Ask HN: Tabletop RPGs for 7-8 Year-Olds - <AUTHOR> Hi folks,
I enjoyed tabletop role-playing games as I was growing up, but I wasn't as young as 7-8 when I started. Are there any good ones that you could recommend for me to play with my son and his friends?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> I ran a couple of Dungeon Squad games with my son when he was 6-7. Easy character creation, simple mechanics… that was really fun.

[http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/dungeon-squad](http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/dungeon- squad) [https://www.metafilter.com/110941/DUNGEON-SQUAD-IN- COLOR](https://www.metafilter.com/110941/DUNGEON-SQUAD-IN-COLOR)

<comment><USER3> Wow, this is great. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Beyond The Wall is a reasonably lightweight game with a fun character-creation minigame (you're rolling in tables that might say things like "The character sitting to your right knows your deep dark secret" and then the two of you can work out what that is). It's also got some tools to help the GM build adventures, which should be helpful.

In general, almost any game should work at that age, you just have to be prepared to adapt. Plenty of 8 year old kids have picked up their older sibling's D&D book and played with their friends, having a lot of fun even if they're not calculating Base Attack Bonus properly. Kids are imaginative, so I'd try and encourage roleplaying and worry less about the pure mechanics of rolling dice, which is easy to screw up.

Biggest advice: make sure you understand the magic system well. Even among adults I've seen confusion about how exactly spells work (for instance in Beyond the Wall, there's cantrips which always work and spells which have a % failure chance, and that trips people up)

</comment><comment><USER5> Hero Kids [http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/106605/Hero-Kids-- Fantas...](http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/106605/Hero-Kids--Fantasy-RPG)

Short self-contained adventures with a simple ruleset

<comment><USER6> Strong second for Hero Kids: it's a surprisingly robust grid-maps-and-dice- rolling system where most of the character/world details are contained on printable cards. It's great for quick-and-dirty dungeon crawls without having too many rules up-front, and it's got extra rules which can be optionally included depending on the level of sophistication of the players. (e.g. you don't _need_ to include rules for the equivalent of charisma checks to begin with, but can easily include them in later adventures as the players get more comfortable with the system.)

If you're looking for something more "storytelling-focused" rather than dungeon-crawls-and-monster-fighting, there's another good child-focused tabletop game called _The Princes ' Kingdom_ by Clinton R. Nixon, which in turn is a hack of _Dogs in the Vineyard_ by Vincent Baker. It's about the young rulers of an island kingdom travelling around from island to island and solving their citizens' problems, and has a really interesting conflict resolution system it borrows from _Dogs_ which involves rolling a bunch of dice up-front and then using the rolled as resources in a back-and-forth conflict: [https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12593.phtml](https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12593.phtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're going to be the dungeon master, I see no reason that Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition won't work fine as an entry into the genre. Other systems tend to be very complicated and rely on the players knowing much more about the game to make it go smoothly.

You could also try some board-game RPG's instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm... I was afraid that the system would be too complex/off-putting for kids that young. I'll reconsider. Thank you.

<comment> squeaky-clean I DM'd for some 8 year olds while working at a summer camp once. I was using one of the 3e starter boxes that comes with a simplified rule book and premade characters. You also have to be okay with just ignoring some rules that may add confusion like attacks-of-opportunity.

But overall it went great, maybe too great, haha. Afterwards they'd frequently try to suggest that instead of any normal camp activities they could play D&D. The camp basically made a rule against it because too many kids got interested and you'd either have an unmanageably large game, or have to exclude kids from the game.

I think the 5e starter box is somewhat similar. I know it comes with a reduced rule soft-book with just the important rules and spells. I believe it includes premade characters too but I'm not 100% sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just bought No Thank You Evil and I've had a couple of good games with my 7 year old son. He's also played once as Narrator (DM) with me as a player and loved it.

The 3 adventures it comes with are a _little_ weak IMHO, although that may just be my poor story telling ability. The ones in Little Wizards look better, but I haven't had a chance to try those out yet.

</comment><comment><USER9> Easy recommendation, esp if they're into Loony Toons: Toon, the RPG, by Steve Jackson. It's super simple, super fun, and since characters don't (can't) die, it rewards extreme silliness and imagination.

[http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG30-1203](http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG30-1203)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_(role- playing_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_\(role-playing_game\))

</comment><comment><USER10> Take the system that you are most comfortable with and tone it down. Start incorporating rules if you feel that your kids can handle them.

Dice and systems should not get in the way. Just teach them the very basic (what is passing/failing a dice roll) and add nuance from there.

</comment><comment><USER11> Was Heroquest any good? I did tunnels and trolls as a teenager but 7-8 sounds a bit young. At that age I was interested in solo roleplaying e.g. Fighting Fantasy, Choose Your Own Adventure, Lone Wolf etc which were in the local library.

<comment><USER12> According to this guys, it's the best

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx8sl2uC46A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx8sl2uC46A)

<comment><USER11> I'll have to check that out later! Just remembered another 2 favorites:

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

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You could try easing them into it with Munchkin. It's very D&D inspired but games are simpler, only last about an hour, and there's quite a bit of "family friendly" humor.

I'd suggest finding a youtube tutorial though, the rulebook is unnecessarily verbose and confusing.

<comment><USER4> In my experience the _game_ lasts 20 minutes, followed by 40 minutes of constant dreary dickery as the players repeatedly stalemate each others' attempts to finally win and finish the game.

edit: I haven't played Munchkin in 10 years, so they may have updated the rules somewhat.

