Measles: Four European nations lose eradication status - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49507253 <comment><USER2> The four nations are Albania, the Czech Republic, Greece and the UK.

<comment><USER3> Three failed states with endemic poverty problems, and the Czech Republic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "All regions of the world showed an increase in measles bar the Americas, which saw a minor decline - although the US registered its highest number of cases in 25 years."

This surprised me, I thought the US was the epicenter of the anti-vax movement? Or is it just how things appear because of the constant news topics?

<comment><USER5> "'The Americas' is lower, USA is higher" is perfectly consistent with the US being the epicenter of the anti-vax movement, no?

<comment><USER4> Ah that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everyone knows the reason for this, but no one is allowed to say it. This is quite a comedy.

<comment><USER7> Not really. The reason (dropping vaccination rates caused by an increase in disinformation) is both well-known and heavily debated and criticized.

In at least one of these four countries (the UK) there is absolutely no ban on talking about this problem, and it has seen solid coverage in the media for years.

<comment><USER6> Yeah that is not it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This isn't mentioned in the article, but the UK at least was only declared to have eradicated measles in 2017 - it was a very short-lived "eradication" that might just have been based on a temporary drop in the number of measles cases (they went up again quite substantially in 2017-2018): [https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/19/measles-i...](https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/19/measles- in-england/) Also, measles didn't exactly return here, we had quite a few outbreaks even during the period where it was supposedly eliminated, there just wasn't evidence it was endemic to the UK during that time period.

</comment><comment><USER9> What struck me about the map of Europe was not how many countries had lost the eradicated status but the number who have never had it. That seems more shocking to me than a possibly temporary loss of that status.

The map is actually on the Daily Mail! [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7403803/Four- coun...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7403803/Four-countries- lost-measles-free-status-Europe-2018.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Vaccines never used to be mandatory because mandatory medical treatment has a very bad track record. Medical treatment requires informed consent to be ethical.

Unfortunately, there is a new viral threat - or rather, a memetic one. A meme that encourages people to immunocompromise themselves and their children. We're not so good at vaccinating against lethal memes, but perhaps this is the pandemic of the 21st century.

It's not just an internet phenomenon; the originator was Andrew Wakefield, with the help of lots of traditional sensationalist poor quality news publications.

Edit: this is more controversial than I was expecting .. I don't normally ask for explanations of downvotes, and I know it's frowned upon, and normally when I get downvoted I know exactly which audience I'm offending and why. But I don't understand it here.

<comment><USER10> Andrew Wakefield was simply an expert in gut health he didnt even want into the vaccine debate. He did very fair research that proved a link between between what he found in the gut and autism at the request of parents bringing their kids to him that was signed off as fully accurate by 12 scientists that assisted the research. It scared a pharma sponsor and got pulled from publication. That's all his story was and it turned into the all time anti vaxxer conspiracy somehow.

<comment><USER3> He spent years promoting the idea, and achieved a level of misconduct that got him disqualified from practicing medicine. Relevant chunk of Wikipedia:

> After the publication of the paper, other researchers were unable to > reproduce Wakefield's findings or confirm his hypothesis of an association > between the MMR vaccine and autism,[8] or autism and gastrointestinal > disease.[9] A 2004 investigation by Sunday Times reporter Brian Deer > identified undisclosed financial conflicts of interest on Wakefield's > part,[10] and most of his co-authors then withdrew their support for the > study's interpretations.[11] The British General Medical Council (GMC) > conducted an inquiry into allegations of misconduct against Wakefield and > two former colleagues.[12] The investigation centred on Deer's findings, > including that children with autism were subjected to unnecessary invasive > medical procedures such as colonoscopies and lumbar punctures,[13] and that > Wakefield acted without the required ethical approval from an institutional > review board.

> On 28 January 2010, a five-member statutory tribunal of the GMC found three > dozen charges proved, including four counts of dishonesty and twelve counts > involving the abuse of developmentally delayed children.[14] The panel ruled > that Wakefield had "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant", acted > against the interests of his patients, and acted "dishonestly and > irresponsibly" in his published research.[15][16][17] The Lancet fully > retracted the 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC's findings, noting > that elements of the manuscript had been falsified.[18] The Lancet's editor- > in-chief Richard Horton said the paper was "utterly false" and that the > journal had been "deceived".[19] Three months following The Lancet's > retraction, Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register, with a > statement identifying deliberate falsification in the research published in > The Lancet,[20] and was thereby barred from practising medicine in the > UK.[21] A British Administrative Court Justice noted in a related > decision—"There is now no respectable body of opinion which supports (Dr. > Wakefield's) hypothesis, that MMR vaccine and autism/enterocolitis are > causally linked".[22]

<comment><USER10> Fair enough. His conduct afterward could be looked at (though going beyond wikipedia may be necessary). But the original hysteria definitely painted a huge target on his back with a lot of misinformation. I don't think that's deniable

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On a population scale, anti-vax movement is self-regulating. People are anti- vax now because they have the privilege to be. When disease becomes a real threat to the survival of you and your family, watch how quickly this movement dies.

The problem is, on the path to this equilibrium, people die unnecessarily.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't understand why vaccinations aren't mandatory for non-allergic, non- immunocompromised children at this point. You shouldn't have the option to kill your kid, and especially others' kids.

<comment> DC-3 Given how recently democratic western governments have conducted eugenics programs, I would be uncomfortable with any law that enforces mandatory injections for children - even for vaccines.

<comment><USER13> Your comment does not make any sense, what's the link between Nazi eugenics programs and vaccination campaigns?

<comment><USER14> One reason people refuse vaccination is that they are worried the vaccines are secretly an attempt to sterilize undesirable segments of the population. For example, see what happened with the tetanus vaccine in Kenya in 2014.

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tetanus-vaccine- sterilizat...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tetanus-vaccine- sterilization/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like another topic that has a suspiciously polarising effect on people - i.e. people on both sides refuse to listen to each or are intrinsically are upset by the opposing view. Both sides have a point in my opinion, definitely more nuanced than this article portrays.

