Show HN: A better PC builder for the US, more parts and Ryzen (Ask HN follow-up) - <AUTHOR> https://www.pc-kombo.de/us/tipp?price=1640&cpuLegacylist%5BAM4%5D=on <comment><USER2> Some concerns:

Can you make the titlebar change as the price changes?

Why is the cheapest case $108 and PSU $70?

You've got some bad links, like this one I excitedly clicked expecting a $12 Dark Rock 3 ([https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA8MC3VU6...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA8MC3VU6034&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction- MKPL&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-MKPL-_- OG%20-%20Riding%20Mower%20%20%20Tractor%20Attachments-_- Reliable%20Aftermarket%20Parts%20Inc.-_-9SIA8MC3VU6034&cm_sp=&AID=11517614&PID=8139957&SID=))

I'm surprised by the omission of the Pentium G4560 as a midrange CPU.

Also RAM doesn't change when going from Intel/DDR4 to AMD/DDR3. I'd probably just remove the really low-end AMD setups anyway.

But really my biggest question is why should I use this over PCPartPicker? They show a lot more specs than just normalized performance, and being able to sort by total reviews from many sites is really great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. All valid feedback

> _Can you make the titlebar change as the price changes?_

Yes, that seems to be possible. I'll add it to the todo list.

> _Why is the cheapest case $108 and PSU $70?_

That should not be like that. I guess for the case this can happen when the cooler or the gpu is very large and it has no remaining other option. I'll check whether the data is correct, but I expect that problem to go away when the newegg API works better. As you noticed there are still some problems (they don't take EANs and the manufacturer-sku sometimes produces different products than expected).

I thought about adding a second list with the components that don't fit currently, and that will replace the non-fitting component with something like a closest match.

For the psu, there suddenly seem to be holes in the offer-database for the US. Very bad timing. The german version now gives a better impression on how that should work...

> _I 'm surprised by the omission of the Pentium G4560 as a midrange CPU._

Midrange is the wrong word for that one :) I mean that positively, is has a great performance for its price. It's just either not listed or not in stock and thus ignored. If it becomes available again it should show up shortly after, the system does know it, and uses it in the german and french variant.

> _Also RAM doesn 't change when going from Intel/DDR4 to AMD/DDR3. I'd > probably just remove the really low-end AMD setups anyway._

Thanks for catching that. Hmpf, I did just fix that yesterday already. But the US version seems to know of no offer for ddr3 ram anymore. I'll have to work on that API integration, and prevent this from happening.

> _But really my biggest question is why should I use this over PCPartPicker? > They show a lot more specs than just normalized performance, and being able > to sort by total reviews from many sites is really great._

Let me preface that: I like pcpartpicker. They build what I set out to build many years ago (I don't think they existed back then?), only that I pivoted very soon to the performance comparison approach and then did not take the project seriously for a while, during which they pulled through, built a community and a business. I do respect that.

But honestly, that pivot and its workflow is why: Just entering a price and getting a working PC is so much faster than what I understand as being the pcpartpicker-workflow. For me, the recommendations most of the time work quite well, and if not are easy adaptable with the arrows, and now maybe with the custom selection.

<comment><USER2> Ok, I can see the value added as entering the page to a fully-built PC without necessarily needing to know all the components needed for a PC. I guess it's just API integrations for US sellers that caused most of my problems. Looking forward to seeing this page do well.

And G4560s are hard to keep in stock anyway so that's fair on your part. They are really surprisingly good.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _Looking forward to seeing this page do well._

:) In that spirit, the ram issue for FM2 got just fixed. Not a hole in the database, just a parser bug making it impossible to select DDR3 ram. Thanks again for reporting that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A genuinely curious question; How is this an improvement on pcpartpicker.com?

With them, I can see completed builds and pictures, compare benchmarks and prices as well as restrict builds to specific parameters.

<comment><USER4> As someone who hasn't built a PC in a decade, I appreciate a site that stack ranks components. PC Part Picker still seems to require quite a bit of selection. While most enthusiasts are willing to do a little more research to optimize things, I think that there's room for a site like this for less knowledgeable consumers who don't want to do more research or want a simpler starting point for researching a build.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That's exactly the angle I'm aiming for.

<comment><USER5> Hey I think you need to write explicitly at the top of the page "Enter your budget and we'll recommend an optimal build."

Because I opened the page and it wasn't quite clear to me wtf I was looking at and I had to come in the comments to figure out how this isn't better than pcpartpicker, found this comment and then went back to the page and was like "oh you have to enter your budget in at the top"

edit: ah just realized this was an issue because I was taken to [https://www.pc- kombo.de/us/tipp?price=1640&cpuLegacylist%5BA...](https://www.pc- kombo.de/us/tipp?price=1640&cpuLegacylist%5BAM4%5D=on)

If you just go to [https://www.pc-kombo.de](https://www.pc-kombo.de) then it is clear

but still worth considering to keep that "recommend" call to action at the top no matter what page you are on so that there is never any confusion what the website is for

<comment><AUTHOR> Color me convinced. After the next restart the explanation will also be on the recommendation page.

The logic was of course that people will go to the main page first and only search in a second step, making the explanation not necessary anymore. But in practice, most people come to the site via a share link and never see the start page. As long as the site is not widely known it is better that way. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks great! I appreciate the new ability to swap parts. A few comments:

1\. Most of your swap pages have less than 100 parts, but display 50 by default. I wish this would default to "View All". Unless there's a huge number of components that will crash my browser, I'd rather view them all than paging through. Or, if you can't view all in case you crash a little phone on a bad connection, at least remember my selection across all of these pages so I don't have to reselect it for each component and visit to the site.

2\. I wish there were more sort options on the select screen. At the very least, I want to see the performance metric you're using to recommend one over another. Further, I want to be able to sort and group by manufacturer (Nvidia/AMD), brand (MSI/Asus), VRAM, release date, power consumption, efficiency, form factor (ATX/uATX), etc. This is a lot of data, but it's the main reason why I use Newegg over Amazon, and Digikey over Allied. Parametric search tools are just the best way to select technical parts.

3\. The Intel/AMD processor selection is a difficult UI problem. You want to simultaneously recommend the right brand for a target price point out of the gate, but also recommend only processors compatible with the selected motherboard. I'm not sure you nailed this one.

4\. In the "Advanced" screen, the Intel/AMD/Additional check box hierarchy is confusing. The additional platforms should be under the Intel/AMD hierarchies, perhaps deselected as "Legacy" by default. Also, I know why they're additional, but a tooltip describing that LGA1150 is "for Intel 8x and 9x chipsets used with Core iX-4xxx and -5xxx series processors from 2013 and 2014" would tell me a lot more than I know without Googling. (Also, I can generate a server error by deselecting both Intel and AMD.)

5\. I didn't see any M.2 or PCIe SSDs in the storage section.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great feedback. Thanks. I'll use this as a todo list.

> _5\. I didn 't see any M.2 or PCIe SSDs in the storage section._

They are indeed still missing. I postponed them for when I habe a good idea on how to handle both a SSD and a M.2/PCI-E SSD without adding another static Box. Guess it's time to add them to the SSD section for now.

For 3: Are you still talking about the swap page there? My only idea in that direction so far is to have a second list that contains parts which would replace other parts, in that case AMD cpus that would replace the Intel mainboard. Maybe shown as combinations of what they do contain, like "AMD Ryzen 7 1700 + AM4 board"?

<comment><USER6> > They are indeed still missing. I postponed them for when I have a good idea > on how to handle both a SSD and a M.2/PCI-E SSD without adding another > static Box. Guess it's time to add them to the SSD section for now.

Sure. Or maybe add them, SATA SSDs, and hard drives to a multiple-selection "Storage" box? I definitely think it's time to add them, they're similar in price and much faster than SATA SSDs!

> For 3: Are you still talking about the swap page there?

No, sorry, the "Advanced" tab, which is where AMD/Intel is selected.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Or maybe add them, SATA SSDs, and hard drives to a multiple-selection > "Storage" box?

I like that, it would be a good solution and could work well with the design.

For the Advanced tab, I think I got the problem now. It's that the swap page filters, making it potentially hard to get from for example socket 1151 to AM4. The Advanced settings are not problematic by itself, the concept of starting with one mainboard is. Does that catch it?

I'm not sure that is obvious, but when you browse via the side buttons, it will happily switch out the mainboard. That is just less discoverable right now because the 1151-processors are always higher rated than the FX-processors (which additionally are disabled by default because of the incoming Ryzen).

But in the alternatives list, there it is problematic. That one needs a way to list alternatives that do not fit into the current build, but would replace additional parts. All I got in my mind for that is having a second list, or probably rather additional entries in the main list that are somehow marked distinctively and contain the additional item as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very useful tool, will definitely send people who want a new computer here as their first stop. Unfortunately the website doesn't open very nicely in Safari - seems fine in Chrome though

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

I appreciate any pointers on what is wrong with Safari here. I'll otherwise have to use something like Browserstack to test for that browser.

Does it just not open nicely on first load and then work fine, or is everything in one row or one column and broken?

<comment><USER8> Here is a screenshot I took: [http://i.imgur.com/FDWQh3o.png](http://i.imgur.com/FDWQh3o.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty great. I do have a few issues though:

1\. Your part picker seems to remove some symbols; for example if you change your video card to the 'Sapphire Radeon RX 480 Nitro 4G', then click the link, you'll see it's actually the Nitro+ 4G, which is a different product.

2\. When typing into the autocomplete box, once your string matches no items the list returns to 'show all items' rather than 'show no items', which is more sensible (along with an indication to the user that their search found no results).

3\. Searching seems to be alphanumeric; typing 'Nitro+' into the search box shows you results for 'Nitro'.

