given that styles of learning has largely been debunked, I would suspect that the vast majority of us actually have roughly the same capabilities and they are just unexercised, exercized to fitness or from too much stimulus to exhaustion by our specific environments, diets, motivation levels, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After I read "Moonwalking With Einstein", I pretty much think it's a gimmick and still a lot of work. Spaced repetition is probably a better technique.

The main idea that seemed to work is the visual association. The visual of Moonwalking with Einstein, for example, was one of his mneumonics.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems hard to apply spaced repetition to numeric information or names of people you've just met at a party.

<comment><USER6> > _It seems hard to apply spaced repetition to numeric information or names of > people you 've just met at a party._

Spaced repetition is one of the only ways to learn names in my experience. If I learn someone's name and then don't see them again for 2 weeks, chances are I will have forgotten. Even if I see them once a month for a year, there's a good chance I will forget each time.

If I see them the next day after I learned their name I will remember. If I see them a week after that I will still remember. If I see them a month after that chances are I will still remember.

If I had first e.g. read the person's academic paper or a few of their blog posts or the like, there's a good chance putting a face to the name once will be sufficient.

* * *

If you can get a photo of the person, then you can work learning their name into some kind of deliberate flash card routine, and that will be more effective overall than relying on chance encounters and less embarrassing than repeatedly asking.

I would recommend that teachers of lecture courses put a few minutes a day into doing spaced repetition of students' faces/names, starting before the start of the term: teachers who can remember students' names make a big impression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So the main tool that memory champions rely on is essentially 'visualizing/picturing' fake situations. Now, I have a solid memory outside of this. But when I picture things, it's pretty hard for me even for most familiar places like my home. Any memory experts with actual advice to see more vibrantly? I feel like I'm always fighting against the natural tendency to see black (as is natural with eyes closed) versus trying to focus on what I'm picturing.

<comment><USER8> 'visualizing' isn't just 'seeing'. Try to think back in your mind to the house in you grew up in. Do you remember where the kitchen, bedrooms, and/or bathrooms were? Do you remember which way the beds/furniture were facing in most of the rooms, which side the sinks and counters were in the bathrooms and kitchens? Do you remember where in the house any other furniture, such as a desk, couch, television, or coat rack was? Most people can remember these things, even if they can't conjure forth before their mind's eye a vivid mental picture of their house.

Try answering all of those questions about, say, any of your neighbors houses growing up which you may have been in once or twice. About a recent home, building or room in which you may have only been in once, sometime within the past 6 months to a year.

While it's not perfect, and some particular facts might elude you, most people will find it surprisingly easy to answer most of these questions, even about buildings they may have only been in once or twice a decade or more prior. Yet, if they were to try to, say, answer detailed questions about a painting they may have seen around the same time, most will struggle.

We seem to have a certain kind architectural/location memory which is used for remembering the relative layouts of places we've been, and this sort of memory seems to have some different properties compared to just visual imagery. It seems to be retained long-term fairly effortlessly, with very little time actually spent 'memorizing' it.

This is the basis of a lot of the tricks used by memory champions: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci)

<comment><USER9> > even if they can't conjure forth before their mind's eye a vivid mental > picture of their house

It should be noted that there's also a small percentage of people who physically don't have a "mind's eye":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you want to run through some pre-built memory palaces to get a sense of how they work, I recommend you check out [https://www.memorypalace.com](https://www.memorypalace.com). They have a platform where you can build them and post them for public viewing. I use memory palaces all the time and it really does take some practice, but they help me store things into long term memory. Part of the trick I feel is that you can review frequently in your head without accessing a book or digital, and so you can repeat it often to yourself so you can make that jump from short term to long term memory.

<comment><USER11> Thanks that seems interesting. What kind of information you are learning with this method and how exactly you go about doing it? I feel brute force learning is very important before diving deep.

I am trying to evolve my personal framework and I feel us starting with "Why" type questions is counterproductive and frustruating. Trying to ask why is something before even asking what is something is poor use of time.