<comment><USER14> It still works that way. There's a tacit agreement amongst my friends to call it after 30 minutes or so if no one has been able to win by that point.

Some of the variations can be fun to play (they add interesting complications to it). But only in small doses for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mice and Mystics [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/124708/mice-and- mystics](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/124708/mice-and-mystics)

</comment><comment><USER16> Has anyone here used the FATE system to design such a game?

Now that we're talking about this, I'm curious of any good FATE games to try, particularly for a 2-player group as we try to learn the system.

<comment><USER17> I've used (custom, simplified) FATE with young children. Worked like a charm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tunnels & Trolls + Monsters! Monsters!

Way simpler than D&D, and has a lot more humor built-in. You can get pretty much all the rules and stuff for free, online.

</comment><comment><USER19> I played Hero Quest as a kid. Loved it. I was my introduction to role-playing games.

<comment><USER12> It is, after all, the best game[1]

[1]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx8sl2uC46A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx8sl2uC46A)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> \+ [Fate Core]([https://www.evilhat.com/home/fate- core/](https://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core/))

\+ Pure D20

\+ Slim down D&D 5e and play it a bit fast and loose

I remember playing "D&D" with my dad at about that age. He used a D6, but basically he used a simplified D20 system with a lot of fudged rolls and minimal mechanics.

Fate Core is great at just telling a really good action adventure without concepts of inventory or death. It has some optional mechanics to let the players add to the story (recognizing the person who has kidnapped them, having been a smuggler in this town before, etc).

If your players enjoy jenga and horror, you can always run [Dread]([https://dreadthegame.wordpress.com/about-dread-the- game/](https://dreadthegame.wordpress.com/about-dread-the-game/)) which is very fast to get running and runs very smoothly, even for folks who haven't played an RPG before.

<comment><USER21> Also Fate Accelerated is even thinner/lighter starting place for Fate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been playing the 1st edition of Decent recently. I think kids that age could probably handle it.

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

</comment><comment><USER23> City of Mist. Very cinematic with a lot of Comic Book overtones. Simple rules. All you need are 2d6. Starter kit comes with some great characters. [https://www.cityofmist.co](https://www.cityofmist.co)

</comment><comment><USER24> If you just want to get them used to rolling dice I'd suggest Button Men, a very short game of fighting.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> If you speak Spanish or French, I strongly suggest Pequeños Detectives de Monstres / Petits Détectives de Monstres. Played it with 4 year olds, it's great, collaborative, non-violent (the only enemy is the Fear of Monsters), has a little song, encourages to use physical accessories to represent in-game objects, etc. It's also designed to be played along older siblings.

Oh, and finally, game sessions last only about 15 minutes, which fits within the attention span of children.

</comment><comment><USER25> Little Wizards or No Thanks, Evil

</comment><comment><USER26> My brother wrote a Wizard of Oz RPG with a recommended minimum age of 8. [http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/83891/Adventures-in- Oz-F...](http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/83891/Adventures-in-Oz-Fantasy- Roleplaying-Beyond-the-Yellow-Brick-Road)

</comment><comment><USER27> Small World is a decent boardgame / RPG. Its more boardgame than RPG but it is a little like dungeon crawling.

[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40692/small- world](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40692/small-world)

</comment><comment><USER28> Dungeon World is supposed to be good for kids with its easy to understand mechanics. It is a soft pg-13 though, so ymmv. But if you are the DM, you can control the level of violence. I'd recommend doing more research on it or checking out their reddit with additional questions.

</comment><comment><USER14> Like Adamantcheese says, if you're the one running it, whatever complexity may be beyond them you can handle.

D&D 5th Edition does streamline a lot of things compared to 3rd and 4th edition. It also brings D&D (to some extent) back to its roots (your characters aren't veritable superheroes out the gate like a lot of them seem to be in 4th, for instance, and you aren't selecting from tons of classes across the various splat books like in 3rd).

Castles & Crusades is a D&D-like system that's fairly light and meant to call back to 1st and 2nd edition. No skills, no feats. No THAC0-like complexity in the rules. You have a target number to hit based on your primary stats, and modifiers based on the situation and abilities. A fair number of published modules of decent to good quality and if you have experience with making your own it won't take you long to come up with new adventures for them.

Fiasco (though you'll want to use different playsets than the book contains) is a _very_ light but fun story-focused system. The main playsets are not at all kid appropriate, better ones for that age range are available online. It also has a stronger focus on imagination and storytelling versus mechanics (really, the mechanics only exist to set up the scenario and resolve a few things at two points in the play).

[http://fiascoplaysets.com/genre:kid- friendly](http://fiascoplaysets.com/genre:kid-friendly) \- I have no experience with any of these, so I can't comment on quality and actual kid- friendliness.

Dread is technically a horror game. But the mechanics are ludicrously simple. As the game master you talk to the kids and help them develop characters, and relationships between the characters. Then you put them in a situation. Whenever they do something challenging, they pull from a Jenga tower (7-8, this may be more difficult for them to do _well_ , but there are other variations). If the tower falls, the character is out of play (in most Dread games this means dead, catatonic, severely wounded; with kids you may want to bring them back in but have the character unable to do much for a few rounds). Kids would probably have fun with it as the tension rises with the tower.

Both Dread and Fiasco can be used for any genre, fantasy, contemporary, horror, scifi. Just steal the mechanics and fit the experience to the kids interests.