4\. It doesn't work in Safari; I'm not sure why or how much work it would be to fix, but it would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I just pushed some fixes: Less symbols should get eaten, and a 'no results' found is now shown instead of the full box when nothing was found.

I asked a friend for help with Safari.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Firstly, t his looks great! I really like just being able to upgrade/downgrade each component with just one click.

A couple is issues I found though - the cheapest graphics card is $448 and I was unable to specify 32Gb of RAM - the next option up from 16GB was 128GB.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. Do you remember the steps you took till the system did not show any gpu lower than $448? Because that was a bug, it goes down till the RX 460 otherwise (~$90).

The ram I just fixed by allowing more ram sticks in that category to be selected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As it stands, I can read only the left column of the Web page.

Suggestion: Turn on or leave on the horizontal scroll bars of the Web page.

Then when I magnify your fonts by 4x or so so that I can easily read your content on my screen, I can scroll horizontally and still see the other half of your Web page.

In general, Web pages need both vertical and horizontal scroll bars. Even if a page looks good on the screen of the Web page designer, without the scroll bars the screen might be a disaster for some users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Uff. That's actually not that easy. By default, that recommendation page is 50% of a page wrapper that fills 200% of the viewport. The other 50% contain the almost empty space for the alternatives list. That is why horizontal scrolling is disabled.

But I did test that with very small screens and high zooms, and on my devices the responsive design makes that work each time. Please excuse that remark, that is not a "your setup is wrong" comment. But I wonder whether there is a incompatibility with the css that makes the situation as bad as it is for you? And in that case maybe I can fix it instead.

For example: What do you mean with left column? On a small screen or a high zoom there should only be a single column. Are you on a browser that does not support flexbox, at least not as implemented here? Could be the safari bug mentioned before.

<comment><USER11> Running Google's Chrome Web browser

Version 49.0.2623.112 m

(which is now a very old version) on Windows XP SP3; Google no longer supports Chrome on XP. Yes, I'm shopping for a new PC, especially because my current motherboard has problems causing the system to reboot several times a day, has caused some data corruption, e.g., my software, including essentially all the software for my startup, that dynamically loads Microsoft's .NET Framework will no longer run, etc.

On your Web page at 100% zoom, I see two columns. The left one has a block of text with title

AMD Ryzen 7 1700

and the right one has

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming Premium Pack

At 100% zoom, a lot of the text I can't read because the font size is just too small and/or the font is not _bold_ and/or dark enough to show up clearly on my display.

As soon as I zoom to the next larger magnification, 110%, I get just one column that starts with

AMD Ryzen 7 1700

as in the left column before the zoom.

At zoom 150%, I can read the content, but zoom 175% is easier to read.

But, now that I look again, at 175% zoom, farther down the Web page I see again

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming Premium Pack

again. So, this looks like the start of what used to be the right column.

So, maybe I can see all the text but at zoom 175% the page is reformatted to one column instead of two.

In the Web pages I've written for my startup, I have put all my content in tables and not used HTML element <div>, and zoom settings do not _reformat_ or rearrange the content on my Web pages. So, maybe your pages (I have not looked at your HTML code) have HTML elements <div> which let a Web browser rearrange the content.

So, maybe I was wrong: A user doesn't need horizontal scroll bars to read the content.

What fooled me is that suddenly at zoom 110% the page reformatted (rearranged), _jumped around_. Pages I've seen that jump around a lot are at Facebook; at times I've screamed myself hoarse; and that jumping nonsense is a big reason I try to avoid Facebook, even when they have content I'm interested in.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy to hear that. Even if you did not like the behaviour here, it is good to see that the css worked as planned. It indeed is a responsive design that will adapt the columns, from 3 to 1. After that the blocks get smaller. Sadly flex-wrap seems to be not animatable, that might have helped here.

It would not work to force the layout to remain, there is not one good configuration that looks good on all displays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would love an option that allows you to filter by ECC ram.

<comment><USER13> I don't think this tool is really meant for the people that are looking for ECC RAM.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to show you the new version of the PC hardware recommender I asked advice for here, a bit less than a year ago in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11618937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11618937). Afterwards I continued to work on this sometimes in my spare time, but the last month I took some real time to fully concentrate working on this, after realizing I really wanted to.

Now, this version does not look completely different, but there are some bigger changes. Most important is probably the new database scheme. Instead of having one preferred model per vendor, it now has a big list of recommended models and takes the cheapest from that. That step alone improved the recommendations a lot. It also made it a lot easier to add new hardware and new countries, which I was thankful for when adding Ryzen just now and extending the version for the US with more vendors.

The other big change is the feature to customize the recommendation, to swap one part with another. You probably see how that goes together with prior change of extending the database. Since this is HN: The UI there was a problem for me, but the solution might be interesting for some. I did not want to load a new site, since storing the current recommendation can be confusing, for the user. But the selection list is too big for an overlay. My compromise was then to scroll to the right (using css) and showing the alternatives list there. The user has a lot of space, but is still very close to the recommendation list, without losing state. I wonder how that will work out, thatfeature is all new.

Apart from that there are many smaller changes. I took a round working on the design: Flexbox for the responsive design, Cache-Headers (set to immutable), syntax highlighting for the share codes, adopting Yahoos pure.css for the buttons, fixing pace.js showing longer load times than was true, using a system font stack instead of webfonts. Had some fun reworking how the recommendation process itself works, breaking it in the process, then having too bad of a performance, resorting to memoization and concurrency to fix that. That reworing included lots of added logic to see which parts go together. More vendors for Germany, a version for France, additional vendors for the US-site (again, made possible by the database change, together with detecting EANs as identifier being supported by the APIs I use - well, by most of them).

Some highlights: bflesch pushed thinking about how to proceed in general, edent triggered the thinking about the database design, WA for the recommendation to do the work I want and not more (this indeed was the kind of project for that). sokoloff and some others recommended ignoring the newegg api terms I did not like, at least so far they were right. aharonovich made a comment I really did not want to hear at the time but accepted later, that the german version was only enough to prove that this can work, not more. But basically, I am still impressed, going through that thread now again, how many helpful comments there were - I just don't want to enumerate too many names here. I hope some of them see it anyway.

I did not become a overnight millionaire thanks to this, and there is still a lot that could be done, but when I saw that the improvements of the site you pushed me to finally came together, that made me very happy. Of course, I would love again to listen to your feedback.

<comment><USER14> I remember this thread! Congratulations on following through and making it happen! It seems like a nice next step would be more options for the case, and perhaps some quick preview of how each case looks. I assume it will update when we have solid Ryzen benchmarks? Is the main source of income through affiliate links?

<comment><AUTHOR> I plan to better integrate product photos, is that what you are thinking of for the case preview?

Ryzen will definitely get proper benchmarks as soon as they are out. I'm honestly eager to know how they will place itself in the system. And affiliate links are indeed the main source of income for that project, with main source meaning the only source ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As someone who wants to build a pc but doesn't want to worry about doing all the research to the components, this is very simple and wonderful. Thank you.

<comment><USER16> This subreddit is quite useful: [https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/)

They usually have pretty good builds, and they update them regularly.

<comment><USER17> came here to say this! also a huge fan of /r/buildapcsales

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The filters are lacking seriously and the amount of component that are listed is quite poor. The recommendation is nice, but without better filtering and more component availability I don't see myself using this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted. Please don't forget that the alternatives selection is really new. Filtering will be extended, and I count on having more components soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> May I ask where one can find data about pc parts? Is there a DB you can buy?

<comment><AUTHOR> If there is, then I did not find it. I created a db of my own, with scrapers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Server returns a 500 on any input over $2,500

<comment><USER6> It does return "Value must be less than or equal to 4000" for numbers over 4000, but 2501 to 4000 does give me a 500 as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, confirmed and noted. Happens solely with the US version, it is a a missing case. I'll fix that now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hmm. Seems pretty badly broken on iOS. ;(

<comment><USER22> I guess in Safari in general

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess so. That new flexbox design in action probably. I probably won't fix that fast, but I will see what I can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Neat, can you add motherboard size (mini-ITX, microATX, ATX exc.. exc..) to the filters as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have mini-ITX yet in the database, but I plan to add them later, when having sorted out the API intergration. microATX is there, I'll add a filter for the size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Where do you pull product reviews from?

How much views/income do you get?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi. I'm not pulling full reviews, only benchmark results. Which benchmarks are used can be seen by hovering over the performance chart, they are linked. That currently does not work well with Kaby Lake processors, since their ratings rely mostly on logic deducing their performance from their predecessors. That will change soon when I'll add another round of benchmarks, at the latest when Ryzen gets released.

I'm not fully sure how many views I get, it is only using piwik which gets blocked by adblockers and respects the dnt-header. But I can tell that sharing the site here gave it a big spike with 3000 visits in the last 24 hours, counting those that piwik can see. I'm not comfortable with sharing the income, sorry. It's not that much.</comment></comment>


Help me choose: A new development language/platform. - <AUTHOR>

Both the language and platform should fit these criteria:<p>* Developing under windows. Where I work developing on Linux isn't really an option. * Web Development preferred. Most of the applications I make are web applications. * I like to create very clean interfaces but a platform that can make a good looking interface wouldn't hurt. * Pulling data from SQL and updating SQL is going to be the core of every app. I'd rather not go with a language that makes this painful. * I'm looking for something more than my current Visual Studios (VB.net) while at the same time I admit I'm no genius and there are probably some languages/platforms I won't be able to teach myself. <comment><USER2> I vote for Python. It comes with SQLite and can handle all other databases out there. If you pay just a little attention, then your code will run equally well on Windows, Mac OS/X and Linux. The site-packages contains almost everything that you could possibly need and there are many other excellent packages available. Increasingly Python is being used as the first language taught as part of computer science courses at most well regarded universities and there are many excellent books available.