To understand the complex system, I feel going from what to how to why makes much more sense than asking why questions and just getting overwhelmed.

\- What Phase Once we know how things work on mechanical level. Asking what each component is build of and what are its parts.

\- How Phase This phase is like taking a leap of faith and comitting the steps to memory. At the end of this phase a big picture of how various components work and hang together.

\- Why Phase This phase should be reserved for things we want to deeply understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Despite all the media attention about memory training, there's actually little evidence this stuff works.

[https://greyenlightenment.com/bullshitting-with- einstein/](https://greyenlightenment.com/bullshitting-with-einstein/) Either memory is a direct function or IQ or due to 'savant abilities' and not something that an be replicated. There are no reputable studies controlling for IQ that replicate this.

<comment><USER13> The author started losing me pretty early in the post, starting from where he implies that IQ is an "innate, biological trait." Notably, he (intentionally?) completely misses the point of a memory palace:

"Using a mnemonic device (such as a 'memory palace') still requires one memorize the mnemonic. If I ask you to memorize ten historical dates, a trick may be to associate these dates with a mental visualization, but you must still remember ten associations, which is still not easy."

It sounds like the author has not even once run a self-experiment to test the efficacy of mnemonic devices. It's patently easier to memorize these "associations" that he criticizes than it is to directly memorize an equal number of bland, meaningless digits, for example. Memorizing the mnemonic is a one-time, up-front investment of effort. Once you've written the mnemonic (encoder-decoder machinery) into long-term memory and become fluent in its use, you can fire it up at any time and encode meaningless sequences into highly meaningful and memorable equivalents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Check out Alex Mullen's site where he explains this in more detail - [https://mullenmemory.com/](https://mullenmemory.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> There's a great app to train your memory: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doggoapps....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doggoapps.smart&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER16> Having read Moonwalking with Einstein (which is fascinating and worth the read), I think of these skills as similar to studying chess - effective for the discipline but probably not generally helpful.

Memory experts sold their discipline as if it would radically transform an average person's daily life, which has not been my experience.

</comment><comment><USER17> I want to know if these champs can do like 20-back or higher(the n-back trainer) with three or more different types of inputs. If they can achieve 80% success rate, that will be super impressive.

</comment><comment><USER18> Do such techniques work for mathematical stuff, like equations or formulae?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Sure; you just need a mapping of math symbols to memorable objects/colors/verbs/whatever. Mnemonics are just symbol mapping.

<comment><USER18> So say I want to remember what Tallagrand's Inequality was [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talagrand%27s_concentration_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talagrand%27s_concentration_inequality) . How would one go about it?

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately, no one can give you a way that would work for you, because that's kind of the point: you adjust your internal representation to your strengths. But here's an example of how I'd map it to a memory palace, based on what I did for my driver's license test.

In my case, I'd walk into the living room of my old house and I "see" that someone wrote "ct24" on the floor. That's all I need to remember that I'm trying to reconstruct that pr[A].pr[A^c_t]<=e-(t^2)/4, because I know I'm reconstructing an inequality, exponents of e are often negative, and I know that I need to parse that text as [][ct][t24] (which are the exponents and sub-indices I need).

I then picture that a guy comes to me and says "Hi, I'm Paxton", and he's wearing a t-shirt with an Omega symbol. With that, I can reconstruct A_t={x in Omega|p(A,x)<=t} (in case you didn't catch it, I map p(A,x)<=t to "Paxton").

And so on. Note that I can take some shortcuts here because I'm playing to my strengths of being used to equations, and therefore I don't need to memorize that the second step defines A_t because it comes naturally.

For a completely different approach, you can picture a kid trying to say "Practice", but he mumbles instead "Pra... Pract...et... 24!", which you can map back to the equation ("Pract" = Pr[a^c_t]). The fact that the "24!" at the end comes out of nowhere only makes the scene more memorable, and therefore easier to remember.

<comment><USER18> Thank you! I just wanted an example so I could conceptualize what this system was talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Others may contain misspellings and factual errors. It doesn't matter. This system is designed to create rich imagery, not accurate representations." Wait, what?!