Also check out [https://rpggeek.com](https://rpggeek.com) and [https://reddit.com/r/rpg](https://reddit.com/r/rpg). Both are good sources for information like this.

<comment><USER29> Fiasco with 7-8 year olds? What could go wrong? ;)

<comment><USER14> Well, if you use the standard playsets, hopefully a lot! Fiasco games are boring if the plans go right.

<comment><USER29> Oh, I know! I was just thinking of just how horribly and disgustingly wrong my games with adults have been. Such a great game. I do think you'd need to simplify some of the setup and game dynamics. Even with first time adult players, it usually takes about an hour for me to get everyone grokking the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> EventH- Have a look at Maze Rats, designed to be simple and easy to pick up: [http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/197158/Maze- Rats](http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/197158/Maze-Rats)

</comment><comment><USER30> I have a librarian friend who's been running a Mouseguard campaign for the local kids. They seem to like it: [http://www.mouseguard.net/](http://www.mouseguard.net/)

</comment><comment><USER31> How about Tales from the Loop? The characters in the game are 10-15 years old, which is to 7-8 yo ones just as fantastical as playing Elves or Klingons to us adults.

</comment><comment><USER32> Mouse Guard might work. An RPG about anthropomorphic mouse rangers, based on the comics of the same name

</comment><comment><USER33> that's when i learned AD&D 2e.

</comment><comment><USER21> Any system _can_ work, depending on the kids' level of interest in math, and the willingness to fiddle with things as the GM. Most RPG system math is basic addition/subtraction and really applies to most age groups.

The best system is really some combination of: A) what setting do you think they will enjoy? B) what would you most enjoy running for them? C) given the huge variety in systems, what style of gaming are you aiming for? ("Crunch heavy" versus storytelling-focused, simulationist versus abstractionist, etc)

Some other ideas to throw into the pot of interesting starter systems:

Mice & Mystics is a self-contained boardgame version of an RPG with cool miniatures and an interesting story. Compares to the Descent boardgame mentioned by someone else, but with a stranger setting. (Mice adventurers battling roaches and cats, etc.) ([https://www.plaidhatgames.com/games/mice- and-mystics](https://www.plaidhatgames.com/games/mice-and-mystics))

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple can be a gentle introduction to shared storytelling (and encourage some writing skills work): [https://www.evilhat.com/home/do-pilgrims-of-the-flying- templ...](https://www.evilhat.com/home/do-pilgrims-of-the-flying-temple/)

Fiasco is a great rules-light storytelling game, that can be adapted to a younger audience (most of the playsets are relatively mature, given the basis in Coen Brothers cozy fiasco movies). ([http://bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/](http://bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/))

QAGS is a very simple system (single D20 for each player and a bag of candy for the GM): [http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/28315/QAGS-Second- Editio...](http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/28315/QAGS-Second-Edition)

The Basic Roleplaying System is what it says on the tin (d100/2d10 percentile roles) and you can describe the system on a cocktail napkin almost. There's a ton of content already tuned for it, especially if you have interest in Lovecraftian settings.

I've been told that the Pip System of Third Eye Games was designed with young players in mind and built to scale up with player age/attention/interest. [https://thirdeyegames.net/](https://thirdeyegames.net/)

Savage Worlds is the most "crunchy" system I would typically recommend, and there are a number of good settings. It's goal is "Fast. Fun. Furious.", and it has a pretty good ramp from very simple system rules to some more complex ones as Settings/Scenarios warrant them: [https://www.peginc.com/product- category/savage-worlds/](https://www.peginc.com/product-category/savage- worlds/)

A current infatuation of mine from a systems design standpoint (it is closest in spirit to an unfinished design of my own I've been meaning to finish) is CAPERS. It currently only has one setting (1920s "gangster" superheroes), but a unique, easy-to-learn system (press-your-luck playing card flipping): [http://www.nerdburgergames.com/capers/](http://www.nerdburgergames.com/capers/)

</comment><comment><USER34> You really shouldn't let your kids play with RPGs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this RPG video games that you're talking about? Or are you categorically against all role-playing games such as the tabletop ones that we're talking about here? Can you elaborate on why kids shouldn't play RPGs?

<comment><USER35> I think he's making a joke around an alternative expansion of the acronym "RPG".

<comment><USER34> Yeah, the OPs title alone had me confused, hence the joke.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Here is the robots.txt of Google - <AUTHOR> http://google.com/robots.txt

<comment><USER2> We actually have a surprising number of customers come to us at 80legs wanting to crawl google search results. I don't think most of them are trying to reverse engineer google or anything like that. Most probably just want a fast way to find relevant topics to crawl.

They are disappointed when they learn we obey robots.txt, so we have them manually do searches to pull out seed lists for their 80legs crawls. It's a pain, but there's not really a way around it within the rules.

</comment><comment><USER3> I always figured that the company that spiders everybody elses content should have a more relaxed policy towards being spidered itself.

After all, google is datamining the web on an ongoing basis, in return it should willingly consent to being mined in return.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but...

For the most part "Google" is a condensed version of the web. In theory, you could "spider" a single site (google.com) and build your own search database without having to go out and crawl the web at large.

It's an odd paradox, but I think one search site crawling another search site is not a good idea. And there is probably an infinite spider loop hiding in that process somewhere.

<comment><USER5> Not like anyone writing a spider _has_ to obey the robots.txt file.

<comment><USER6> Sure, and their IP will be blocked by Google some time around the 10th request.