If you are totally Windows focused, then IronPython will allow you to enjoy most of the Python advantages as well as giving you full access to .Net Framework. There also is Jython if you are more JVM inclined.

There are several web frameworks to choose from as well, Zope, Django, Plone, etc. And of course, you might want to check out Google AppEngine.

I prefer to use wxPython (wxWidgets) for GUI programming to maintain portability. But you could choose to use WinForms or WPF with IronPython.

With companies like Disney, NASA, Google, ILM using Python, you have to put it at the top of your list.

For more info: <http://python.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't you feel curious to study and learn everything out there? you're already a programmer; ever thought of venturing out, if even for a weekend? don't you talk with people and have programmer banter?

I taught myself Pascal and Basic in week, and the first kid I spoke to who knew how to program told me: "Pascal and Basic suck, learn Delphi". I didn't, I learned Turbo C and Assembly, and I told everyone I met how _they_ suck ever since.

For the sake of programmer banter and my own immaturity, allow me to say that VB.net sucks! now go and learn everything else :-) including languages that make non-corporate programming painful (i.e. because they're far too beautiful to be abused with SQL.)

<comment><AUTHOR> When I was younger I was like that and I still get that way when I hear about new platforms and see what people have created using them. I waste a lot of my free time on video games and I want to branch out and expand my knowledge/experience. I feel I should go with 1 language/platform at a time because that's the quickest route to returns in my current job.

<comment><USER3> Mozart/Oz and the book Haridi and van Roy.

Mozart/Oz is the kitchen sink of programming language semantics. It has _everything_ , and just one uniform core syntax where the rest is built on.

Brush up on your emacs as Mozart's IDE is built with it, just a few handful commands though.

P.S. Drop the video games; they channel your natural, healthy aggression and curiosity into useless entertainment.

P.P.S. before the gamers jump at my back; to each his own, it's my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm 26 and starting to realize how boring most video games are now adays. I played WoW for 4 years and gave that up 6 months ago. Tried some other games and really have seemed to lose most of my interest in them. Right now I'm playing wiiware, the new FFIV sequel. It's very short and I'm taking my time with it. But with all this free time I hope to set out and master a new language/platform and make a few sweet applications to impress higher ups.

I'm having trouble finding some examples of web apps created with Mozart. Could you point me in the right direction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stick with asp.net - it works and scales. You could always break out in C# if you need a change.

Database integration is a snip (and I avoid data bound controls like the plague) and Ajax works just fine. You can even use JQuery at the browser end.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I just need to learn ways to make my applications look less generic. Whenever I hear about some new development platform I feel like maybe I'm pigeon-holing myself by sticking with Visual Studios. I want to be a valued contributor and no better way to do that than to create applications that WOW those above you.

<comment><USER5> Sadly, you are already pigeon-holed because you are stuck with Windows and SQL. Stick with VS.NET for your platform. But also look into what JQuery can do for your front ends. There are many JavaScript frameworks that could also add a lot of value, but I recommend JQuery because Microsoft is using it in their new versions of SharePoint.

Bottom line: If you have to be stuck in Microsoft-land, work with them, not against them.

<comment><USER6> It's a large pigeon hole--ironruby on rails is certainly possible. But to stay more idiomatic to .NET, F# is fairly comparable to Ocaml. Concurrency-friendly functional programming will allow you to hang out with all the coolest kids and grow a long, greasy beard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like VB but I love C# - it's so clean, so easy, and so nice. I think that the Visual Studio/ASP.NET setup is just great for Windows development particularly if you'll be using an MSSQL backend. I'd encourage you to learn C# and really master ASP.NET.

Aside from that, I'd suggest augmenting your ASP.NET skills with:

* ASP.NET MVC

* jQuery

</comment><comment><USER8> SQL Server -> ASP.Net web service -> Adobe Flex front end. This setup has been working quite nicely for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my friends uses this at his work to pretty good affect. The price of the software kind of scares me off though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> web development on almost any non-.net platform can be done on both windows and/or linux.

you should pick what you want to use and see if you can use it on windows. because you probably can.</comment>


Why is the rent so damn high? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/techequity-collaborative/why-is-the-rent-so-damn-high-df03e6e99195 <comment><USER2> The article says that a unit of housing is $600K, but you have to click through to see that that is for an example 100-unit building. This is somewhat relevant, since construction costs for residential buildings scales nonlinearly with size. And that does seem pretty high. Here in the Boston area, I think it would be less, though perhaps not a lot. THe new Millenium Tower downtown cost something like $600 million, or roughly $500 per sq. ft. But that's a super-lux tower on one of the most valuable plots in the city. Around where I live, I see a lot of semi-prefab buildings going up--smaller buildings where the units are trucked in on flatbeds and stacked up like Legos. This is presumably much faster and cheaper.

But these sorts of costs mean that developers are only going to build when they can get premium prices for sale.

</comment><comment><USER3> Because you live in a high rent area. Get over it.

<comment><USER4> Can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've been doing it a lot lately, and we've had to ask you before.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best links or comments of the day or week? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I've just found two useful HN links:
http://news.ycombinator.com/best http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
Is there an easy way to filter the best links or comments from 1, 2, ... 7 days ago? Don't you think that it could be a time saver other than the anti-procastinating settings in the profile? <comment><USER2> The easiest way to 'catch up' with stuff from a while ago is to go to the 'news' page, then follow the 'more' link several times.

I know of no way to go beyond the end of that list though.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I do. I wonder if there is a better way. May be that filtering submissions X days old could be useful and easy to implement.

This site is addictive for me and I would want to check it only once a day or less, without missing anything good.</comment></comment>


The Woolly Mammoth's Last Stand - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/science/woolly-mammoth-extinct-genetics.html <comment><USER2> Basically there is no adaption that works against bad circumstances that adapt to you - besides intelligence. We might wipe out all bigger life-forms where we go- but in our shadow, intelligent life might grow. Arras able to do take out orders from unoccupied flats. Foxes able to open trash cans. Wild boars, planting ambrosia to keep allergic humans at bay. Algae and Fungi able to eat electricity and plastic. Nature has a nice come back swing. Not very Disney, but nothing is.

<comment><USER3> As a child I read a science fiction story about a distant future Earth where sapience was the best survival strategy for complex life.

/me Googles

[http://variety-sf.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/raymond-z- gallun-s...](http://variety-sf.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/raymond-z-gallun-seeds- of-dusk.html)

I remain indebted to my parents for their excellent collection of books, to which I had access at a young age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let's clone a Mammoth! Why aren't we.

Most of nothern megafauna was destroyed anyway (mostly not by humans, but climate change) and we should probably bring it all back. Replace swamps with steppes.

<comment><USER5> To start with, we're wiping out pretty much any natural habitat it might may able to survive in at an alarming rate. Along with that of the polar bear and elephants etc.

We seem to also have a pretty good habit of causing countless other species to go extinct, so maybe if we learn to look after the species we have, we can get a new pet?

So why invest bringing back something back that will just get made extinct again?

<comment><USER4> Nope! Siberia (especially Northern) is basically an uninhabited land. We can surely host a lot of mammoths and wooly rhinos there.

Why can't we have a new pet _now_?

<comment><USER6> From what I've read, the hard part isn't cloning, we already have that technology. The hard part is growing it in a womb, where the baby is bathed in various chemicals at various times in its progression, and where the temperature has to be exactly right. Where do you attach the umbilical cord?

Do you know what the body temperature of the womb a pregnant mammoth is? Tough question.

<comment><USER7> Unless we figure out a way to make artificial wombs, our best bet is just to use an elephant for that. Since mammoths are unlikely to differ much in terms of body temperature and nutrient requirements, the problems you mention won't be much of an issue.

More problematic would be immune system incompatibility, which could lead to the mammoth or its elephant mother being killed by the other's immune system response. But I think we have a way to deal with that when it happens in humans, so there should be a workaround.

Anyway, first you need to get some cells with mammoth DNA to divide often enough. Before you have that, those other problems don't really matter much.

<comment><USER6> _Since mammoths are unlikely to differ much in terms of body temperature and nutrient requirements, the problems you mention won 't be much of an issue._

Everything I've read suggests it will be a huge issue.

<comment><USER7> Could you point me to where specifically you have read that? Every article I can find on the internet seems to assume that using an Asian elephant as the surrogate mother will be as easy (i.e. very hard) as if we had living mammoths to carry the clone.

<comment><USER6> I sent an email to the team at MIT back in 1997 when the mammoth clone news first started hitting the rounds (maybe it's older, I don't know).

Even getting a hybrid asian/african elephant baby to survive is very difficult. How big would a mammoth baby be at birth? Could it even fit in the womb?

All that said, if someone does manage to clone mammoths, that will be very cool.

<comment><USER8> Just to clarify: Are you suggesting that mammoths were bigger than elephants are now? That would be interesting</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Book Preview: Do More Faster – Be Tiny Until You Shouldn't Be - <AUTHOR> http://techcocktail.com/do-more-faster-book-preview-2010-10

<comment><USER2> I like this philosophy of working hard on what you know even if people can't recognize you right away, and not relying on anyone to live like that.

It means that living and working with a strong will, only depending on what you know in the world, will be able to result in better results (even through hardship) than those who have to rely on others.

Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like both were programmers. Wonder how non-programmers can make things work. Also, wondering if RedLaser is coming to Android. The Android "Barcode Scanner" App seems similar.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are a ton of great nuggets of info and insights into the process of getting and early stage tech company off the ground. Its pretty cool to see our lives on paper...