<comment><USER21> That's right. The system isn't a lossless compression algorithm. It's designed to give your brain a bunch of hooks to hang interesting snippets onto, which you can use to reconstruct the short story that unravels into a phone number or whatever. For this reason a misspelling or impossibility is just as a good as any other notable attribute, because it makes the story element more memorable.

Taking the article's examples, you might construct a story like "toilet paper is used as socks in Minnesota." It doesn't matter whether that's true. It only matters that it makes it incredibly easy to reconstruct the number 190732.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does it work for less well structured Data?

Digits of pi you can translate to characters and twine a story, but loosely associated facts are more tricky.</comment>


Show HN: Black Friday deals for developers - <AUTHOR> http://dealroundup.io <comment><USER2> I expected more, nothing really interesting on that list. Just the usual suspects, the same old Mac software that's (1) always on sale or (2) bundled up every few months.

<comment><USER3> Reading this list makes me happy I develop for/with Linux.

<comment><USER4> Eh, the fact that there are a lot of paid software for Mac is not indication of the lack of open source software. It only suggests a healthy market.

There a lot of open source software for Mac, too, and I frankly does not use any software on this list. In fact, the POSIX nature of Mac OS X means that the majority of open source software on Linux are also available for OS X.

<comment><USER5> I never understand this mindset, where OS X having a thriving independent software ecosystem -- something that I would expect HN to support, startups doing well and all that -- is a _negative_.

<comment><USER6> People just want to make (even more) money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pity that jetbrains didn't join the party (I know they are Czeck). At least, I got me some little snitch && pixelmator 50% off which it nice.

<comment><USER8> It seems they haven't had a sale in ages, which is a shame because I really want Pycharm but won't pay full wack for it.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, not picking on you, but statements like yours kind of bug me. You want a quality product yet refuse to pay what the developers have determined is both fair for their development and continued evolution and support for their product? Well, then, use something else.

Disclosure: No relationship to Jetbrains other than being a happy customer who paid "full wack". I do wish they'd improve their support though. My experience has been it's mostly crickets for a while before you hear back.

<comment><USER10> I'm surprised why this upsets you? You are making a fundamental assumption that price is somehow connected to input costs. This is not true for anything other than commodities. An experienced marketer was giving a talk in one of my biz classes in school when someone asked him how one much one can sell X for. His response was ... however much you can sell it for :-p

So tldr ... pricing for all non-essential goods is a game played by the seller and buyer. No one should be upset :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://pragprog.com/](https://pragprog.com/) has 50% off all books. I don't see that listed here.

<comment><USER12> aren't those for ebooks?

<comment><USER11> That is true, the discount is only good for e-books.

I hardly even thought to make the distinction. These days, for technical topics anyway, the "e-" prefix is just as optional for "book" as "mail".

<comment><USER13> > These days, for technical topics anyway, the "e-" prefix is just as optional > for "book" as "mail".

No, it's not. If you sell me a book, and it turns out to be an ebook, that's a scam, and I'm getting my money back. Technical topics or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My book, Bulletproof SSL and TLS, is available at 50% with the coupon BLACKFRIDAY: [https://www.feistyduck.com/books/bulletproof-ssl-and- tls/bla...](https://www.feistyduck.com/books/bulletproof-ssl-and- tls/blackFriday)

Please note that the discount on the bundle (paperback and digital formats) is about 48%, due to the coupon limitations of Shopify. For full disclosure: we currently have a small discount for everyone, and the coupon adds 40% on top of that.

</comment><comment><USER15> 30% off Bvckup 2 - [https://bvckup2.com/purchase/?code=BF2014](https://bvckup2.com/purchase/?code=BF2014)

Not a _dev_ tool per se, just a general purpose app that may come handy as a part of the development pipeline. Here's the Show HN I made several months ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027405)

<comment><USER16> Off topic, but kudos for your product site - I think it's functionally and aesthetically very well done.