<comment><USER3> Next time you're looking at a PC infected with malware have a look at the network traffic using a sniffer, chances are pretty good that you'll see searches to google for the weirdest of terms. Apparently this is to get around the limitation that you mention. I'm assuming the results of such searches will be 'mailed home' through some kind of dead-drop.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but responding to the parent, that's why people don't crawl Google, not the Robots.txt.

And incidentally, some of those searches are to find forms that it can stuff links into. My sites are constantly getting hit by botnets searching for Drupal comment forms. Luckily it uses a quirky URL format that's easy for mod_security to block.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does Yahoo! not have a robots.txt file?

<http://yahoo.com/robots.txt> _Sorry, the page you requested was not found._

<comment><USER8> If that page doesn't exist, then according to specification, they don't and you can crawl any page.

<comment><USER7> Update: Some Yahoo! subdomains have 'em.

 __Yes __:

        http://search.yahoo.com/robots.txt
        http://groups.yahoo.com/robots.txt
        http://realestate.yahoo.com/robots.txt

__No __:

        http://maps.yahoo.com/robots.txt
        http://omg.yahoo.com/robots.txt

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is <http://google.com/unclesam> ?

Edit: must have just mistyped it, works fine.

<comment><USER10> this is even weirder.. <http://www.google.com/microsoft>

<comment><USER11> I would guess it's the compliment of:

<http://www.google.com/linux>

<comment><USER12> Maybe it's Google's way of saying "we're not even gonna go there"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not that this was difficult or anything, but here's a list of all of the links as links. Easier to investigate ;)

<http://dpaste.org/TqnU/></comment>


The Fastest Legal Entity Identifier Lookup Site on the Web - <AUTHOR> https://legalentityidentifier.info/lei/lookup/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty cool. And freaking fast! Not realizing an LEI is a thing, I originally expected it to search for any business entity--like a corporation lookup. Each state has a directory, but it would be cool if someone could pull together all the states and other relevant/reliable sources.</comment>


BitTorrent Sync Beta API Now Available to Developers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bittorrent.com/2013/11/05/bittorrent-sync-beta-api-now-available-to-developers/ <comment><USER2> I really like the project and I would love to use it for [https://cloudfleet.io](https://cloudfleet.io) (shameless plug), but ... show us the source, bittorrent!

However I am hopeful that some other projects will come up (maybe based on [http://www.gocircuit.org/](http://www.gocircuit.org/) ) that will give us the same functionality with a verifiable code base.

<comment><USER3> The best open source alternative I've heard of so far is clearskies ([https://github.com/jewel/clearskies](https://github.com/jewel/clearskies)). The implementation isn't complete yet, but it started right with a clear, open protocol definition based on standard technologies.

I've been waiting for some free time to write a client myself - go circuit looks very interesting for that!

<comment><USER4> Thanks for mentioning ClearSkies. I have only mentioned it in a comment thrice on hacker news when it seemed appropriate (and pretty much nowhere else), and it's amazing to see someone else bring it up!

We've been working to get it to a point where it'd be ready for a "Show HN". We finally got connection encryption working last night, so hopefully that will be in a week or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Without source it just can't be trusted.

<comment><USER6> Has there been any kind of official response from Bittorrent about this?

Are they planning on open sourcing the code at a later date or have they simply kept quiet this whole time, hoping the issue will go away?

<comment><USER7> They yesterday claimed they would make it public once it was stable. [http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/24050-i-apologize-ahead- of...](http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/24050-i-apologize-ahead-of-time-can- the-devs-stop-being-assholes-and-release-the-cryptoarchitectural- documentation-please/?p=71474)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I am reading this right, the API supports creating encrypted-only peers, they can hold your data without knowing the decryption key. My interest has just been piqued.

<comment><USER9> Testing this out, looks like generating secret key through API generates three keys, encrypted, readonly, and readwrite, and I can see when I plug in an encrypted key to one node, I can see encrypted blobs are being populated from other nodes of all types, including other "encrypted" node.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So according to the terms you're unable to resell the service... so does that mean you can't build a paid SaaS service which uses this as a distribution mechanism for files?

<comment><USER11> (Disclaimer: I work on Sync at BitTorrent) Sorry if that language is confusing - we'll try to clean it up. If you build a SaaS product using Sync that's totally fine and you're welcome to sell your service. What we're trying to prevent is people who try to sell something that we are giving away for free. Happy to try to clarify if there are any other questions.

<comment><USER12> Since you are already answering questions: when can we expect BitTorrent Inc to publish the protocol or at least add the option to run and use your own tracker for syncing?

SyncApp is wonderful but I don't feel comfortable with it being closed source and your infrastructure being used. Thus I use it only to transfer files between computers I wouldn't mind sharing with the world.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the question and feedback. First, keep in mind that Sync is a beta product and we're still actively building it, things are evolving every day. We're investing a ton of time and money into it, there's a ton of great stuff happening and more coming.

As for your question, yes, we're planning on releasing a version that will allow for you to use your own tracker - unfortunately we don't have timing yet for that but it is in the works. We're working hard to make a great product and to support everyone as best we can.

Also, we do have a dedicated forum for the Sync API [http://forum.bittorrent.com/forum/106-developers/](http://forum.bittorrent.com/forum/106-developers/) in case you have other questions/comments. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why do I have to register in order to read the API docs? So annoying..