<comment><USER16> What is the point of not vaccinating?

<comment><USER15> the real question is why do people 'take a side'? I mean in all polarising debates not just this one.

<comment><USER16> Because people care about the welfare of the group but disagree about how to achieve it. It is a matter of safety versus personal liberty and you're not going to get easy answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anti-vax, flat earth, alt right... I often ask myself, are these the same kind of movements that brought down the civilizations before us?

<comment><USER7> What makes the current situation unique is the ubiquitous presence of the internet as a very robust and very efficient infection vector for disinformation.

We've just never had something quite like it.

<comment><USER18> It's funny, having been part of the generation that was educated as a youngster midway through the rise of the Internet, I can't help but feel envious of young people now who have access to a wealth of resources I never had growing up.

Nowadays, one can go online and find PDFs of textbooks, online lectures from prestigious professors teaching useful subjects, videos from conferences to learn latest findings, tutorials on practically every subject matter, Discord groups / subreddits from other enthusiasts, YouTube videos explaining practically every esoteric subject matter... I could've used so many of these resources when I was struggling in high school with classes taught by smart but bad teachers.

I guess I've felt like it hasn't been that hard to separate the 'good' information from the misinformation.

<comment><USER19> I wonder if we'll see to some degree much wider variance in intelligence in kids growing up with access to these resources. I was a fairly nerdy kid, but all I had access to was a crappy library, I was starving for interesting information.

But then again, if I was growing up now I very well may have become addicted to iPad games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Could it be - in part - due to the virus changing? Other vaccines with high coverage are known to have lost effect due to mutation, such as pertussis. There is also the example of the best-guess flu vaccine of the season. The article mentions it is in highly vaccinated populations, which contradicts the heard immunity idea, as well as would equate to a high selective pressure on the virus to change. Also looking into this I've learned about how prior to the vaccine, mothers would pass on a temporary immunity to their children but that this is lost with the vaccine - could that also be at play here?

<comment><USER10> This may be valid. After both the last 2 measles outbreaks that hit the news in the US it was discovered in many of the kids tested that the strain of measles was actually from the vaccine itself. Not sure if that's classified as a mutation but I don't think thats supposed to be able to happen and spread that way. Will follow up with sources after I'm off mobile

Edit: Here are a couple of sources. The first claims to have proven that someone on the vaccine schedule spread measles in 2011. However I will correct that I thought the disney case was similar but I think that one may have been wild measles and only a few vaccinated were infected. These are just food for thoughts

[https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/58/9/1205/2895266](https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/58/9/1205/2895266)

This one is more scientific and dry but is from the CDC I believe and showed among other things an increase in sporadic measles outbreaks among vaccinated

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC228449/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC228449/)

The whooping cough is more interesting. You can find multiple cases of outbreaks among highly vaccinated people but the symptoms are allegedly milder so the vaccine is possibly doing something positive about it. The CDC is warning the vaccine is losing effectiveness.

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/allthemoms/2019/03/14/wh...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/allthemoms/2019/03/14/whooping- cough-vaccine-less-effective-cdc-warns-as-outbreaks-hit-schools/3161859002/) [https://www.livescience.com/53359-whooping-cough-outbreak- ra...](https://www.livescience.com/53359-whooping-cough-outbreak-raises- questions-vaccine-effectiveness.html)

Anyway interested in any takes on that. I'm not wildly anti-vax but even these mild questions on it were immediately downvoted. I think its a complicated and fascinating thing to talk about when people aren't crybabies about it

<comment><USER20> That's very interesting, I didn't know that. Looking forward to the sources, thank you

<comment><USER21> I'm interested as well, as I did some searching and found nothing like those claims.

<comment><USER22> Yes, because it's wrong. The measles is a live attenuated vaccine, meaning that in some extremely rare cases it could be transmitted and can cause minor symptoms. This is _of course_ tested for and monitored, and current vaccine technology allows vaccines with a good safety profile.

<comment><USER21> That's my understanding as well, but as someone who tries their best to be a rational skeptic, I'm more than willing to reconsider my understanding given sufficient evidence (the key there being "sufficient"), so if such evidence exists I'd like to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting how few unvaccinated people are required for the virus to come back. Here in Greece, I only know one person who doesn't vaccinate their child, but apparently such low densities are enough for viruses to propagate.

<comment><USER24> According to the French ministry of health, "the elimination of measles requires a 95 per cent immunization coverage level for young children." [0]

I've tried finding some good resource about mathematical modelling of infectious disease, but they're rather dry[1] or clearly biased.

[0] [https://solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/prevention-en- sante/preser...](https://solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/prevention-en- sante/preserver-sa-sante/vaccination/vaccins-obligatoires/article/11-vaccins- obligatoires-en-2018)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infectious_disease)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article tries to have us believe it's the anti vax movement doing this.

Although that's probably true in the UK, are we really going to pretend the problem in Greece is also some non vaccination movement? This is absolutely Orwellian.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why is it legal not to vaccinate your child? Seems stupid.

<comment><USER27> > Why is it legal not to vaccinate your child? Seems stupid.

Why do you feel you have the right to tell me what to do with my body? My body, my choice!

<comment> saiya-jin Your rights and freedom end where my begin, and with such an approach you are attempting to kill me and my family by your negligence.

<comment><USER28> Is you/your family immuno-compromised?

<comment><USER22> Not relevant. Measles represents a substantial risk of death even in immunologically normal individuals.

<comment><USER28> Well if you have a normal immune system, you can get the MMR vaccine. Which if it is effective, should significantly reduce your risk of contracting measles as a disease, no? If the vaccine is effective, there are two casez in which ggp commenter's life is threatened by gggp commenter's rights: a) they have a immunologically normal, but have refused the vaccine for whatever reason, which is puts the risk on their shoulders, b) they have a compromised immune system, and cannot get the MMR vaccine, in which case gggp may actually represent a threat to their life not preventable by normal action.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GCC celebrates its 25th anniversary with the release of 4.7.0 - <AUTHOR> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gcc.devel/125441

<comment><USER2> Congratulations!