The annotated UI pagers on the homepage are neat.

<comment><USER15> Thanks. I was actually going to redo it soon, but mostly just the pitch, not the styling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Suggestion for companies running Black Friday deals for techies. Don't run them with midnight to midnight hours based on the EAST COAST!!! Run the midnight EAST COAST until midnight WEST COAST.

I was looking at transferring dozens of domains from GoDaddy to NameCheap today. Their deals ended at midnight east coast. I'm in Los Angeles.

Don't know if the domain transfer deal ran for a specific sub-segment of the day, which means I would have missed it anyway. I thought I'd just highlight that ending online deals at midnight east coast makes little sense. Particularly on a day when people can be very busy during the hours that brick-and-mortars are open or, barring that, if they happen to be enjoying time with family, which may have bee the primary purpose of travelling for the holiday weekend.

In other words, be smart about how you make these decisions while at the same time being considerate to the customers you are trying to attract.

Also, one hour deals? Really? I probably have over 50 domains still left at GoDaddy. Do I really have to get that done in one hour? It almost guarantees that some will not be transferred until next year.

Not ranting, just voicing an opinion. I could be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not to hijack the thread, but I just created this thread to discuss the book deals in particular: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8671630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8671630)

Which technical books have you recently read that could appeal to the HN crowd?

</comment><comment><USER18> DaisyDisk 50% off

[http://daisydiskapp.com/](http://daisydiskapp.com/)

<comment> fake-name Who the fuck would pay for that, when WinDirStat, KDirStat, and Grand Perspective are all free, and far more powerful, while still being quite easy to use.

It seems to get mentioned EVERYWHERE, but it offers nothing compelling.

<comment><USER5> > it offers nothing compelling _to me_.

I fixed that for you, you forgot for a moment that your subjective ranking of software features is not a perfectly objective metric that holds for all humans.

Personally, I prefer Daisy Disk because it it fast, well designed, and I find it easier to reason with its representation of space used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We're giving WakaTime premium out for the student price for 1 yr (applies to team plan too). Student price is $5. Use this coupon code on the billing page:

HACKERS-GIVE-THANKS [https://wakatime.com/](https://wakatime.com/)

<comment><USER20> What if you're an existing customer?

<comment><USER19> It's meant for new customers, but send me an email :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you're interested in getting 30% off for the first 6 months on any plan @ Blossom ([https://www.blossom.io](https://www.blossom.io)) reach out to us at firstname.lastname@example.com and mention "HN & Black Friday"

:)

</comment><comment><USER22> VMware is doing 30% off on Fusion.

I'm looking at it for some extra performance over VirtualBox, and so far it seems to deliver.

[http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion](http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion)

</comment><comment><USER23> near the bottom of the the list is a course for sale:

"How To Market Yourself as a Developer"

it's regularly $599, but wait, now it's $299 but today it's on sale for $190!

sounds like somebody definitely has the marketing part figured out

</comment><comment><USER24> The Design+Code deal links to dealroundup.io instead of designcode.io.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm running a deal on my design and marketing books here: [http://nathanbarry.com/black-friday/](http://nathanbarry.com/black-friday/)

</comment><comment> james-skemp Drat, I was hoping you were the creator. Being able to exclude tags (iOS apps for example) would make this very valuable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am :) I just added a filtering box where you can type something in. Excluding is just a tad too complicated a UI to make simple enough in a short time, so it's include-only for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> 50% OFF: (All our projects)

[http://www.handdrawnicons.com](http://www.handdrawnicons.com)

[http://www.photoshopwireframingkit.com](http://www.photoshopwireframingkit.com)

[http://www.modernlogomockups.com](http://www.modernlogomockups.com)

</comment><comment><USER27> 50% off any of the [http://ipinfo.io](http://ipinfo.io) geolocation API paid plans for 6 months. Offer valid until Dec 2nd:

[https://ipinfo.io/pricing?coupon=blackfriday2014](https://ipinfo.io/pricing?coupon=blackfriday2014)

</comment><comment><USER28> Zone (time tracker) - 40% off - $2.99 - [http://appstore.com/mac/zone](http://appstore.com/mac/zone)

Zonebox (timeboxing) - 40% off - $2.99 - [http://appstore.com/mac/zonebox](http://appstore.com/mac/zonebox)

</comment><comment><USER29> Brennan Dunn has money off his "Sell Yourself Online: The Blueprint" ebook & bundles:

[http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/leads/?promo=2015](http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/leads/?promo=2015)

Any good?