<comment><USER14> You shouldn't need to register to view them. There's a link under the Register button:

[http://www.bittorrent.com/sync/developers/api](http://www.bittorrent.com/sync/developers/api)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know if by using BitTorrent sync, my internet connection will start to be used by other strangers as an intermediary node (to help them traverse firewalls?)

</comment><comment><USER16> What's are the protocol differences against libtorrent capabilities? I assume it can sync differences between files, can libtorrent do that?

<comment><USER17> If the files haven't changed size, you don't need explicit support, just put the files in the right directory and let libtorrent treat them like damaged/incomplete downloads (it'll checksum the blocks and download the changes).

Dunno if it works for files of different sizes, though. It probably won't, since the blocks won't be in the same positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone know which algorithm they use underneath for duplication detection/delta encoding? Is it rsync or something else?

</comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone using this for application deployment?

<comment><USER20> twitter apparently uses murder: [https://blog.twitter.com/2010/murder-fast- datacenter-code-de...](https://blog.twitter.com/2010/murder-fast-datacenter- code-deploys-using-bittorrent)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tabminder, a Chrome extension to (gently) prevent distracted browsing - <AUTHOR> http://ecmendenhall.github.com/Tabminder/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been teaching myself to program over the past year, and HN has been a great resource. I started with Python, but wanted to learn some Javascript, too, and settled on writing a browser extension as a first project. I wrote this simple Chrome extension to bug me when I browse distracting sites and keep one tab from turning into ten.

I'm a big fan of tools that help manage the total time I waste online like Leechblock and StayFocusd, but I wanted a tool to remind me to spend my daily distraction quotas wisely. This extension prevents quick visits to HN and other sites from sucking up too much time by providing a gentle reminder every few minutes. Open a distracting tab, and it starts counting down from your preset time limit. When time's up, it will prompt you to close the tab or restart the timer.

This is my first browser extension (and the first real thing I've written in Javascript). I'm sure you'll find some bugs, but I hope you also find it useful. It feels great to have the ability to build the tools I want myself, instead of hoping someone else will!</comment>


Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-penalized-by-googles-page-layout-algo-108613 <comment><USER2> Yeah, too many ads above the fold sucks: [https://img.skitch.com/20120121-rwyw8bm7mhu86ptrjuq1mpfqg.jp...](https://img.skitch.com/20120121-rwyw8bm7mhu86ptrjuq1mpfqg.jpg)

<comment><USER3> I count three ads above the fold. I believe the results below those top ads are still search results, just presented in different modalities.

<comment><USER2> Regardless of whether the product search stuff counts as an ad or not, the six items on the right definitely do.

<comment><USER4> The three in the center are in a box that says "Ads". I think they count. And all six down the right side count too. Targeted ads are still ads, even if they're relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yep, only Google's search results page gets to be top-heavy with ads.

<comment><USER6> Completely true.

[http://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=breast+r...](http://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=breast+reduction)

There are 11 paid links and 10 organic. At least 75% of the above-the-fold content is ads.

<comment><USER7> I don't see any ads actually.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/361483/archive/google_search.png>

<comment><USER8> This is how it looks without AdBlock.

<http://imgur.com/3pOyK>

<comment><USER9> To be fair, I only see the three ads above and none on the right. Still, is this what Google refers to as 'above fold' location ?

<comment><USER10> Yep, that is what they're referring to. The term comes from newspapers, which are shipped folded across the middle, so that only the half of the front page that's "above the fold" is immediately visible. The web design community adopted the term with essentially the same meaning: the part of the page that's visible when you first get there. So yes, those ads are decidedly above the fold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems rather contradictory with the general AdSense historic guidance to run up to 3 ad units and place them generally to the top and left side of the page (per various pieces of heatmap research often cited). Seems like this could be pretty easily gamed too depending on how much of a CSS-wizard you are, as I suppose the algorithms are somewhat limited in analyzing CSS vs plain HTML layout or Javascript.

<comment><USER12> There was an article a while back about how Googlebot is likely a version of Chrome that fully renders a page to process it. [1] You're right, without a full browser engine, you could pull a whole host of tricks to make the page appear clean but then put in ads later. Since Googlebot is probably a full featured browser, it becomes a lot harder to trick.

[1] <http://ipullrank.com/googlebot-is-chrome/>

<comment><USER13> There are definitely at least two different, shall we say classes of crawlers: The Googlebot and the Google Web Preview crawler. I don't know the extent of Googlebot's javascript parsing but the web preview crawler appears to parse javascript like plain webkit.

Here's a link where they show the UA for the Google Web Preview crawler: [http://www.webmasterworld.com/search_engine_spiders/4353651....](http://www.webmasterworld.com/search_engine_spiders/4353651.htm)

I believe this crawler renders your pages for the preview snippets you get in search results when you hover over the arrow that appears on the right side of a result.

The previews I've seen would only look that way if javascript was being rendered and allowed to run for ~10-20s by my estimation--based on the progress of an animation that was previewed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Rather ironic to see this on a site so crowed with obnoxious social media- cruft that it actually took me about 5 seconds to find the article text...

<comment><USER15> Well, I guess they got penalized and got upset. But it's honestly good if such pages are penalized. Nowadays time is very important, and wasting time on a normal basis just to look through the advertisements is a very annoying thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This change also needs to penalize pages with full screen ads that are not always being shown (NY Times among others do it). Can anyone at Google confirm or deny whether these types of pages are being penalized?

<comment><USER17> Since when did Google become the Internet police? Seriously, I don't think it's their role to penalize anything you find annoying online.