</comment><comment><USER5> Great insights from on startups from TechStars.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great case studies from amazing entrepreneurs!

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a really interesting book.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great excerpt about Occipital.

</comment><comment><USER9> very informative excerpt by Do More Faster</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't saas companies incorporate in countries with no corp. tax? - <AUTHOR> For small/one person internet based business which do not plan to take vc money it looks like a no brainer to incorporate a company where no corp. taxes are levied. What is the reason people prefer US for incorporation? <comment><USER2> probably because the legal wrangling is complicated. also, most of the profits would get taxed once you bring them back home anyway.</comment>


Feynman about the difference between knowing the name and knowing something - <AUTHOR> https://www.fs.blog/2015/01/richard-feynman-knowing-something/ <comment><USER2> There is a parallel with art. Beginning artists when drawing a still-life are encouraged to see the forms and the shapes and the relations between them, not the words that describe the objects. Instead of drawing 3 pencils on a table top, they are encouraged to see and draw 3 diagonal lines on a trapezoid. Otherwise their drawing will lack a wholeness or "meaning".</comment>


Conway's Game Of Life in one line of APL - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=a9xAKttWgP4&fmt=18 <comment><USER2> I don't know the origin of the quote but 'if you need more than one line of APL you do not fully understand your problem'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also:

      "There are three things a man must do
       before his life is done;
       Write two lines in APL,
       And make the buggers run."
       -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, 'The Devil's DP Dictionary'

And:

      "APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.
       It is the language of the future, for the programming
       techniques of the past: it creates a new generation
       of coding bums."
       -- Edsger Dijkstra

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Impressed. Not just by the syntax (first time I see APL) but also by how easily he juggles and shapes what is mostly hieroglyphs to me.

I know he was probably following a script to spare us the trial & error. I also know the hieroglyphs could be replaced with ascii-keywords to make it look more down to earth. But still; if I was to come up with a game of life in any language then the process wouldn't look anywhere near this elegant...

<comment><USER4> "I also know the hieroglyphs could be replaced with ascii-keywords to make it look more down to earth."

Not really, that _is_ APL. The keywords in the APL language are mathematical symbols (Greek letters plus a lot more). [http://aplwiki.com/AplCharacters#What_exactly_is_.22APL385_U...](http://aplwiki.com/AplCharacters#What_exactly_is_.22APL385_Unicode.22_offering.3F) The result is readable (I assume) to a mathematician, but is hard for mere mortals to read and hard to type without a special keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That was my first time seeing APL code. All I knew about it was that it had its very own keyboard for its own funky symbols.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been reading a bit about APL, and I can't find anywhere to buy one of the old APL keyboards. However, you can remap your existing keyboard to output APL symbols for certain key combinations, which is how I think most people are using it these days.

EDIT: Picture of the keyboard layout: <http://www.users.on.net/~farnik/upload/APL2union.gif>

<comment><USER6> Actually you can purchase one here: <http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/adcolkey.html> they even provide different colors and special keys (windows key into a meta key etc.) - I have the dark grey one and I love it.

You can also get APL stickers that fit onto any keyboard (I put them onto an hp 1000 laptop even) from here: [http://hooleon.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product...](http://hooleon.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=OV-0132&Category_Code=) for about 15 dollars. They actually work really well - I would advise using a pair of tweezers to get them positioned exactly how you want because one they are on they are pretty permanent!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's a great video for giving a taste of APL. It's too bad that the barriers to entry for learning APL seem to be so high; it's a great language.

The link mentioned in the video, which gives a fuller explanation, is here: <http://www.dyalog.com/dfnsdws/n_life.htm>

</comment><comment><USER8> J is essentially the new version of APL using ascii rather than the odd symbols, if I'm not mistaken? I'd love to see a version in J.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd love to be able to understand some complicated bit of code by watching an Etherpad-style timeline, with audio commentary of the whole (test-first?) process.

I love all those special characters, too. So much easier and quicker to read (chunk) than method names and so on.

And I expect the audio track to be sampled on a forthcoming relaxation tape.

</comment><comment><USER10> It reminded me the old saying that "every C program can be written in one line". Think about it, it's true.

For me it was similar to obfuscated C code, when one line of code packed with funny symbolic names produces a program that shows a bouncing ball or something unexpected like that.

<comment><USER11> It would be better to say it is done in one expression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I also found another one-line solution for the same problem: <http://catpad.net/michael/apl/>

</comment><comment><USER13> " _one_ line of APL"? He was coding for 7 minutes, on many lines...

edit: also my first time seeing APL, very neat stuff.

<comment><USER14> Most of it was just messing with APL's REPL to build up the less than 3 lines that actually mattered.

That's why I like languages with REPL-like functionality (Lisp, Python, Haskell, etc) so much. It makes for much faster debugging/development loop.

Whenever I code Java/C, I always end up using a tiny 'Testing' file (on the side of my real project) with lots of print statements that serves as a poor man's REPL. But it's still much slower.

<comment><USER13> > _Most of it was just messing with APL's REPL to build up the less than 3 > lines that actually mattered._

Fair enough, and good to know. It was a very cool demo, I just don't care for the "in one line" or "in fifteen minutes" nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish I fully understood half of what happened in that video. (First time seeing APL, very cool)

</comment><comment><USER16> Can someone put that one line here? I don't feel like watching a video on my mobile.

<comment><USER4> life ← {⊃ 1 ω ∨ . ∧ 3 4 = +/ +⌿ 1 0 ~ 1 ∘ . Θ 1 - ~1 Φ" ⊂ ω}

(all typos are mine, not the author's)

<comment><USER17> It took a few minutes (and looking closely at the video) but I think this is what he typed:

life ← { ⊃ 1 ω ∨ . ∧ 3 4 = +/ +⌿ 1 0 ‾1 ∘.θ 1 - ‾1 Φ″ ⊂ ω }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think I have most of those keys on my keyboard...anybody else?

</comment><comment><USER19> I fell asleep during the video. Twice.

Thanks for a great solution for insomnia!!

<comment><USER20> The guy's voice does have a soporific quality, and I also found myself nodding off (because I am jetlagged). But this is perhaps not the most constructive thing to comment about.</comment></comment>


What data-provider(s) does Siri use? - <AUTHOR>

In all this talk about iPhone 4S and Siri, I haven't read anything about the data source/services that Siri uses to 'answer' questions. Some articles seem to imply Yelp, but I'm not sure if that's the only one or not.<p>Anyone have an authoritative answer for what data sources/services drive Siri? <comment><USER2> Here are some of the data-partners that Siri uses: [http://web.archive.org/web/20110716075235/http://siri.com/ab...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110716075235/http://siri.com/about/partners)</comment>


Ask HN: Can someone explain this pg tweet to me? - <AUTHOR> The tweet is: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/823304393273573383 "One of the most interesting places to look for new ideas are the edge cases where deeply ingrained desires are mistaken."<p>"Could you provide an example Paul?"<p>"The desire for software to be efficient."<p>Is he saying that people think they want software to be efficient, but they actually want software that solves problems, and therefore you can find good ideas in making software that solves problems? I'm pretty sure I still haven't interpreted it correctly. <comment><USER2> I see it as mistaking software for the subject.

I'd guess a lot of people think the above, when they actually want "software that makes _them_ more efficient."

For example, it may be more efficient for the software to break up screens into tabbed views, but certain users may find a single screen covered in controls more efficient when actually working day to day.

</comment><comment><USER3> He's being ambiguous, I'm pretty sure there's not _a_ correct interpretation. That said, I'd like to see where the conversation goes from here...</comment>


In Minneapolis, Neighbors Are Mobilizing–Offline - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/in-minneapolis-neighbors-are-mobilizing-offline/ <comment><USER2> This story has done more to give me hope than about anything else. I can only hope more places follow suit. Unity is the key right now. With it, there is a way forward. Stay safe out there folks.</comment>


Job: I want one day of your time. - <AUTHOR>

I've got a number of simple projects I've been wanting to get of the shelf for a while but no time to get around to them.
Here's what I'm thinking: If there's any programmers with an off day or extra time on their hands, I want to hire you for a day to complete simple projects from scratch. If 1 day is not enough time, no problem, I'll take it from there. Ideally, I'm looking for Rails coders but other languages are acceptable.
I'll have a few options available at any given time. I prefer to communicate via Skype during the process.
Next, I'll give you a scan with a very basic layout. You don't need to do any design, just structure.
As for payment: I've got two ideas for payment, either hourly rate/fixed price or trade of services (I design + HTML/CSS - HAML/SASS). If you're a world-class programmer looking for $300/hr, I can't match that but I can offer a reasonable rate for fun work in your spare time with few requirements and restrictions. If you're needing UI design, I can offer anything from site review & recommendations to site redesigns.
Example projects: Creating a restaurant menu with simple admin including adding and deleting items.
Sending/Receiving SMS only via the Python "Google Voice API".
I'm open to suggestions on how to make this process better as well, so it's not stuck in stone. <comment><USER2> I'm curious. Email me at techiferous-at-gmail-dot-com. I've been programming Rails professionally for the past four years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sent, thanks for commenting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can do HTML/CSS/JavaScript programming, so I'm mostly front end, I can hack some PHP but not good on it. If there is a job for me, email me @ omar.abid2006(at)gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER4> Send me an email: mail at munimkazia.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds fun; I'm don at madwombat dot com. I've been working with Rails and Ruby for about three years...