</comment><comment><USER30> Where is Sublime and IntelliJ Idea???? They are the only ones that matter :D

<comment><USER31> use emacs

<comment><USER32> You're being a bit irresponsible, people are not really the same after embracing Emacs. First you try to understand what's the deal with all these parens and year later you frown at almost everything that isn't Lisp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> You can get SqlSmash (productivity plugin for Sql Server) [http://sqlsmash.com](http://sqlsmash.com) for 40% off using coupon code 'BlackFriday'

</comment><comment><USER34> Code School has deals for 6 and 12 month subscriptions.

[https://www.codeschool.com/sales/black_friday](https://www.codeschool.com/sales/black_friday)

</comment><comment><USER35> Here are a couple of my apps on sale. I'd be happy to give coupons to HN users - shoot me an email: haseebq _at_ jumpdesktop.com

Jump Desktop RDP & VNC for iOS: $15 -> $10: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jump-desktop-remote- desktop/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jump-desktop-remote- desktop/id364876095?mt=8)

Jump Desktop RDP & VNC for Mac: $30 -> $15: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jump-desktop-remote- desktop/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jump-desktop-remote- desktop/id524141863?mt=12)

<comment><USER36> Does Jump Desktop support RDP file transfer using copy/paste? I looked at the product description but didn't see this noted.

<comment><USER35> No it doesn't support copy-paste file transfers yet. Supports folder redirection though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> PCDuino3 Nano: [http://store.linksprite.com/pcduino3-nano/](http://store.linksprite.com/pcduino3-nano/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Pinegrow Web Editor - 10$ off for personal license, 15$ off for company license.

[http://pinegrow.com](http://pinegrow.com)

</comment><comment><USER39> SnappyApp - 75% off - [http://appstore.com/mac/SnappyApp](http://appstore.com/mac/SnappyApp)

</comment><comment><USER40> Any suggestions on O'Reilly books to get?

<comment><USER41> JavaScript: The Good Parts

<comment><USER42> Love javascript the good parts.

Also "Unix Power Tools" I have found to be a useful reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Got one course from udemy at $19, not bad.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'd like to find a great course that teaches design to developers. In particular, mobile or web.

<comment><USER33> Pluralsight has a bunch of courses you might like. E.g [http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/hacking-user- experience](http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/hacking-user-experience). I got a 30% discount email from them. [http://www.pluralsight.com/signup?discountCode=b2cfall2014mo...](http://www.pluralsight.com/signup?discountCode=b2cfall2014mon&utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=b2cfall2014tt_2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Developers need hardware too!

<comment><USER46> [http://pcpartpicker.com/](http://pcpartpicker.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> OP: There's a typo in the title for ReadKit:

> ReadKit RRS reader

(should read RSS).

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch! Fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> No intellij deal :-(

</comment><comment><USER49> Deckset is 50% off!

</comment><comment><USER50> We are running a Black Friday Mac App Bundle here: [http://bundle.fiplab.com/](http://bundle.fiplab.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This thing has Apple so far up its ass, systemd can't even come out the other end.

</comment><comment><USER51> 60% OFF for a Premium Membership of CloudAcademy.com to learn AWS, pass AWS Certifications and use our courses, labs and quizzes/explanations to test your cloud skills.