<comment><USER18> It's Google's service, it's Google's web-spiders, and it's Google's attempt to deliver useful content to their own customers. How is it _NOT_ in Google's interest to police the links they present to visitors of Google's own properties?

If you don't like it, use Yahoo!.

<comment><USER17> But where does it stop? Is it ok for example for them to downgrade a site based on political content? Or religious content? It's not much of a jump from "we don't want to to visit this site because it has too many ads" to "we don't want you to visit this site because we don't believe in it's views".

> If you don't like it, use Yahoo!.

Thanks for the tip, but I prefer DuckDuckGo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Advertising company penalises others who sell advertising, news at 11.

</comment><comment><USER20> Cool, I didn't know about the browser sizing tool,

<http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if this isn't at least partly a sneaky way to penalize pirate sites without needing to wade into the intractable question of copyright. There seems to be a strong correlation between a site's sketchiness and the likelihood that it will plaster obnoxious ads all over the top of every page, and the timing is weirdly coincidental if not.

(I really hope this doesn't derail one of the few non-SOPA threads. But that's the most relevant motivation I can think of for this change.)

<comment><USER21> any serious 'pirate site' has absolutely no ads. The only 'pirate sites' that have ads are the ones open to the public - and they are not so serious, but rather unreliable with no community. I am guessing you are not a member of a private tracker.

<comment><USER10> I said _pirate_ , not _private_. Private trackers may be where the most hardcore pirates hang out, but theyre still only a fraction of all pirate sites. What you're saying here is precisely cognate to the No True Scotsman fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So many issues with the internet seem to devolve into the same thing: a fight over who gets to show ads to the naive user.

Eventually Google itself will be showing "too many ads above the fold". Does anyone doubt it?

Gaming the search engine to be numero uno on the SERP is one thing. But proclaming a penalty for websites that have "too many ads"? That seems like it's for users to decide, not Google. Not to mention hypocritical. Can we penalise Google for "too many ads"?

<comment><USER23> Huh? That's why you go to a search engine -- so that it decides what good content is and the user doesn't have to (or at least they only have to do so in a dramatically-reduced-dimensional space).

When Google sends me to the worst of these kinds of sites, I become extremely annoyed...at Google. So yes, we can and should "penalize" Google, but on metrics like quality of results (which includes the ads being shown). In an ideal world I'm replacing having to separate the wheat from the chaff of the entire internet with having to separate the wheat from the chaff of the search engine market, and I'm going to favor a search engine that does a better job.

In other words, as a user, "since Google is a website that uses ads, and they're going to favor websites that use fewer ads, aren't they hypocritical?" is not a question I care about even a little.

What I do care about, among other things, is having a search engine that doesn't show me useless crap.

<comment><USER22> The fact that they have to make changes to their system in order to not have useless crap appear at the top of the results tells us something: either people are searching for crap or the portion of the web Googlebot is crawling is full of crap.

Neither is something the search engine can fix for you.

With respect to the later idea, the search engine may in fact be contributing to it by encouraging more crap to be created, because it easily percolates to the top of their "intelligent" results and users blindly click on result #1. And no doubt many users see these results as equivalent to "the web". Whatever Google returns, to them, that's "the web".

You can think about the web through the lense of "search engine results" and evaluate the web based on whatever is returned from your search engine queries.

Or you can think of the web as a huge mess of websites some of which are useful, most of which are crap and many of which an aggressive search engine might index.

Are you evaluating search results, or websites?

I'm evaluating websites, individually. Because that is what the web is. To me, Google is not the web. Google might give me some clues about some sites. They do an enormous amount of grunt work crawling them.

But it's up to me to do the final evaluation. To decide whether a site is useful or whether it is crap.

And there are other ways to discover websites besides using Google. How do you think Google learns about existing and new websites? Voluntary disclosure by the webmasters?

It sounds like you want someone to evaluate websites for you. I doubt you are alone in that regard.

This is not a new problem.

However, unlike you, I do not see Google as providing any viable solution.

<comment><USER24> _The fact that they have to make changes to their system in order to not have useless crap appear at the top of the results tells us something: either people are searching for crap or the portion of the web Googlebot is crawling is full of crap._

No, it means the ranking algorithm is evaluating the results wrongly. Which is what they're trying to fix.

 _With respect to the later idea, the search engine may in fact be contributing to it by encouraging more crap to be created, because it easily percolates to the top of their "intelligent" results and users blindly click on result #1. And no doubt many users see these results as equivalent to "the web". Whatever Google returns, to them, that's "the web"._

But that's the point, isn't it? It _shouldn't_ easily percolate to the top. That's what their algorithms are for. If it does, they need to be fixed.

 _Are you evaluating search results, or websites?

I'm evaluating websites, individually. Because that is what the web is. To me, Google is not the web. Google might give me some clues about some sites. They do an enormous amount of grunt work crawling them.

But it's up to me to do the final evaluation. To decide whether a site is useful or whether it is crap._

I don't get what you mean by "Google being the web". Of course the final evaluation is up to the user. But if Google can rank the results more like you would, you're wasting less time clicking through the crap to get what you want.

 _And there are other ways to discover websites besides using Google. How do you think Google learns about existing and new websites? Voluntary disclosure by the webmasters?_

Actually, they do that too. But mostly by painstakingly loading every link recursively, something which is obviously impossible for a person to do unless they want to be limited to 0.0...01% of the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> i'm pretty amazed that they didn't do this a long time ago... sites with no content above the fold have been a problem for a long time...