</comment><comment><USER6> Drop me a line. Sounds good for procrastination.</comment>


Why I don't use React - <AUTHOR> https://areknawo.com/why-i-dont-use-react/ <comment><USER2> """ Yeah, React is popular - almost every web developer knows that. And it's this fact that makes new project use it. Popularity in the OSS world can be considered as a guarantee of the stability of the project. But, what if someone doesn't really want to follow the "hype"? What if they want to be unique, to stand out? I know it might sound like a joke to some web developers, but this post as a whole is, as previously said, more psychological more than rational. """

Bwahahha, ' What if they want to be unique, to stand out?' I am liking this more as absurdist fiction than an actual analysis of the js landscape.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did I miss his reasoning for _not_ using React?

<comment><USER4> It's popular (apparently too popular) and Facebook is bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That article is just a wordy sort of high level view of React with almost nothing about why someone might not use React.

</comment><comment><USER6> Content-free article.

<comment><USER7> Lot of bold words though, and very distracting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The incessant >bolding< of every other >word< is really annoying to >read<. Please consider using _italics_ , the form of _highlighting_ that doesn't _jump out of the page at you_.

</comment><comment><USER9> I thought immutable data structures and their identity checks actually are helpful re performance in react.

</comment><comment><USER10> So you don't like Facebook but you use it, interesting... ([https://www.facebook.com/areknawoblog](https://www.facebook.com/areknawoblog))

</comment><comment><USER11> "Why I don't use a hammer (when I need a screwdriver)"

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems that when uMatrix blocks some of the resources the website expects, it pegs one of my CPU cores and uses a gradually increasing amount of RAM.

</comment><comment><USER13> I clicked on it b/c it made to the front page and I read the entire article but I can't understand why he doesn't like to use react.

</comment><comment><USER14> > I personally struggle with embracing immutability. Maybe that's because I'm > more of a performance guy. Even though I really want to make my code more > maintainable, and thus I started reading a lot more about FP in recent > times.

Honestly performance is a non-concern for me. I worked on a React app that ran on IE9 without any major performance issues and almost no code tuning. It's not even worth thinking about. However, avoiding immutability for the sake of maintainability and developer experience is something I would never give up.

<comment><USER15> That seems to be a common attitude with front-end devs these days, to the detriment of web users. The performance impact of React, Angular, any other heavy frontend SPA framework is immense. Plus the extra weight required to get back to feature-parity with frameworkless (url rewriting, scroll reworking, etc). There are some complicated web apps like GMail where an SPA makes sense (although it's still super slow and heavy), but I've been on so many corporate teams where there's a big push to move a traditional site to React/Angualar/etc and it's never worth it. Development productivity is not worth sacrificing usability, and often developer productivity doesn't actually improve anyway. But I always seem to be fighting an uphill battle in this regard. I'm in the process of realigning my career away from full-stack dev nowadays because the state of frontend dev is so horrendous, I want no part of it anymore.

<comment><USER14> I honestly don't know what you're talking about. What performance impact? As I mentioned above I've never encountered a major performance problem in a React application, even on very old browsers.

Regarding your other concerns I suspect you and I work on very different types of projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> React makes sharing and maintenaning code easier IMO unless it has been over- engineered in the name of DRY.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think I'll write my own version of the article. I'll keep it more succinct though.

I like vue better.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't know about you, but I don't use react because I don't know how to use it.

I think it would be more interesting to read about people who know how to use it, have used it, but now choose not to.

<comment><USER14> > I think it would be more interesting to read about people who know how to > use it, have used it, but now choose not to.

I suspect you won't find many people in this camp. I know a great many Angular->React converts, but very, very few lapsed React devs.

<comment> cam-stitt I'm one of the people in that camp. I loved React, and still think it's a fantastic tool. A few things that have made me move on:

\- Svelte ([https://svelte.dev](https://svelte.dev))

\- People thinking Redux is brilliant. It's good, but it's a far too complex system to simply manage state. I'm aware this isn't React, but I have worked on very few React projects that don't have Redux

\- Run-time load. Back to Svelte. It's inspired me to remove as much run-time work as possible.

\- API complexity. The React API has exploded over the last year or two. Hooks, memo, portals, error boundaries. Most of them are clever solutions, but are only required due to the limitations of React.

<comment><USER14> I though svelte was interesting until I read a recent article where they introduced that `$:` label. It seemed like a very poorly thought out approach to me.

That said, I honestly don't think I'll ever go back to using a framework with templates. My distaste for them has only gotten stronger the more I use React.

> People thinking Redux is brilliant

Redux is good as long as you understand what it's good for and only use it when it buys you something. My default recommendation is to not use a state library until you find you need one.

<comment> cam-stitt Having used a bit of Svelte 3, the label is quite easy to understand. On top of that, it's valid JS.

> Redux is good as long as you understand what it's good for and only use it > when it buys you something. My default recommendation is to not use a state > library until you find you need one.

Agree 100%

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why is this here? the article has no substance and it is poorly reasoned subjective preference.

</comment><comment><USER20> I expected an article about how the JS environment is out of control and you should just use HTML. Instead it looks like another call to action to migrate the JS herd to something more shiny.

I'm hoping we have an anti-JS revolution and go back to HTML-only unless JS is absolutely-without-a-doubt necessary.

</comment><comment><USER21> Waste of time to read.

TL;DR: I do not use React because I choose not to

</comment><comment><USER22> tl;dr I don't use React because I don't like immutability, it gives you bad performance (spoiler: it doesn't). Also it's from Facebook, everybody knows that Facebook is evil, hence React is evil.

Really?

<comment><USER23> Also because I believed the FUD about its patent license. The patent license only ever granted rights compared to a BSD-licensed project without an explicit patent license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wasn't event baited</comment>


Death of the Neighborhood Bar - <AUTHOR> https://www.bostonmagazine.com/restaurants/2019/08/06/plough-stars-neighborhood-bars/ <comment><USER2> If we remove alcohol from the equation I think whats more pertinent is the death of the "third place". Churches are dying. If the article is to be extrapolated then smaller local bars are dying. Where do people go other than online to socialize. Thats important to understand.

<comment><USER3> I honestly can't understand that at all. The "third place" has _exploded_ and has never been more vibrant in the history of mankind, at least if you live in a city.

Yoga classes, coffee shops, CrossFit, meetups, hiking groups, rock climbing, dance parties, marathons, evening painting classes where they serve wine, improv comedy shows, improv comedy classes, cooking classes, language classes, indie band shows of every type. Meditation, Buddhism, any kind of spirituality you might be into. Literally everything just a few clicks away on Google. You don't need to "know somebody", you can just _go_. Go a few times in a row and make conversation with people, and suddenly you've got community and new friends.

Modern culture is an incredible smorgasboard where you can connect with every type of person through pretty much every type of activity known to man, whether athletic or artistic or spiritual or educational or all four.

The bar was a kind of lowest-common-denominator location that often came with a drinking problem. Bars still exist, but today's alternatives are almost infinitely more varied and vibrant.

<comment><USER4> That is true, but those are all interest based activities, things you do at 7pm on a Tuesday night, between getting off work and passing out while watching netflix. They aren't places where one can go to simply 'be', or to mingle with strangers. In Ireland for example, people would do those things and then go to the pub afterwards.

Think of the Prancing Pony in the Lord of the Rings...a place where locals and travellers can mix and mingle and converse as much or as little as they please.

<comment><USER5> > In Ireland for example, people would do those things and then go to the pub > afterwards.

I love the idea of a hot yoga session before heading to the pub for a couple of pints and some darts.

<comment><USER6> Nothing as beautiful as cans with the lads and a couple of smokes too

<comment><USER4> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anybody think it's about price? At least the quoted guy thinks so

> Why go to a bar when you can go to a yoga class, WhatsApp your friends, > crack open an inexpensive bottle of wine at home, and watch something on > Amazon Prime?

And I do believe that if beer prices were 1/3 of the usual, you'll see way more customers. Boston and some other US cities I have visited have, inexplicably, very high prices for bars and restaurants. Then you add taxes and tips.

Add to that the American sprawl and if you are drinking a few beers, you'll need an Uber to/back home. That makes your night in the $70-100.

No wonder Americans don't have $2000-$3000/month to spend on after-work bars.

<comment><USER8> This times 1000.

Back in the day around 10 years ago I could go out and spend less than or right around $20 for a night out (a few hours at my local haunt)... now I am unable to do that for less than $70. My wages have not increased 3x; so now, I go out maybe a couple times a month... and I even still drink cheap well whiskey (Old Crow, ka-kaw!).

<comment><USER9> > GP: And I do believe that if beer prices were 1/3 of the usual, you'll see > way more customers.

I agree, but I don't think you'd see 3x the number of customers.

> Back in the day around 10 years ago I could go out and spend less than or > right around $20 for a night out (a few hours at my local haunt)... now I am > unable to do that for less than $70.

This makes me wonder where you live and what kind of bars you go to. I'm in a large American city that will appear on any list of most expensive cities to live in. Thinking about the places I've been to more than once, $20 would buy me about three beers - and even that price is _vastly_ more expensive than the $12 price of a sixpack where I live. $70 would buy me enough beer to be passed out on the floor.

Now granted, I know there are fancy quiet bars for the wealthy. I was at one for someone's birthday once and mixed drinks started at about $15. And even $20 for a night out is high enough that I (not quite middle class in this city) can't do it often. But I wonder if you live in the most expensive part of your city, or if your tastes have become more expensive in recent years. To be sure, one isn't up for the atmosphere of a college dive every night, but I think in most cities there are still cheaper ways to go out with people.

<comment><USER7> 3 beers, a side item, a tip and 2 Ubers could take the total bill to $70. Now if you live in a walking distance (probably somewhere in the middle of the action in a walkable place like NYC) that could cut down the costs. This might explain why dense cities have more nightlife. It's cheaper both from a $ and effort perspective to go out.

<comment><USER9> I think you may have hit it. This article is about the "neighborhood" bar. In other words, it's a place where you meet with people who live nearby. A neighborhood bar is not a place that's a $10+ Uber away.