Before GCC existed, UNIX vendors used to sell the C compiler + tools in expensive separate SDK, the same way the OSS community complains about certain companies nowadays.

Without it, the way we develop software today would look really different.

<comment><USER3> GNU liberated software, and software users. Long live the revolution!

<comment><USER4> The new revolution is that the compiler is for free but you need the right patent licenses to use it. It's called LLVM. But they, it's modular, so we can ignore that. For now.

<comment><USER5> I was under the impression that [patents were no longer believed to be an issue](<http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#patents> "LLVM Patent Policy") any more than they'd be for GCC (which is arguably _more_ vulnerable to patent issues).

<comment><USER6> Why would gcc be more vulnerable to patent issues?

<comment><USER7> The expression "A any more than B" doesn't imply B > 0, it just discusses A - B.

<comment><USER6> Eh, what? I responded to:

> GCC (which is arguably more vulnerable to patent issues)

And that statement certainly implies that A is _more_ vulnerable than B which promted me to ask what would make it _more_ vulnerable as I can't see in what way that would be true.

<comment><USER7> Ah, never mind then. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds like an excellent occasion for the GCC maintainers to consider how revision control software has progressed in the last 25 years, and to re- evaluate the utility of the ChangeLog file; a manually maintained an "undo list" for all commits.

</comment><comment><USER9> And to think that all that started (GNU), because Xerox denied giving the source code for one of it's printers :)

Kudos to RMS.

</comment><comment><USER10> The revision history go back almost that long (November 1988): <https://www.ohloh.net/p/gcc/analyses/latest>

</comment><comment><USER11> By the way, does anyone know of an easy way to install gcc47 on OS X?

I've tried brew, port & fink to no avail.

<comment><USER12> The standard `./configure && make && make install` shouldn't be un-easy

<comment><USER13> GCC can't be compiled by the LLVM compiler shipped with Mac OS X.

<comment><USER14> I thought gcc built its own bootstrap compiler to do the heavy lifting of the build. Can LLVM not build the bootstrap compiler or was I mistaken in thinking this?

<comment><USER12> The bootstrap process for gcc involves first building gcc with an existing C compiler, then rebuilding gcc from this first build [1].

I'm still waiting for my build to finish, but i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-gcc-4.2 seems to be handling the gcc 4.7 source fine.

[1] <http://gcc.gnu.org/install/build.html>

<comment><USER14> Ah for some reason I had in my head the bootstrap was a smaller, simpler compiler. Thanks for the link and clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm feeling old. 25 years of compilation with gcc.

</comment><comment><USER16> yup. Now lets discuss the modular system?

<comment><USER17> GCC 5.0 [citation needed.] It was on HN and /r/programming a few days ago.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you do to prevent your data from being leaked? - <AUTHOR> I've gotten pretty worried recently about data breaches. I cringe every time I need to sign up with my email/password for a new site. One obvious thing to do is use a password manager to generate random passwords for every website I sign up for, but is there a way to protect my email address from leaking out as well? <comment><USER2> I use a new e-mail address (alias) for every service I sign up to -- especially if it's a one-off transaction or a "short-term" relationship.

That way, if/when I start getting spam to that address or the address otherwise "leaks", I simply disable that alias and carry on.

(I've run my own mail servers for a loooong time so this is quite easy. It may be a little more difficult or involved if you use something like Gmail or whatever.)

<comment><USER3> In Gmail email@example.com works just the same as firstname.lastname@example.com. What's more, you can add a plus sign and any word before the @ sign (e.g. firstname.lastname@example.com) and messages will still reach you, where you can sort them and filter them through labels. ~Hope that helps.</comment></comment>


The Benefits of Server Side Rendering Over Client Side Rendering - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/walmartlabs/the-benefits-of-server-side-rendering-over-client-side-rendering-5d07ff2cefe8 <comment><USER2> At what point do developers question whether they chose the right framework when their solution requires a large blocking call for many milliseconds in a single threaded server:

> SSR throughput of your server is significantly less than CSR throughput. For > react in particular, the throughput impact is extremely large. > ReactDOMServer.renderToString is a synchronous CPU bound call, which holds > the event loop, which means the server will not be able to process any other > request till ReactDOMServer.renderToString completes. Let's say that it > takes you 500ms to SSR your page, that means you can at most do at most 2 > requests per second. _BIG CONSIDERATION_

<comment><USER3> I've always found that nearly all of the time spent when requesting a page of SSR'd content (whether that be a full page or a rendered component returned to an AJAX request) was spent in the processing before the render happens. Given that, the added complexity of CSR has never been worth it for me.

This is situational, I think. My work mostly involves applications that do significant back-end processing for most requests, and my SSR is always done using a framework that has pre-compiled code doing the rendering rather than an interpreted language. (Perl and C#.) This combination adds a lot of pre- render computing and optimized rendering, which adds up to SSR being a good choice.

I'm not sure what that says about when CSR would be a good choice. If your requests _don 't_ do much back-end processing, but still have a long (500ms?) response time, that seems like you're doing something wrong rather than an opportunity to use CSR. Maybe you've chosen a poorly-performing rendering framework. Maybe you're trying to render too-large a page (which would be even more of a problem client-side.)

<comment><USER4> While the rendering time is minimal, the rendering code still blocks to wait for the underlying processing code, making the throughput low.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't make sense, unless you're talking about a specific framework that has bad performance characteristics.

Let's say you've got a request that does SSR and takes 500ms, with 450ms of that time spent processing the request and 50ms spent rendering the response. If you switch to CSR, you still have to wait 450ms to process the request, and you've got to serialize the response data (eg: render it to a more concise format than html) which is going to take some of that 50ms you're trying to save. So, where is the blocking you're talking about? How does CSR make it go away?