Annual membership at $229/year: [https://cloudacademy.com/pricing/plan/pro- yearly/checkout/?c...](https://cloudacademy.com/pricing/plan/pro- yearly/checkout/?code=blackfriday)

We usually have developers, sysadmins and IT managers using it with also some big companies using our training for their dev teams. Thank you!</comment>


MaterialFox userChrome.css makes Firefox look just like the new Chrome 69 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/muckSponge/MaterialFox/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a nicely polished theme that mimics the new Chrome chrome really well, and it includes a dark mode. I didn't realize Firefox themes could look this nice, and I hope we see more designs like this as FF gains attention.</comment>


Trello rhymes with . .? - <AUTHOR>

Does Trello rhyme with "mayo" or "hello?" Seriously, I am vary excited about the product and want to tell others without saying it wrong. <comment><USER2> Never really even considered an alternative pronunciation. Fog Creek Software is located in NY so I'm going to guess a straightforward American-English pronunciation.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always said it like "Mellow", "Yellow", "Jello", "Hello", etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> bello, bellow, belo, cello, celo, delo, fellow, kellow, mello, mellow, melo, pellow, quello, stello, strehlow, strelow, tello, velo, yellow

I came up with all of these from the web without any help.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Tréllo" it sounds little italian to me :)

<comment><USER6> Exactly, like limoncello

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It rhymes with fellow, bellow, mellow.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hello Trello . . .

</comment><comment><USER9> Yello.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think your day will be like in 2030? - <AUTHOR> Inspired by this post Predictions for what life will be like in 2030 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15843762), I'm curious to hear what HNers think their days will actually be like in 2030. <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a start: I'll wake up open my window where a drone delivers my new monthly pair of AR contact lenses and earpiece with the most recent bio hardware updates (now capable of reading binary thoughts through in-ear EEG of course) and pop them in...</comment>


This Video Has 477,200 Views - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/BxV14h0kFs0 <comment><USER2> Inaccurate submission title. Can one of the mods please change it?

<comment><USER3> lmao (that's the whole point of the video)</comment></comment>


What My Mom Taught Me About Client Services - <AUTHOR> http://the-pastry-box-project.net/mike-monteiro/2013-november-19/

<comment><USER2> cool, how did she pick her client's and how did she turn a client away that wasn't a good 'fit'?</comment>


DCPU-16 v1.1: Interrupts, hardware, better addressing... - <AUTHOR> http://dcpu.com/highnerd/dcpu16.txt

<comment><USER2> Seems not legit as it's not on 0x10c.com and that's where official updates are supposed to be posted.

<comment><USER3> 0x10c.com and dcpu.com resolve to the same IP address.

<comment><USER4> That's true, but for the record, that doesn't automatically mean that both domains are owned by the same entity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Copyright 1985 Mojang.

No detail too small.</comment>


As School Moves Online, Many Students Stay Logged Out - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/coronavirus-schools-attendance-absent.html <comment><USER2> Maybe Internet access do need to be made into a basic human right after all.

See [https://phys.org/news/2019-11-free-internet-access-basic- hum...](https://phys.org/news/2019-11-free-internet-access-basic-human.html) for another example why.</comment>


In 2nd Look, Few Savings From Digital Health Records - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/business/electronic-records-systems-have-not-reduced-health-costs-report-says.html?hp

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure why anyone thought getting a bunch of Fortune 500 technology companies invested in the status quo of health care spending would lead to reduced costs.</comment>


Show HN: Effective Learning when Getting Started in Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://researchtrep.com/research/personal-development/effective-learning-when-getting-started-in-entrepreneurship/ I have been working on my writing and was looking for some feedback. <comment><AUTHOR> I have been working on my writing and would appreciate some feedback, Thanks.</comment>


JavaScript 2017 Rising Stars - <AUTHOR> http://slowwaker.work/javascript-2017-rising-stars <comment><USER2> The article only talks about quantity, not quality and that is the main problem with javascript.

Not so long ago I had to work with graphs in javascript and none of the graph libraries I found explained the implementation details or the complexities of the algorithms.

It turned out that the implementations were ad-hoc and the time complexities were bad so I had to implement my own because they did not work for real life usage, only the example projects.