<comment><USER15> I think they have been trying for a long time, but while it's possible to conceive the idea in a second, it might be harder to find the right algorithms to do it in an effective way. After all they make changes every day and study the response of users randomly distributing new versions of the algorithm to a small group of users that are effectively beta testers without even knowing it. It is a known problem, that's true, it can be tricky. For example it is massively clear for webpages that have keywords such as "iphone" "jailbreak" and so on that pretty much have just ads or want to sell you something without really any content in the page. But if you try to find, say something about a scientific paper in blogs, you don't want to penalize the page of a good blogger that has a few ads towards maybe a crazy crackpot that has their own idea about the universe and knows nothing about real science just because their pages have no ads.

<comment><USER25> well, i think also Google has a motivation to make the search results as bad as they can get away with.

a crappy page with nothing but ads is going to get clicks, and since Google is the #1 ad network, it means more money for Google.

if Google organic search results were perfect, people would never click on the ads. the worse the results are, the more likely the ads are better and you get trained to click... and ker-ching!

Google needs to be good enough to (i) discourage mass defection to Bing and Duck-Duck-Go, (ii) not produce public outrage as happened when A list bloggers were getting outranked by duplicate content, and (iii) not get in trouble for anti-trust. (Hint: if you want to run a spam farm, buy a second or third tier search engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence > "(Side note, that yellow color around the ads in the screenshot? It's much > darker in the screenshot than what I see with my eyes. In reality, the color > is so washed-out that it might as well be invisible. That's something some > have felt has been deliberately engineered by Google to make ads less > noticeable as ads)."

Sounds like the author needs to go through the process of correctly setting up his monitors using the Apple provided tool in System Preferences, I have absolutely no problem seeing the yellow box in Google's search results.

<comment><USER26> My monitor is calibrated properly, so I checked.

The color yellow in that screenshot is very faint. It's HTML color #fef5e4, which is 10% yellow and little else.

Then I compared it with the ad background on a live SEPR, which was rendered as #fff, aka 100% white.

Sounds like the author was right.

<comment> X-Istence This is what I am seeing when Googling "trash cans":

<http://i.imgur.com/gJjCK.png>

To me that yellow stands out extremely well, I have no trouble seeing it.

The background in Google's CSS for that div with id "tads" is: #FDF6E5

This is for the search "credit cards":

<http://i.imgur.com/bPnkJ.png>

The background colour is still the same. I just asked around the office if anyone was misled regarding these ads and no-one else seems to be unable to see the yellow or have trouble seeing it in general.

<comment><USER26> Ah yes, that SEPR does have an ad block with background color #FDF6E5. However, that color is only 10% yellow. Objectively, that should present a very faint yellow.

If you're seeing a gold-ish yellow background, then your monitor is set to low brightness or Gamma 2.2. That way, you won't see colors as they are.

<comment> X-Istence My monitor is set for accurate colour representation. Gamma 2.2 is the norm these days and is what websites, photography software, video software all want these days.

Mac OS X used to be the lone hold-out at 1.8 gamma but those days are long gone. (Snow Leopard changed the default to 2.2 to be in-line with the rest of the industry). Windows has always been at 2.2 gamma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Let's closely monitor YouTube's rankings in that case.

</comment><comment><USER28> I skimmed the article, but I didn't see at what arbitrary line Google considers "the fold"

<comment><USER29> I thought "the fold" was always the line where you have to scroll to see below it

<comment><USER30> Yes but for what combination of hardware and software?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why do people still browse the web without an ad blocker

<comment><USER17> Seriously, if you were a web publisher who's livelihood depended on revenue from advertising, you'd be kinda glad that most of them didn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Best way to find the content: don't use javascript.

<comment><USER3> Then I can't see 80% of the "Show HN" stuff that enters the newsfeed!

<comment><USER22> Exactly. You get content only. Do you want to read, or do you want to click on stuff? Most ads (stuff you click on) are javascript driven. Most content (e.g. text, like what you're reading now) is not. Articles on news sites like HN or other similar sites render just fine without javascript. Converting them to nicley formatted text is easy once the effects of javascript are eliminated. Let the downvotes begin!</comment></comment></comment>


Hiring factors for recruiting software developers for your startup? - <AUTHOR>

What are some of the most important factors you look for when hiring software developers for your startup? And how do you interview/test for those factors? <comment><USER2> I had read 2 articles when I was searching for devs for my own startup. Please go through these. Hope it helps! :)

[http://blog.sandglaz.com/a-guide-to-hiring-the-right- people-...](http://blog.sandglaz.com/a-guide-to-hiring-the-right-people-for- your-startup-or-small-business/)

[http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/87890/Startups-Stop- Try...](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/87890/Startups-Stop-Trying-To- Hire-Ninja-Rockstar-Engineers.aspx)</comment>


Generalizing from one example - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/

<comment><USER2> I actually think this is one danger of the internet and increasingly specialised communication channels - individuals are never exposed to contrary opinions, and either gradually grow to believe that their opinions are the only valid ones or fail to see legitimate threats to their world view.

The best example I know is politics - so many partisan sites exist that individuals who are firmly within one camp can get all of their news through their preferred filter - unlike MSM which at least pretends to be objective and achieves somewhat middle ground.