What you wrote sounds like you're describing a singleton that handles all rendering for all requests, and can only handle one request at a time. If that's the case, your framework is a toy and you need to ditch it for something that can handle multiple concurrent requests independently of each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> CSR bugs me most on mobile. What should be simple content, like a reddit page or a tweet, leaves me staring at a large pulsing logo for awhile as the whole app is loaded and content is rendered.

I get offloading some rendering (that server time adds up) but meet me half way. At least show me some content while the rest loads.

</comment><comment><USER6> Almost everything was on server side rendering 5years ago. Then angular appeared.

I have seen an application login page size 5mb, full of js. Because it downloaded the full application to the client before rendering the login page.

<comment><USER7> Early attempts were pretty ham-fisted and only really useful for backoffice web apps with captive users and LAN connections. The past few years have seen a lot of advancement in tools like webpack to streamline how much code gets served for a given page.

<comment><USER8> And for a login page with what is effectively a form element with two input fields that IS is overkill.

<comment><USER7> Well, what was likely happening is that the entire application was bundled into a giant JS file that was served up on every page regardless of how much of it you needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hm, any thought on the performance/throughput consideration?

I'm not experienced with Node.JS, but something hogging the main event loop of an asynchronous server with a long computation sounds horrible. It'll mangle your throughput, and it'll create some really strange latency spikes for unrelated requests, because the slow computation blocked the event thread from delivering the response of another request. Is this not as much of a problem practically, or would you isolate that SSR code from REST code in different application instances?

In a threaded server like java application servers or go applications, that should be a non-issue since requests are handled in mostly independent threads. It might increase the necessary compute resources some, but that's expected when moving work to the server side.

<comment><USER10> Keep in mind that only rendering blocks, not the entire request. Your database calls and other stuff is still non blocking. The actual rendering time is measured in tens of ms in my experience, but then I'm not Walmart. But at the same time I haven't seen any pages in Walmart that render for half second.

I think you are doing something wrong if your tender time is more than a few ms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried—I really did try—to use server-side rendering for every project I've worked on. I find it really unpleasant when I hit a site, like a blog or something, which has almost entirely static content and yet it still rendering it locally. The experience is objectively worse, and I had no interest in making that the case for my users.

But there's a middle ground in practice. Public-facing website that users might hit from a search engine? Obviously render it on the server, and if required progressively enhance it. Something more akin to a web application? Server-side rendering makes everything slower and more complex without benefiting any users. If you aren't using Node on the server, it's even more complex.

I really hate that this is the case. I had this firm idea in my head – "every URL is an HTML page, and users should be able to take that URL and request it using Curl or whatever, and see the content of the page". In practice, we were developing a highly-interactive, domain-specific application that relied heavily on client-side scripting to be realistically useful for users. There were no users without JS that I was able to find. We were doing a huge amount of work to follow a rule of progressive enhancement, that in practice slowed down the experience for users and, benefited nobody, and made development ~ an order of magnitude harder.

<comment><USER12> Can you elaborate? My understanding is just having the initial version of your components server-sided rendered, not all of it. Then JS takes over when it's loaded. It shouldn't change much to your existing code.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, in theory it's pretty simple. If you're using Javascript on both the server and client, it's definitely easier. But I guess I'm conflating server- side rendering with "pages that don't require Javascript to work", which is definitely more work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't really see what are the benefits of using React in an internet shop. SPA are good for interactive and complicated interfaces, but an internet shop is mostly a set of static pages - product lists, search and product pages. I hope they don't use React for the static part of the page and only use it for rendering the cart and other interactive parts.

</comment><comment><USER14> > SSR TTFB(Time To First Byte)is slower than CSR

Well, it of course depends on what your content is, but you can still use a cache service before.

I installed an infrastructure for an e-commerce for a client. They use Magento. I installed a Varnish in front of it and it goes really faster than without. Most pages are, in fact, static pages (home, categories or products), the dynamic part are ajax loaded after content rendering (like prices or stock) so it's a blast for UX.

Of course it will make no (well, less) sense for a SPA. But for content websites, I think it's more logical to do SSR than force to load the whole JS files to see what's on the page.

Edit : typo

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder why the article doesn't mention renderToNodeStream which is new to React 16? That allows streaming the rendering to the browser. Still blocking for that thread, but probably a better UX than renderToString.

</comment><comment><USER16> > SSR throughput of your server is significantly less than CSR throughput. For > react in particular, the throughput impact is extremely large. > ReactDOMServer.renderToString is a synchronous CPU bound call, which holds > the event loop, which means the server will not be able to process any other > request till ReactDOMServer.renderToString completes. Let's say that it > takes you 500ms to SSR your page, that means you can at most do at most 2 > requests per second. _BIG CONSIDERATION_

If your `renderToString` is taking 500ms you should really consider using `renderToNodeStream` [1]. It will significantly reduce TTFB and runs asynchronously, letting your Node.js server handle more incoming requests. This [2] blog post goes into more detail.

Also, if you don't want to use streams, Rapscallion [3] provides an asynchronous alternative to `renderToString`.

[1] [https://reactjs.org/docs/react-dom- server.html#rendertonodes...](https://reactjs.org/docs/react-dom- server.html#rendertonodestream)

[2] [https://zeit.co/blog/streaming-server-rendering-at- spectrum](https://zeit.co/blog/streaming-server-rendering-at-spectrum)

[3] [https://github.com/FormidableLabs/rapscallion](https://github.com/FormidableLabs/rapscallion)

<comment><USER17> > `renderToString` is taking 500ms

What baffles me is that this is a _long time_. In that time, you've got about a billion CPU instruction executions. If you include GPUs, they can render multiple frames of complex scenes to million+ pixel buffers in that time. And people are having trouble rendering a string?

<comment><USER9> Hm, I'd guess, it's latency to backend servers. Cores are plenty fast for just about every language.

If you have a good network between systems, each request of any form to a backend service will introduce at least 0.5 ms of response time due to datacenter RTA, so once you hit 250 queries, that's that. And 250 queries are just one n+1 problem somewhere.