I'd rather have 1-2 options for solving a problem which are well documented and implemented properly instead of having zounds of crappy libs which don't worth a penny.

<comment><USER3> Javascript graphing libraries are a pain in the arse, whenever graphing comes up at work we all cringe at the prospect of having yet another go at picking a library out of the millions that is: not painfully slow, not terribly written and not poorly designed even though they are all written on top of D3. I've also submitted PRs so some that I will not name in an attempt to optimise them semi successfully, but you start to realise that none of these were designed with performance in mind, most are just arbitrary collections of declarative D3 bundled together into predefined graphs and some user configuration passed through.

But to be a little more fair, I think a big part of the problem is that graphing is such a subjective problem to solve, that's why there are a million libraries - because there is no correct way to do it, and so it's all spread so thin.

... with some exceptions, for what I do, that's scientific graphing, if you want this you will find that all but two libraries are just not fit for purpose. What you will want is matplotlib - but that is python. The closest thing i've found in JavaScript is Plotly, and frankly, even from a non scientific graphing perspective I'd still choose this library, it's quite fast (for something object/D3 based) and is simultaneously comprehensive and customisable, to put a cherry on top it can also use it's JSON schema to define all aspects of a graph. - but it's not new and trendy, so it's not on the list.

<comment><USER4> Would you recommend Plotly for real-time charts that update visually around 60fps? At work we wrote wrote ours in pure D3, but it was as pain in the ass

<comment><USER3> It's hard to do anything DOM based at 60FPS and a moderate number of points, if that is the main crux of your problem then I think you picked the correct route (custom D3). Still I find it's hard not to rinse peoples CPU in the browser when doing this.

Alternatively if you have nore than 10K points it's probably time to abandon DOM based methods and just redraw everything every frame directly (canvas / webgl).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > With big project like Vue.js and React, it's almost becoming a pleasure to > design your interface using Javascript. (...)

> DisplayJS (...) is lightweight (100kb for the entire library)

React + React DOM is around 100kB, Vue is 86kB.

<comment><USER3> Coming from an angular world I went full spartan and just used jQuery (I tried to go native but the DOM interface is rather long winded) - it felt so good, suddenly you realise that for most things model view control is pretty simple to do with a few lines of code and you have the advantage of being able to see exactly what is happening.

<comment><USER6> jQuery's bread and butter is DOM manipulation. However, for even moderately small use cases (even an interactive form) it is useful to use React, Angular, or some data binding framework, as state changes in jQuery quickly become unmaintainable.

<comment><USER3> It _can_ become unmaintainable but it entirely depends on how you define your view state, you can still create large applications with jquery if you refrain from creating overly complex state UI (speaking from experience). One thing I find overly shunned in favour of heavy MVC is CSS, CSS is a bloody state machine, it's perfect to manage your UI, you need one DOM call to update one piece of state... define the reset in CSS and your MVC UI component suddenly seem over engineered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> fuzzy sorting with no mention of fuzzball?! surely an error

/shameless self* promo :P

*as much as porting something from another language can be self promo

edit: ok technically launched dec '16 so not meet criteria, omission acceptable

<comment><USER7> not that fuzzysort not great or anything, i like the scoreFn and prepare api's ;)

diff algs for diff things</comment></comment>


Share your ML models easily, with almost no extra code with Gradio - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/cb5y3f/p_share_your_ml_models_easily_with_almost_no/ <comment><USER2> Oh this is neat - I can see this being really useful for iterating model development with our clients. Really would save us a lot in development time - gonna look more into this!

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Let me know what use case you have in mind. Iterative collaboration was the original case we had in mind -- as it allowed ML devleopers to iterate different versions of medical imaging model with doctors at the Stanford hospital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most realistic ml collaborations are with other ml engineers or users who either don't know or don't care. Not sure how many non coders would find this useful</comment>


Unusual 5th grade math problem - <AUTHOR> http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/290435/unusual-5th-grade-problem-how-to-solve-it

<comment><USER2> The geometry answer is freaking brilliant. Great way to think about and teach fractions.</comment>