Which isn't exactly the fault of anyone who has to take one for a night out. This points to a nexus of problems with American cities, including sprawl, and the fact that few people know their neighbors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like the usual hatchetators are here to play.

Bars and pubs are not the same. Bars just serve alcohol, but pubs are public living rooms and centres of communal life. A pub is where life's milestones are celebrated, the departed are grieved, friendships are cemented, matches are made, and revolutions are plotted.

And some of us prefer the pleasures and pangs of gradual self-destruction to the quasi-religious cult of self-improvement.

Some of us truly our 'best selves' after a few pints of something dark and bitter.

I for one never trust anyone who doesn't drink.

Cheers!

<comment><USER10> > I for one never trust anyone who doesn't drink.

And if they can't drink for medical reasons?

<comment><USER4> Medical and religious reasons are totally exempt in my book. Though I strongly recommend getting wasted on Raki with (Muslim) Turks. They have hollow legs. And it totally breaks down any preconceptions or irrational prejudices one might have. I once had a Pakistani Muslim over for Christmas dinner, and I offered him some single malt scotch. He said his duty to accept my hospitality outweighed his duty to abstain from alcohol. We had an excellent time. :)

But really if it's medical, it can't be helped. And if it is really a matter of faith, then abstinence is absolutely worthy of respect.

<comment><USER11> What's your opinion on recovering alcoholics?

<comment><USER4> Known many, and that I respect as well. True alcoholism is an absolute monster, and the truth is that some people simply cannot stop once they start. Don't assume I think everyone should drink just for the sake of it--many people have excellent reasons for not doing so. Totally understandable. Many people who do not drink are beyond reproach.

And then some others are, well, Cathy/Kate from Steinbeck's 'East of Eden'.

Might change my original position to 'I don't trust anyone who doesn't drink without a good explanation such as a medical condition that precludes the enjoyment of the drink, religious convictions, or a history of or proclivity towards alcoholism. Sounds rather like an American prescription drug ad though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a 28-year old, I never understood the appeal of a pub as a meeting place. I think my main issue is that in loud places I just cannot for the life of me understand what is being said. I've had my hearing tested and it's absolutely fine, better than it should be at my age actually, and yet it's as if my ability to decode human speech goes to zero as soon as I'm in a loud environment, especially if there's sport events playing on the TV as well. I end up sitting there and nodding to conversations because I genuinely have no idea what people are saying. And yet people have group meetings and hold entire conversations surrounded by what seems like just an impenetrable wall of noise. Anyone else with the same problem?

<comment><USER13> Same problem. Hearing so good in quieter environments that it seems impossible to some people, and totally unable to make out a single word in a typical bar or club or party etc.

I've always thought it had something to do with undiagnosed ADD, or maybe more likely some autism spectrum disorder (though I never understood why medical professionals felt the need to label something that feels to me mostly like a few commonly coexisting personality traits and is not a source of any medical adversity for me a "treatable disorder", so I've always rejected this).

I also have problems with alarms and sirens. I've walked down many miles of city blocks in my life, and I'm the only person I've ever seen who has to put down everything they're holding and cover their ears with both hands any time an emergency vehicles drives by. That makes me enough of an outlier that I think there's probably something medical to this, I don't know what though.

<comment><USER12> Huh, the bit about emergency vehicle sirens is weird - because I'm exactly the same. If an emergency vehicle is driving past I _have to_ cover my ears or otherwise it's just...painful? I've never seen anyone else do this.

<comment><USER13> Interesting! I've never seen anyone else do it either.

It's similar to pain but it's more like a sensory input at a level of intensity that is so overwhelming that it feels like it is or could cause permanent physical harm to whatever in my ear is receiving that input.

I guess I just described pain, but it feels a little different because the sensory input itself is the source of it, it's not a side effect of anything else that's happening, and it doesn't really feel similar to any other kind of pain.

Fire alarms do this to me too. I lived in a building with false alarms every few weeks. I would like to have ignored them and continued working, but it is just impossible. I have to cover my ears and wait for the pauses between sounds to even do anything with my hands, like unplug a laptop or open a door.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wonderful article, both content and style.

I'm in my early 30s and although I'm hardly lonely, I miss making new friends. The article makes me want to try visiting a few of my local bars more often.

</comment><comment><USER15> On the contrary, I'm a lifelong Mass guy whose been in Boston proper for 12 years, and the bars seem better than ever. I'm in Jamaica Plain and Turtle Swamp brewery is packed every weekend and expanded into the neighboring building, which was abandoned and dilapidated before they came. My wife and I met a couple there from the neighborhood and we became good friends, we just went to their wedding. Downtown JP is in a renaissance of success and local business activity. The death of bars in Boston is greatly exaggerated.

<comment><USER10> There's quite a class divide between corner pub and brew-pub clientele. It feels like for every trendy brewery thriving, a few anonymous bars are failing. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it is different, and I'm not sure that a popular brew-pub is a useful counterexample to the general decline of dive bars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> About half the article is about a regular named Richard, who dies:

> When I heard that Richard was in a bad way, I figured he was at a low point > in another cycle. I expected that I would just see him at the Plough the > next time I dropped in. Instead, he died.

Nothing is said about what killed him, but I suspect there might be a clue here:

> Arguably, their [bars'] lifeblood—alcohol—has destroyed more American > families than any drug ever has. Now the owner of the Plough, I struggle > with this truth. My own family has been afflicted by alcoholism, and while > "the gene," as it is often called, bypassed me, I worry for my four-year-old > twin boys. Recently, one of them snuck a sip of my beer, then thrust his > right fist in the air in triumph and shouted in his deepest voice, "I am a > man!" before running away gleefully. I laughed, but the episode also stabbed > me with worry that he may be carrying a ticking time bomb.

It's hard to imagine the mental gymnastics that must be necessary by the owner to keep this business going.

Some patrons may be staying home, but it looks to me as if a plethora of alternative hangouts and ways to meet, not centered on alcohol, have popped up over the years:

\- Meetup groups

\- juice/hookah/vegan/whatever bars

\- exercise/yoga classes and groups

\- hookup apps

<comment><USER17> > Nothing is said about what killed him...

From the article:

> _If the Plough provided him with a home in Boston and a community that was > his own, it also helped him toward his demise. When he died at 60 in 2017, > booze played a starring role in his precipitous decline._

Later in the article, the author also explicitly states that Richard was an alcoholic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Old neighborhood bars are also in prime locations for real estate "redevelopment". Many seem to get wiped out just for this reason.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't think Netflix and (maybe) chill explains this wholly. Here's my guess: {Boston, NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, $CITY} isn't as cheap as it used to be. Bigger, more corporate bars can afford the rents required to stay near where the people are. Consequently, smaller, neighborhood pubs close and force people to commune near bigger bars (and sometimes pubs) to get their fix of community through delicious alcoholic drinks.

</comment><comment><USER20> The Plough used to be my neighborhood haunt. I knew Richard, he was a decent friendly guy, I liked him. Its strange to learn about his passing on this website.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is so emphatically untrue in New Orleans I have to wonder if the writer has ever visited.

<comment><USER22> Nawlins is about the most atypical American city you can find. It's best typified as Caribbean North.

That's not a slight, just an observation. And yes, virtually _all_ major cities are fairly distinctive. As Ed Glaeser has pointed out, something of an anti-Anna Karenina principle: unsuccessful cities are all alike, successful cities are each successful in their own way.

Not _entirely_ true, but a strong element of truth to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The- Machi...](https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machine- Stops.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER24> My guess is the bar is just lame. There are plenty of cool bars that are packed every night in basically every place I've ever lived.

<comment><USER25> A neighborhood bar is a place you go to see people you know will be there. Even if your friends aren't there, you'll still know the owner and the staff. The people you see there routinely are the "regulars" and the "locals." You're not going to the neighborhood bar to get sloppy drunk, loud or to pick up chicks. You aren't going there to "party."

A "cool bar" which is packed is usually too loud for conversation. If you want to sit and talk casually with people you know, then you won't go to the cool bar. If you go alone to a cool bar, then you might not talk to anyone. The atmosphere has too much going on for casual conversation. You can't overhear and engage with someone sitting at the opposite side of the bar.

This may sound lame, but one of the major themes of this article is loneliness. Regulars at the neighborhood bar might find that the bar is less lame than being lonely at home.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely! The best thing about the local is that you don't need to make any plans with anyone. You already have a pretty good idea who will be there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I used to live down the block from the bar in the article. Fantastic bar, staff, food and live music...

</comment><comment><USER27> " Arguably, their lifeblood—alcohol—has destroyed more American families than any drug ever has."

My reason for not missing the neighborhood bar much.

They have some value-- helping people socialize, notably. But the downsides are just too steep.

</comment><comment><USER28> Article can't quite make up its mind whether it's about the death of bars or the death of one bar patron.

<comment><USER29> This is probably purposeful, to draw parallels. The author also can't quite make up his mind about whether drinking becoming less popular is good or bad.

It's relatable content. When you have a bunch of nostalgia and identity (and money, in this guy's case) invested into something, I guess it would be hard to admit that overall, it's categorically been to society's detriment.

<comment><USER21> Don't you love how everyone on HN thinks they can do journalism too off the cuff just because tech disrupted it? Glad to see taste hasn't been disrupted

<comment><USER14> I thought the article was really well-written, felt like a good mix of fact and emotion. I read it to the end which I don't do with about 80% of HN stories...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google launches Public Datasets program - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/ <comment><USER2> I remember the earlier Google attempt at the same thing. I was in undergrad and an engineer came to my Uni to give a presentation on the topic. A big area of concern was "Why won't Google just shut this down when the going gets rough?" The question was mostly batted away along the lines of "this is lunch money to Google anyway." But just a couple years later, it did indeed bite the dust.