<comment><USER18> The OP says the call is CPU bounded, which suggests that even if time is spent on the network, it is a minority of the total time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For dynamic content it may make sense to offload computation to the client (although in the linked article the opposite was found to hold), but it really irks me when otherwise static pages are rendered again and again on the device of every visitor. Such a waste.</comment>


Ask HN: Developers, do you play computer games? - <AUTHOR>

As a tech-person, do you play computer games? If so how often?<p>Do you think that gaming kills productivity? <comment><USER2> I deliberately abandoned computer gaming 9 years after I first touched a computer to delay the day RSI would become an issue. That gave me another 8 years before I started having problems.

As for productivity, most people need downtime and if self-disciplined enough gaming shouldn't become an issue. Of course, that assumes that their official work isn't so deadening that games or many other things are a welcome escape....

</comment><comment><USER3> I was addicted to gaming about a year back. But then, I was not working in those days. Now, I usually don't get the time, but I manage once or twice a week for a few hours. I don't enjoy or look forward to playing as I used to before, and apart from the obvious reason that I have started working and I don't have time, I think the other important reason is I have got a lot more social and started going out with friends more often. Gaming can kill productivity when it gets out of control. Programmers may start playing games in the work place when no one is watching. This mostly happens for MMOs, as these games usually hook their players/subscribers for long periods of time. One nice solution to this problem would be go to out more often and start enjoying real life with friends (and maybe encourage/help your employees do the same if there is such a problem)

</comment><comment><USER4> Most of my weekend is spent playing, usually evenings too. But only part of that is playing for playing's sake. The major part is actually playtesting of my hobby project - patching new functionality into a certain game with asm/c++ (some more details in my profile). Wonder if that skillset is employable?

Productivity, yes, GTA VC/Urban Chaos/UT2k3 helps me unwind after work and in turn makes me more productive the next day. A few times I even solved some work problem that was bothering me, while ingame.

Oddly, I noticed that I fare better in GTA VC racing courses when I'm paying absolutely minimal attention to the actual game and focus on the music or some thinking problem instead.

</comment><comment><USER5> I used to play games a lot some years ago, but now when I start a new game I get stressed because I feel how my time is wasted without doing something ... good. I would rather prefer watching some soap (Friends, TBBT) and get back to work, or better, go out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Games definitely used to kill my productivity by keeping me up until the early hours of the morning, but then fairly suddenly I lost interest in them for no obvious reason. Maybe I just got too old or more likely maybe the new games don't seem as good as the old games and I've played the old ones to death.

My enjoyment of games seemed to reach a peak. I used to be impatient for the next Grand Theft Auto, but after San Andreas I didn't enjoy the newer ones so much (still good, but not as good). The Total War series peaked with Medieval Total War. SimCity peaked around version 3. Elderscrolls 3 was better than 4.

Thinking of them makes me want to go and play...

</comment><comment><USER7> I play games for about 10-15 hours per week. My time is split between Star Trek Online or EVE Online for multiplayer, Half-Life 2 (and its add-ons), maybe one or two others in any given week (sometimes racing, sometimes RPG, sometimes SF - like Dirt 2, Alice, Torchlight, Freespace 2, and Sims 3), and various casual games on my iPod and Android devices.

I believe gaming _can_ influence productivity in both positive and negative ways, but it's different for everyone. Obviously though, playing Quake IV when you should be working is a drain on corporate resources ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> I used to play alot of games but my problem is that I can't get into it casually. Competed as a 'pro gamer' for a few years then led a few high end guilds and ever since then, if I pick up a game it _HAS_ to be for 3-4 hours at a time or else I don't have fun :(

This makes it very difficult to play anything beyond Plants vs. Zombies as every other more complex game saps my productivity and just makes me feel like i'm not accomplishing anything.

</comment><comment><USER9> I used to obsess over computer games, but one day coding up fun projects and being able to brag about them to my friends was the best game of all. It wasn't so cool to have a high score in a game, at the end of the day it was lame.

Now I play games to study the way they make people obsessed so I can apply it to my own projects.

I'm pretty hooked on a few ngmoco games these days, they have their game engine down to a science!

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, although there are few games that truly interest me these days. If you can be disciplined enough, gaming is a great way to spend some downtime.

I mainly prefer to read about games/gaming these days as I find this almost as stimulating as actually playing them. I'm definitiely a sucker for all forms of interactive story telling and I find the way these guys push the envelope with the available hardware inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER11> For all practical purposes, no. The last time I played any sort of computer game regularly was back in the dial-up BBS days of the mid 90's, when I played door games like Legend Of The Red Dragon fairly often.

These days, I might logon to a MUD and poke around for a few minutes, or fire up adventure and play a little while, once every blue moon or so. But that's about it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I get bored of games remarkably easily compared to the average person or the average programmer, it seems.

Games that have managed to keep my interest enough to play most of the game, in reverse chronological order: Portal, No One Lives Forever 2, No One Lives Forever, Super Mario World, Super Mario Brothers 3, and Super Mario Brothers.

</comment><comment><USER13> I played back in high school and a little bit of college and found them enjoyable, but I don't think I've touched a computer game in the last 4 years or so. I already have so little time, I don't want to waste what I do have on games.

</comment><comment><USER14> No, I quit after I wrote two games that were sold commercially, mandatory play for testing killed a lot of the fun.

<comment><USER15> What games?

Just curious and apoligies if this is common knowledge.

<comment><USER14> It isn't :)

Flight Deck and Indy 500 on the atari st for a dutch company called 'aackosoft'.

Ages ago...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes, it's what got me into programming. Though as I get more work, I don't tend to game as much.

</comment><comment><USER17> I play games on the weekends. It's good to take a break and just relax for the upcoming week.

</comment><comment><USER18> I admit I play a game of Tetris every now and then.</comment>


MRI feedback gives powerful technique to manage our minds - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170507-the-most-promising-route-to-mental-superpowers <comment><AUTHOR> High Tech Startup Opportunity Here? There are some powerful hardware engineers reading HN. Can you devise a low cost substitute for MRIs that would give at least some of the same effects?

<comment> T-A There is [https://www.opnwatr.io/](https://www.opnwatr.io/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Get paid for your job and business referrals via Eminent.ly - <AUTHOR> https://eminent.ly <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN community,

we are announcing today the release of our Eminently platform in beta: [https://eminent.ly](https://eminent.ly)

We are looking for feedback from the community, in particular from those who are frequently making introductions between people for job or business opportunities.

Eminently helps you manage your referral, track it and get paid when a deal is made.

You can give your feedback on our Slack community using the following link: [http://bit.ly/join-eminently-rp1](http://bit.ly/join-eminently-rp1)

Enjoy, HF HN!

Romain Pellerin \-- Eminent.ly Founder

[https://twitter.com/rom1_pellerin](https://twitter.com/rom1_pellerin) [https://www.linkedin.com/in/romainpellerin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/romainpellerin)</comment>


Marin Software Partners Working Paper (1982) - <AUTHOR> http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/e5/chapter2_2.html <comment><USER2> The growth of Autodesk and it's environment is wonderfully documented by John Walker and posted to his web site, [http://www.fourmiab.ch](http://www.fourmiab.ch). There are also other goodies there as well. The Autodesk Papers is worth the read by anyone doing a start- up.</comment>


Show HN: If you use PagerDuty and AlertSite, this will be of interest - <AUTHOR> http://alertsite2pd.appspot.com/

<comment><USER2> This looks great! Can you tell me more about how you created it? I'd be interested in checking out your code.

It seems like there are plenty of uses for 'middle-man' integrators like this, that would receive an HTTP POST and then relay that information on by sending sending a POST.

Are their any generic tools/frameworks that do this, besides ifttt?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wondered about generic tools, but didn't find any that would solve this. There's nothing special about my code - it's really just collecting data from the incoming POST vars, rearranging them and passing them along.

I thought it was interesting that the platform (AppEngine) enables simple one- off solutions like this - not everything needs to be abstracted into a ifttt style solution ...</comment></comment>


How to Get Your Laundry Done in Ancient Mesopotamia - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/at-the-cleaners-ancient-mesopotamia <comment><USER2> Getting the stains out in messypotamia</comment>


I find it hard to context-switch b/n marketing n programming; How do you do it? - <AUTHOR>

I find it hard to context-switch b/n marketing n programming; How do you do it? <comment><USER2> Make with your big time slices and focused attention, market with the tiny slices that remain available in spare moments</comment>


Booki.sh: Free Online epub Reader - <AUTHOR> https://booki.sh

<comment><USER2> FYI, there is also Ibis Reader, which I think did this first: <http://ibisreader.com/></comment>


Reading your DVDs the RAW way (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://debugmo.de/2007/07/read-your-dvds-the-raw-way/ <comment><USER2> Quite interesting.

> The software also contains code to properly handle Gamecube optical discs

I suspect this is the real reason behind the experiment. I've been looking for years for a way to get raw DVD data, to decode XBOX discs [1]. Why can't manufacturers give us raw access to the discs? Are they afraid we might use it to break copy protection schemes?

[1] [https://xboxdevwiki.net/Xbox_Game_Disc](https://xboxdevwiki.net/Xbox_Game_Disc)

<comment><USER3> > Are they afraid we might use it to break copy protection schemes?

Yes. Many CD copy protection schemes worked by messing around with subchannel data, error correction and things like that.

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

<comment><USER4> How did Alcohol120% work?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (This submission was inspired by a previous article about CDs: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21185897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21185897) )

<comment><USER5> dont you mean by my comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195720) ? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great Article!

Reading it reminded me (at least to the best of my knowledge at this point in time!) that _THERE ARE NO OPEN HARDWARE CD /DVD PLAYERS_.

I think some person or people should attempt a completely open hardware CD and/or DVD and/or Blu-Ray player...

I'd be happy with just a completely open hardware CD player...

<comment><AUTHOR> IMHO open software/firmware would already be far more useful, because then you could read discs at a far lower level which greatly aids in data recovery situations; something like the optical disc version of a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KryoFlux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KryoFlux) , in other words.

The hardware in a drive is very high precision but otherwise quite "mundane", as the article shows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anybody else always think of Robert Anton Wilson when you see RAW capitalized?

<comment><USER8> RIP RAW</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I convince my boss that he should get me a Mac? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working as a web developer (client and server) at this company for over a year now, and the office is full of PC computers running either Windows or Linux (programmers may choose themselves). The thing is I am a Mac user, and a quite devoted one. I dislike working in Windows as I feel the means for increased productivity in Windows are far behind the thought-through UI and apps of OS X that help me get my daily work done. Also, Linux is not an option as---as extremely impressing as it might be---it is (honestly) a bit shaky on the desktop.
IMHO, the best of both worlds is OS X with its  glitch-free UI, stable core and BSD roots with a terminal and toolset similar to the one in Linux (a great aid for us developers developing for and working with Linux servers).
So, what I want to do is to try and convice my boss that he should get a Mac for me the next time it is time to get some new hardware for the developers. How would you go about doing this, seeing as Macs are a bit more expensive than a bundle of workstations from say Dell? <comment><USER2> your best route is productivity. you're an OSX pro and the few hundred more it might cost will come back to the company via your increased productivity across your time working.

also, for testing purposes.

</comment><comment><USER3> show him quicksilver</comment>


PACER Fetch APIs - <AUTHOR> https://free.law/2019/11/05/announcing-our-new-pacer-fetch-apis/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this! I'm the executive director of Free Law Project. If anybody has any questions or comments, I'm happy to chat!

<comment><USER3> Have you considered allowing people to "donate" their PACER accounts up to the free limit so that CourtListener could download documents directly without relying on a RECAP or API user to do it? With enough free accounts you might be able to start downloading every document in every case.

<comment><USER2> We're thinking about that, actually! There are a couple hard parts though:

1\. How do you know which documents to buy with the donated credits?