Covered in Wired: [http://www.wired.com/2008/01/google-to- provi/](http://www.wired.com/2008/01/google-to-provi/)

Update: And the shutdown article, 11 months later: [http://www.wired.com/2008/12/googlescienceda/](http://www.wired.com/2008/12/googlescienceda/)

<comment><USER3> 2008.

I remember those days. GMail was still in beta and ' _a big area of concern was "Why won't Google just shut this down when the going gets rough?" '_

8 years later GMail has a billion users, and not going anywhere but up.

I haven't been to the future (yet), but I'll happily take any bet you have against BigQuery.

Disclaimer: I'm Felipe Hoffa, and I work at Google. ([https://twitter.com/felipehoffa](https://twitter.com/felipehoffa))

<comment><USER4> Can you give me an update on Wave and Orkut? I never use this Reader thing, but I hear others do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy to respond to every single person that makes this argument in perpetuity :)

There's a difference between experimental free services and Enterprise-grade SLA'd SLO'd fully-supported paid services with a very clear and recorded deprecation policy and an army of customers with contracts and full support from Google CEO and chairman.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, but _who_ is paying to maintain 546GB of online storage ( plus backups ) for Reddit comments in BigQuery, for example?

If the answer is "Google" then I think people are still right to be cautious.

Or to invert the question; could I put 1TB of my own 'interesting' data into BigQuery and have Google maintain it in perpetuity for free? If not, then why are any of these datasets considered safer?

<comment><USER6> If you think Google even cares about 546GB of online storage you've gotta be kidding. This is like asking if Google is going to eliminate the free water in the water cooler because it costs a few cents per employee.

You can put 1TB of your own interesting data in BigQuery and pay $0.02/GB/month for the data storage fees. I'm sure Google will happily take your money as a paying customer, and keep your data for as long as you want to store it and pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One large difference between this program and alternative programs is that data already resides in Google BigQuery:

\- You do not need to spin up a database to work with BigQuery

\- You can simply start writing SQL on top of BigQuery

\- You may leverage Dataflow and MapReduce connectors to work with this data directly in Hadoop, Spark, or Dataflow

\- BigQuery has a free tier - one Terabyte of data processed per month

Finally, for folks who would like to share their datasets, BigQuery offers free hosting and credits to help get a pipeline going.

(disclosure: work on BigQuery)

<comment><USER7> And if you've got public data in BigQuery that you want to make explorable/shareable/visualizable to anybody (no SQL required), let Looker know and we'll see what we can do. (disclosure: work at Looker)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looker has been a great launch partner for this program. Really helped us develop and deliver great interactive dashboards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "HACKER NEWS - A dataset that contains all stories and comments from Hacker News since its launch in 2006."

I know what I'm doing this weekend.

<comment><USER9> I'm dying to get comment scores, not just submission scores.

There's a lot you could do with that to find the best comments, which is really why HN is so awesome.

<comment><USER10> Blame HN for that. It was removed from public access right after I made a blog post about it, although it was coincidental I think.

<comment><USER11> Though the data could be assembled; I can see my comment scores, you can see your comment scores...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I work and play in data. By far the best resource I've encountered is [https://app.enigma.io/](https://app.enigma.io/)

Signups are free. The aggregated public data is plentiful and easily discovered, indexed, filtered, and exported.

Free account have API limitations, but as far as govt data is concerned, I don't find that its updated often enough to peg my API rate limiter anyway.

<comment><USER13> Awesome. Do you have any other resources to share? I run occasional local hackathons and am always looking for inspiring data sets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great to see folks digging into this. Looker (where I work) is what you're seeing visualize and make the underlying datasets explorable. Our founder did a great blog post explaining how it works and how quickly these datasets yield interesting insights with just a few lines of code.

Full blog post explaining and walking through the process (and giving access to explore the data fully yourself, no SQL required) is here: [http://looker.com/blog/hacking-hacker-news](http://looker.com/blog/hacking- hacker-news)

Felipe and all the other folks at Google have done a great job getting this project off the ground and we're psyched to partner with them. We're working on some new public datasets now, but if you have particular ones you'd like to explore, let us know.

What should we look at next? Census? Medicare?

<comment><AUTHOR> Kudos to Looker, great partners here! We're just getting started :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a much more useful list: [https://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/wiki/datasets](https://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/wiki/datasets)

I'm not sure why Google hosts it on Reddit. There's some interesting (and more up-to-date) stuff on there.

<comment><USER15> That's a list of random data from random people, curated by Googler felipehoffa in an unofficial capacity.

The ones in the submitted page are maintained by Google itself in the public- data project.

<comment><USER14> I believe that the GDelt, Freebase and Genomics tables (at least) are officially supported by Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just ran a Markov text generator over the USA Name Database and created a few thousand girls' names, including:

Aracella, Ashla, Blakelyne, Carylou, Damariah, Enchantrelle, Francenza, Iridia, Jalexius, Lilliotte and Scotlanta.

Hey, maybe I can start a bespoke baby name business...

<comment><USER17> I'm building a baby name app and this is a fantastic idea that I am probably going to steal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Who is the King of Hacker News?

[https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/hacker- news#wh...](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/hacker- news#who_is_the_king_of_hacker_news)

<comment><USER19> Click on the Stories Count and you can see the individual stories :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any chance we'll be seeing the Common Crawl data on there anytime soon?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like a good one. We'll be sure to reach out to them. Or, if you know them, have them shoot us a note at:

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just noticed the Freebase data available as one of the public datasets, so been wondering what happened to the Freebase team?

I liked what Freebase, DBpedia etc were doing few years ago with "semantic db's". I remember Freebase Gridworks being extremely useful for data cleanup. Haven't had a reason to follow the space...is it dead? Haven't seen much semantic talk off late. Where would one go to catch up on the latest news?

<comment><USER3> Freebase data is being moved into Wikidata.

I loaded Wikidata into BigQuery too!

Fun with movies and cats: [https://medium.com/google-cloud/oscars-2016-movies- that-got-...](https://medium.com/google-cloud/oscars-2016-movies-that-got-the- most-attention-on-wikipedia-151cd56f4fc0)

Implementation notes: [https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2016-March/00...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2016-March/008414.html)

More notes: [https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2016-March/00...](https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata/2016-March/008427.html)

<comment><USER22> Super interesting. Thanks for all the curation and relevant set of links that you are promptly posting/replying. StackOverflow data is available for free too - that would be one awesome dataset to let folks get their hands on. Any plans for that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/hacker- news](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/hacker-news)

</comment><comment><USER24> Looking a the suggested textual analyses of the Reddit and HN datasets, and thinking about how they can be combined, makes me wonder if anonymity- through.multiple-avatars will even be remotely possible 5 years from now.

</comment><comment><USER25> I get 404s for all Looker iframes...

<comment><USER26> where are you seeing Looker being used?

<comment><USER7> Looker is powering all the iframes (any 404s should be fixed now). Bigquery is hosting the data, but Looker is generating the queries and visualizations of the data.

<comment><USER26> Interesting, I'm surprised Google is using Looker rather than their own tool

edit: ah, I see, it is just one of the partners they have with BigQuery and they are apparently using it for their website (I'm guessing because Looker lets you iframe graphs directly into the page for free).

<comment><USER7> Yup, Looker is a Premier Partner for the GCP launch ([https://cloud.google.com/partners/?q=Looker#search](https://cloud.google.com/partners/?q=Looker#search)). And then we (I work at Looker) are specifically partnering with GCP for the Public Datasets project.

Because LookML (Looker's modeling language) makes it easy to explore and visualize big datasets, we're building out models and dashboards so visitors can get a sense of BigQuery/Looker's power and find insights from the datasets quickly (whether or not they write SQL).

Frankly, there's a ton of public data that's "available" in the sense that you can technically download and clean a CSV, but isn't actually easy to extract meaning from. So we figured we'd select some interesting datasets, do the cleaning, uploading and modeling, and then let folks have at it for free.

If there are specific datasets you'd be interested in seeing, let us know and we'll see what we can do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Any chance of getting GNAF and some other Australian datasets up there?

[http://data.gov.au/dataset/geocoded-national-address- file-g-...](http://data.gov.au/dataset/geocoded-national-address-file-g-naf)

A CKAN->BigQuery connector would be interesting (think of an "Open in BigQuery" button)

<comment><USER3> Twitter noticed:

[https://twitter.com/_pwalsh/status/715054406073524224](https://twitter.com/_pwalsh/status/715054406073524224)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Seems like it has a dataset of hacker news since it launched in 2006

\--

      SELECT * FROM [bigquery-public-data:hacker_news.stories] ORDER BY score DESC LIMIT 100

\--

made a screenshot with Top 20 stories on HN [http://i.imgur.com/czXYEyQ.png](http://i.imgur.com/czXYEyQ.png)

</comment><comment><USER29> Public data is good! I have used their book text data on two projects to generate common ngrams. These newly released data sets look useful and using BigQuery is reasonable if you just need parts of data sets.

Amazon does something similar: keeping useful data in S3 for cheap access when running on AWS.

</comment><comment><USER30> There's a Hacker News dataset. In case anyone wants to take a crack at it: [https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/hacker- news](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/hacker-news)

</comment><comment><USER31> I hope someone submits a voice recognition data!

It's fantastically hard to find audio->phoneme datasets and only slightly less difficult to find audio->word and word->possible_phonemes...

</comment><comment><USER32> Sorry Google but my trust in cloud solutions reside in AWS and Azure.