2\. How do you get access to the user's account? Do you store their password somewhere?

Maybe a simple trick would be to throw a little alert with the extension around the end of the quarter just to say, "Hey, it's the end of the quarter. Have you spent your entire free budget?"

Hm. There's an opportunity here, but we've never quite nailed it down.

<comment><USER4> 1\. Whatever docs your org feels have the highest value at that time.

2\. The user provides their creds and you store them in Hashicorp Vault, AWS Param Store, or another secrets manager, and then retrieve them for use in making requests with a queue and runner mechanism.

If you have questions about this, email in profile. Last job was somewhere making requests for users with their creds at scale, currently in infosec. I would love to help make all PACER docs freely available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone curious, this is part of a broader project to democratize access to often difficult-to-obtain or paywalled court opinions across many different jurisdictions, among other things.

<comment><USER6> Potentially stupid question: why is this a paid thing at all? Aren't court dockets public information?

<comment><USER7> They are public. You can always go to the courthouse and use one of the computers to download documents for free.

Also, PACER bills quarterly, and your first $50 is free. Of course, if you are a party to the case, you can download for free as well.

<comment><USER8> Viewing them is free. Printing them is not. Also, you're assuming that the public access terminal is a computer. In some places, the "terminals" are human clerks, and the turnaround for searches are days to weeks.

And only the first $15 is free, but if you spend $16, you get charged the whole $16, not $1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The RECAP project is a great project, and highly recommend its use.

But PACER charges 10 cents per page for access and I don't have a problem with that. These fees keep the federal courts open to do vital business when Congress decides it's a good time for a shutdown. Any complaints re: PACER fees should be directed to Congress.

<comment><USER10> There are much better ways for the judiciary to maintain their finances than relying on arbitrary non-cost based fees for public access to public information. Judiciary funding is around $7 billion/year. Pacer makes maybe $150 million/year. Agree that Congress should fix Pacer fees, but the judiciary is not free from blame here.

<comment><USER11> I agree. I think it's a travesty all court documents aren't mandated to be freely accessible.

<comment><USER4> Call your congressional representative. Ask them to sponsor legislation to remove pay access to PACER.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python project template with a convenient Makefile-facility and helpers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alexkey/cookiecutter-lux-python <comment><USER2> Nice idea, but does this offer anything over and above the well-supported and functional pyscaffold? [0]

[0] [https://pyscaffold.readthedocs.io/en/v2.5.7/](https://pyscaffold.readthedocs.io/en/v2.5.7/)

<comment><USER3> Well, cookiecutter came first, has a huge library of supported templates, and works across multiple languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any reason why tox isn't included? I find it a lot easier to run tests, especially with different python versions.

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a good place to get inspiration from, or quickly look up file formats and conventions - but actually using it? That would be an overkill.

(This template, alone, is 1000 lines long, counted with wc -l. The last Python project I released was 500 lines long, including setup.py and README.)

</comment><comment><USER6> I love Python for its simplicity. This doesn't feel simple.

<comment><USER7> Thinking of unit tests and sphinx from the start is a good idea. But vagrant does seem like overkill for most things given virtualenvs, and that setup.py makes me sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tossing here one that helps building tagged releases:

[https://github.com/hcarvalhoalves/python-package- template](https://github.com/hcarvalhoalves/python-package-template)</comment>


Your City Sucks: Altanta - <AUTHOR> http://davideckoff.com/2010/11/your-city-sucks-and-so-does-mine-atlanta-version.html

<comment><USER2> The narrow minded comment made me chuckle. I no longer surprised by how myopic certain people can be. In my personal experience moving between Chicago, Appalachia, LA and now deep in the rural heart of Texas is that "broad mindeded" people (especially those in larger cities) often overestimate their own tolerance, and see no reason to be tolerant of, interested in understanding the rural or southern culture within their own country, and have a profoundly limited, almost cartoonish understanding of the motivations, predjudices and attitudes of the same. I remember with particular humor a roadtrip with people that I had worked with in some rough areas of Chicago to Lvingston, TN. During the trip a couple of the group got into a discussion without every having stepped from the van about how backward and prejudiced the people in the area were.

<comment><USER3> This. I moved to Silicon Valley from Huntsville, AL (< 1hr drive from KKK birthplace, snake handlers, and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'). I've heard more racist and sexist comments from educated people in SV than I did living in AL. Sure, you have your fair share of stereotypical rednecks in AL, but the vast majority of the population is mostly past that. SV just has a bay segregating them instead of city blocks.

My coworkers expressed disgust that they might have trouble in AL going around the office proudly proclaiming they were atheists. I told them that CA had a similar paradigm too: Fox News.

...That being said: Atlanta is a cautionary tale of how laze-faire central planning doesn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Living in Atlanta for 4 years while in college at Georgia Tech, I can basically corroborate on the opinions here (except the funding ones which I have less information about).

My overall opinion about the city is that it in a lot of ways is looking to other cities for inspiration, believing that Atlanta _needs to_ become a major city of influence and prestige on the country and the world. With that goal, however, there's currently far too much "us-too" leading to posturing and materialism and burnout.

Underneath that exterior, of course, there are a whole ton of people in art, music (huge underground music scene on the east side), and technology (lots of engineers and young doctors) doing wonderful things. I think it'll come as a surprise to many in the city that should that side of its culture ever take hold that they might have a chance of actually developing a unique city identity.

I'll also reiterate the point that Atlanta feels like a collection of unconnected neighborhoods instead of a real city. The place was burned down twice in history and rebuilt ostentatiously under the influence of zero central planning. Roads meander oddly and there's a demand for a car given the inadequate public transport MARTA provides. Traffic on the major in-city highway, which is a perpetually under construction connector between two major out of city highways, is almost always a parking lot and that spills into the city making rush hours tricky at best. I managed to bike everywhere which is adequate but not immediately safe. It can also be a bear to have to go 15 miles up and down hills to get to your favorite bar or a concert.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am already over the "Your X sucks" articles and we've only just gotten started. The title is so irrelevantly offensive (since it has little to do with the content).

</comment><comment><USER6> I live in Atlanta. The number one thing for me is this: "Traffic can be horrendous, especially for those who live outside the city but work downtown." Other than that, it's not a bad place to live, if you're just working a job.

For startups, there isn't anywhere near the investor community you'd find in other cities, especially when compared to SV. For instance, Atlanta's Shotput Ventures funded _one_ company in 2010, but Y Combinator funded dozens.

However, if you want to work for a Fortune 500 company, and have the sense to live near where you work, Atlanta can be wonderful. You can find all kinds of places that have tech shops or even their corp headquarters in town and probably a cheap house, too.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would love to see more of these. It's surprisingly hard to find good summaries of what life in a city is really like, especially geared toward tech people.

I'd volunteer to provide info on New Orleans, but I don't know enough to put it together myself.

<comment><USER8> I'd love to see these for a variety of cities. One way to put one together for New Orleans: reach out to other tech people you know there, and collaborate. That's what I did for Atlanta, and I got a much richer set of pros & cons than I would if I had done it independently. The little bit of time spent eliminating dupes and organizing it thematically, was well worth it. If you write one for NOLA, do let me know, and I'll link to it.

I'd also love to see one for Austin, TX. And one for NYC.

<comment><USER9> David, thanks for putting it together. That was kind of my goal for sweatteamanifesto.com was this kind of information.

Atlanta is an awesome city. I'm surprised I didn't see anything about Amendment 1 in there especially since you got Lance to comment ;)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I was surprised about that, too! But a fun mini-project, and shows what banding together can do. Perhaps the best result is writing that post got me to surface from a ton of work I've been doing, and get onto HN! I can pretty quickly tell that there are some awesome people here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The city is quite segregated (mexicans, white, black, asian, etc are in certain areas and don't often mix)."

Eh, kind of. It's more segregated by socio-economics just like everywhere else. As a counterexample, many areas in Gwinnett contain Hispanics, whites, Asians, and blacks. Many of the neighborhoods on the East and South of Atlanta contain whites and blacks in mixed neighborhoods. I don't know that the wealthy parts of town are any less diverse than the sample of wealthy people overall. Mostly white, some black, some Indian, some Chinese, etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> I read the linked article and was immediately turned off the by narrowed minded comment under cons. Just because someone disagrees with the authors personal political ideology does not necessarily make them narrow minded. If he was simply talking about racists, bigots, and the like then you can find those in any city as large as Atlanta.

This author based his idea on the post here:

<http://stu.mp/2010/11/your-city-sucks-and-so-does-mine.html>

I disagree with a lot of what the author said were cons of Boulder. In a pro he says good ski slopes are 3 hours away, but a con is Denver is too far. Huh? Denver is plenty close enough to Boulder to drive to for a concert or to see a professional sporting event if that's your thing.

The cold really isn't that bad here either. Does it get cold in the winter? Yes, but it's not unbearable like Chicago or any other mid-western city. When the sun comes out it really does feel much warmer here. I was in Oregon not long ago and I had forgotten how miserable the wet cold feels even when the thermometer says it's not that cold.

Now I gotta jet because I only live 1:30 away from good snow and it's opening day at Keystone :D

<comment><USER12> > I was in Oregon not long ago and I had forgotten how miserable the wet cold > feels even when the thermometer says it's not that cold.

Precisely. It's the same here in Padova, where it gets humid and foggy in the winter. It usually doesn't dip too far below freezing, but the humidity chills you to the bone. Where we lived in Innsbruck, Austria was much colder, but it was less humid so it didn't sink in the way the wet cold does.

And as a native of Oregon... yeah, rain and 5 C is about the worst thing out there. You simply can't do stuff outdoors in that kind of weather and stay warm for very long, no matter how much fancy technical gear you pile on: the rain eventually soaks in and you start getting cold. Bleagh....

<comment><USER13> I've always wondered about that - to me -10C at ~1000m on a ski slope in Scotland often feels _much_ colder than -35C at ~4000m in the Alps.

I've always assumed it was something to do with the humidity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> have lived and hacked in metro/downtown Atlanta my entire adult life (however decently well traveled inside and outside the US), I think the emphasis on traffic being horrible cannot be understated. I would love to see a large scale study of Atlanta residents' overall perception of Atlanta grouped by how many miles they drive per week avg. It is an amazing city provided you are within walking distance of your destination between the hours of 7am and 7pm weekdays.

</comment><comment><USER15> I live in atlanta…pretty accurate. Except for the comment about the weather. Yeah we have all 4 seasons…but we also have all 4 seasons once a week during the so-called "fall" and "spring." And there's no snow. One morning or so a year, there's a half-inch of snow on the ground. Occasionally, it's followed by ice that the DOT covers with sand instead of salt for reasons that have never been adequately explained.

Oh, and there's no such thing as clean local politics. Want something passed…pay for it. Period.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe someone can edit the headline to correct the spelling? Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER17> Altanta?

<comment><USER18> Not sure why you're getting piled on; the name is misspelled in the headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I program in Buckhead on the the northside of Atlanta. If you are from here it is a great place. Basically almost nobody is from here so one thing in common everyone has is how long ago their family moved here.

<comment><USER20> Buckhead is a really great area. If I had to compare it to somewhere in the SF/SV area, it would probably be most comparable to Palo Alto. I've been in Atlanta twice over the past year, and spent most of each trip in Buckhead. There are _tons_ of great restaurants, but my two picks so far would be Woodfire Grill for dinner and Buckhead Diner for brunch. I really can't say enough good things about Woodfire Grill -- it was probably the best meal I've ever had.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Chef there won "Top Chef" one year.

<comment><USER20> Yep! That's why I went there the first time. It was amazing, so I went back again on my next trip to Atlanta. Interestingly, he was in the "kitchen" (at the woodfire grill, actually) cooking both times -- most well-known chefs are more restaurateurs than chefs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>