Why? Because when Amazon and Microsoft announce something I know there's a good chance it will still exist 24 months later

<comment><AUTHOR> This narrative gets repeated time and time again, and it really doesn't hold up to even surface debate:

\- Google TI and Cloud merged. Same teams. Per Urs Holzle in Jan2014

\- Just last week Sundar (CEO), Eric Schmidt (chairman), Jeff Dean, Urs Holzle, and Diane were on stage talking about how they spent $10 billion last year investing in infrastructure and how serious Google is about cloud ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgWHeT_OwHc&list=PLIivdWyY5s...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgWHeT_OwHc&list=PLIivdWyY5sqIFd0E6JG1hVr8sXQaLmmBP))

\- In many cases, publically available technologies are actually replacing internal technologies (BigQuery and Dremel, Dataflow and FlumeJava/Millwheel for example).

\- Disney, Coca Cola, Snapchat, Spotify, Home Depot are just some of the customers running on Google Cloud. It'd be very foolish to abandon these.

\- If you watch the day two GCP NEXT keynote, you'll see how Google is the cloud leader in environmental responsibility and open source. We're the good guys :) ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axhdIa_co2o&list=PLIivdWyY5s...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axhdIa_co2o&list=PLIivdWyY5sqIFd0E6JG1hVr8sXQaLmmBP&index=2))

Happy to debate further!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How can they copy our comments from here to there and sell queries on them...?

</comment><comment><USER34> Can we extract the datasets to work with them on our own (cheaper to query) servers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course! BigQuery export operations are free.

Although compared with other cloud technologies, BigQuery is incredibly cost- effective :)

<comment><USER34> Well, I've checked the prices, and dedicated servers from old-style hosters are still far cheaper if you're going to query data 24/7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> In a similar vein, Kaggle datasets enables you to run Python, R, Julia, and SQL on many public datasets [https://www.kaggle.com/datasets](https://www.kaggle.com/datasets)

</comment><comment><USER36> Site doesn't render well on my Moto X.</comment>


Detailed How-To From Banned Digger - <AUTHOR> http://aszx.net/how-i-became-a-digg-power-user-with-a-75-popular-ratio.html

<comment><USER2> >"I hope this article can help those normal diggers understand just how it is the power users got that way, and why digg is not a democracy"

Actually, it sounds like Digg is exactly a democracy to me. You have as much chance making the front page of Digg (or a popular subreddit) as you do getting your preferred policies enacted by the government - essentially zero. Having your voice heard in a crowd of millions is hard. Those that succeed usually hack the system.

The position that there is no conflict between competing interests in a democracy because "everybody has a voice" is BS (not that I would expect such arguments from this crowd). You can ask my sister who was outvoted for 18 years by my brother and I, the Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, or the Republicans in DC about how great a job democracy does of balancing competing interests.

<comment><USER3> What we have in the U.S. is not democracy (literally, "rule by the people"). We have, instead, a quasi-accountable tyranny of politicos and lobbyists. Do not call that _democracy_.

<comment><USER2> I am curious exactly what you think democracy is, then. The combination of democracy with large bureaucracies is vulnerable to horse trading and power abuse, behind-the-scenes deals and favors, pork politics, and the like. Bureaucracy is needed to implement the policies desired by democracy, so there is really no way around it.

I think of some examples of well-run, transparent democracies in history, but they are all much geographically smaller, less populated, or poorer than the United States.

<comment><USER4> I think democracy is implementing the will of the people. No scrap that.

Democracy is doing what a reasonable man would do. There is no arguing that the people might have not been told the true reasons for going to Iraq. Nonetheless most of the people are reasonable hence there is no reason to lie to them.

Democracy is about being guided by high principles, by acknowledging that each human on this earth deserves equal treatment, by acknoledgin that my interests do not come before another etc.

Socrates said that the rulers ought to be philosophers taught in academia for 25 years. Or maybe it was Aristotle.

The point is that we know that the majority might be wrong, we certainly know that the minority might be wrong, but in the system of governence we currently hold it is rather apparante that the prevailing principle is that if you have more I will have less.

There must have been a time when people realised thatthey could have been born into any family, any country, any social status, etcetera. I believe that is the time when empathy emerged for fellow human beings.

If we as people realise what it means to be in someones shoes and continue to treat that someone inhumanly, or take away from him privileges that we ourselves enjoy, we become barbaric and not much different from our ancestors who found slavery convinient or colonialism profitable.

The people posses empathy. It is this question of what if that person was I that I believe has hlped us advanced somewhat.

If people are not governed by leaders whom are guided by reason rather than personal or country interests there will never be peace on earth nor happiness in the houses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Extremely intresting article on how digg users have managed to bend the algorithm to their whims. I wonder if any social news site is really immune to this.

<comment><USER6> Any algorithm is going to end up being exploitable. It's an arms race, but like with evolution, it's the only way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> classic example of how democracy turns into an in-group oligarchy. there is no way to engineer a democracy so that certain people will not wield disproportionate power.

this is a problem, for government to be effective responsibility and power must be equal. since democracy always ultimately ties responsibility back to the masses there is no accountability.

notice how in this example, just as with political democracy, power is wielded through framing what people vote on and not controlling the votes directly. the in-group does not actively prevent any story from reaching the top. but engineer the system in such a way that it is phenomenally unlikely for out- groups to get their content noticed, regardless of merit.

</comment><comment><USER8> All that effort just to front page a story on a news site overrun by idiots. What sad, sad, waste of time.

<comment><USER9> Well, maybe. But my site <http://absurdlycool.com> didn't go anywhere for a year until I got it on the Digg frontpage (got all my friends to Digg it back when that worked) and then it took off and has stayed at 5k unique per day ever since. The value of that Digg frontpage to me has been many thousands of dollars in revenue at this point, and that PR resulted in a subsequent write up on TechCrunch, LifeHacker, etc.

<comment><USER9> Speaking of which, feel free to Digg my variant on the above site. However, these days it's _really_ hard to get on the Digg frontpage.

<http://tinyurl.com/7t2ydc>

:)

<comment><USER10> Yes and no. There's a lot of moderation (by human beings) is now going on, nonetheless we got our stuff on digg frontpage thrice without any "extraterrestrial" help, just submitted links. Last time it happened in Nov/2008.

Yet, it did not help much to grow visitors, in all the cases it just resulted in a spike and fall flat after that. Digg is totally useless as a promo service, same is true about Reddit, Stumbleupon & Co.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds a lot like politics. Just with more hotpockets and wizard capes.

</comment><comment><USER12> The banning thing is dumb.

<http://digg.com/how>: "Digg is democratizing digital media." Riiiight...

<comment><USER13> Even the best democratic governments of the world imprison individuals who they consider to be a "public disturbance" etc. And the definition of "public disturbance" usually has a pretty wide scope.

<comment><USER12> Even the worst democratic governments of the world have due process, the right to actually hear what the charges are, courts, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> if only there were a place where posting a story instantly puts it on the front page at least briefly, and where people actually vote for submissions because they're good, not just so that the submitter will reciprocate. It would be an added bonus if the comments weren't filled with mindless drivel. But that's clearly a utopia that could _never_ exist.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a very insightful article, and I'm impressed with how much work the author put into getting something onto the front page of digg. If I were looking for somebody to do effective online PR, I'd be looking for somebody like this.

I think it's somewhat sad that digg is so huge now that it takes so much effort to get people to pay attention to an interesting link, and I'd be interesting in seeing if there were any way to counteract the user fragmentation that occurs as a social news site gets popular. Reddit-like categories seem to be one solution, but it seems more like a band-aid than a total solution.

<comment><USER16> I think it would be better to create a site that embraces the user fragmentation. I want to create a news aggregation site that provides a different set of articles for each user.

<comment><USER17> I made one. :) <http://newsbrane.com>

Please send me feedback!

<comment><USER16> You won't get many users if you make them sign up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _26,000 diggs in two months should have meant, $13k right_ </quote>

It is about one digg per minute working full-time (8 hours a day) for two months straight!

      26 000 / ((2 months) / ((24 hours) / (8 hours))) = 0.889820511 minutes^(-1)

google calculator: <http://is.gd/dnFp>

</comment><comment><USER19> Are any of you guys practicing mutual upvoting with friends here, on Hacker News?

I suppose it happens naturally to some extent. These voting patterns and the amount to which they happen naturally should be statistically visible for pg if he is actively looking for them.

</comment><comment><USER20> If someone really wanted to, alot of this could be automated. Ofcourse, there probably already are such bots (unfortunately)

</comment><comment><USER21> Democracy != Meritocracy

</comment><comment><USER22> Alternate title: "How to win at World of Diggcraft"

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess there is a lot to learn from this article which goes way beyond digg to the internet in general and maybe AI and also probably the genetic coding which we see happening and will see much more in the future.

What this article tells me is rather simple and important. Programms do what they are told to do. There is no human element to reason nor decidions being made, it is simply fucntions, orders which are very very predictable.

Knowledge is power of course and no one ought to have power which is why I believe that the author's cause seems noble, namely sharing your kowledge. But it really goes to the heart of the matter as far as the internet is concerned.

Everything is a program and programms follow orders therefore every programm can be manipulated whether directly or inderectly to achive the desired maybe mal intentioned results.

Hence will there ever be a proper democracy, a unity of people, a place where the market forces do not manipulate the good intentions of the users?

Will there ever be a place where the people in general can share with each other deserving articles, unifluenced by other motivations or bias, but the simple desire to share worthy kowledge, I presume with the aim of advancing civilisation itself and educating felow human beings?

The answer seems to lie not with the internet where robots (algorithms) follow orders but with the humans themselves who are imensly much more complex and driven by many varieties of purposes.

</comment><comment><USER23> wow what what a pathetic waste of time!</comment>