For HN, I think it's fair to say there are some characteristics we have in common which are not common in the wider community (say, respect for rationality and intelligence). I hope we're not too insular to only find news and conversation here; if we're are insular, we may wake up one day to discover our values have been even more marginalised in the wider community and we didn't even see it coming.

<comment><USER3> For those interested, this is basically the theory of law professor Cass Sunstein in his book Republic.com. He calls this problem the "daily me," the idea being that content can become too personalized to one's views, resulting in irrationally extreme perspectives on those views and their correctness.

I would recommend the book, and also the numerous criticisms of his theory (that prompted him to partially retract his argument in the second edition), easily found online.

A book? Yes, a book! Go out and stare at a fixed-content display for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Absolutely. I generalized from one datum once, and hoooo boy. I'll never do that again.

I'm being funny, but with a purpose: if acting on one datum was always fallacious, you'd think it would be bred out of us by now. Sometimes you have to act on what you know, and different ages favor different personality types.

For instance, I believe that strong visual people have an advantage in our times. I suspect it's because visual people are able to explore (by quite literally visualizing) much larger solution spaces in shorter periods of time. Like the author I am skeptical of Galton's claim that people who cannot visualize are over-represented in math and science.

<comment><AUTHOR> > if acting on one datum was always fallacious, you'd think it would be bred > out of us by now.

True enough, but you have to look at the context.

LW is sort of obsessed with Aumann's agreement theorem at the moment, which is why it frequently has long back-and-forth threads that don't go anywhere. This post can be seen as a reminder that sometimes you genuinely cannot convince someone of something, because it's all in your head.

> I am skeptical of Galton's claim that people who cannot visualize are over- > represented in math and science.

I was about to say that it's impossible to do (algebraic) topology without visualizing... but then I'd be generalizing from one data point.</comment></comment>


We're throwing a hackathon, come build games with us (and win stuff) - <AUTHOR> http://hackathon.chartboost.com

<comment><USER2> I would totally join this if I wasn't in Seattle. And fighting a lingering cold. I've actually been thinking about organizing some mini game jams with a handful of my fellow artists and some coderly friends for a few months now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bummed I can't make this. I really like the idea of a game-focused hackathon.

<comment><USER4> Ludum Dare is this weekend. <http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm in QA for a software company in SF and not a developer by trade, would I still be useful in being apart of the teams or would this be a developer only situation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nowadays there's many tools and SDKs to help you build games rapidly. I'd encourage you to register and try to learn some more about game development in the next few weeks. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome stuff. Also drop me an email some time - ben at playtomic.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best online resource to learn advanced SQL? - <AUTHOR> I too often find myself getting stuck when it comes to more advanced SQL queries. I have never actively learnt SQL and realise that I don't have a great mental model of how it works. I would like to improve this as it is killing my productivity from time to time. <comment><USER2> [http://use-the-index-luke.com/](http://use-the-index-luke.com/)

Is really good, though its more related to indexing than SQL specifically.

<comment><USER3> I second this. I prefer reading on pdf, so I bought the ebook[1]. The book explains indexing perfectly, and it shouldn't take you more than a day to finish. I can't recall a book having a better benefit/time ratio. I wish the author would release more books in this vein, but he hasn't. So right now I'm looking at Designing Data-Intensive Applications to learn more about different kinds of databases [2].

[1] [http://sql-performance-explained.com/](http://sql-performance- explained.com/)

[2] [http://dataintensive.net/](http://dataintensive.net/)

<comment><USER4> Sightly tangential ... which device do you read PDFs on?

<comment><USER5> Kobo Aura One. Bit more expensive yet high quality.

Preview on macOS is also good.

EDIT: I don't know, when that review was written the device was just released. The device received various firmware updates since then. I convert everything to EPUB with Calibre.

<comment><USER6> I read that this one isn't good for PDFs [http://the-digital- reader.com/2016/08/31/kobo-aura-one-pdf-e...](http://the-digital- reader.com/2016/08/31/kobo-aura-one-pdf-ereader-no-just-no-video/)

<comment><USER7> I really wish there were at least one mass market device that wedded a good eink screen to a reasonable CPU / RAM. There was a crazy expensive Sony PDF reader. But I really just want a Kindle DX (Aura One okay too) sized screen that doesn't struggle to render PDFs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [self plug]

On [https://pgexercises.com](https://pgexercises.com) I focus quite a bit on developing a mental model for SQL. I would suggest not skipping the easier exercises - even if you can do the SQL, you might find the explanations useful.

<comment><USER9> I worked through many of these when discussed here 7 months ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12022953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12022953) ... really enjoyable, great refresher, and learned some things I never knew before.

<comment><USER8> Thanks :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe this is obvious, but the PostgreSQL manual [1] is excellent. The first 100 or so pages (at least up to and including chapter 7) will give you a good overview. I suggest you read through them at least once. Then you can dig into the rest of that manual at leisure, exploring topics that interest you. It's a great reference too.

[1] [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/manuals/](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/manuals/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've found the Mode Analytics course to be quite useful : [https://community.modeanalytics.com/sql/tutorial/introductio...](https://community.modeanalytics.com/sql/tutorial/introduction- to-sql/)

The HackerRank SQL challenges were also helpful in getting some extra practice: [https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/sql/](https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/sql/)

Finally, this Quora post will also point you to some useful resources and has some great tips that I'm working through now: [https://www.quora.com/How-do-I- learn-SQL](https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-learn-SQL)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is great: [http://sqlbolt.com/](http://sqlbolt.com/)

[https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/cours...](https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/courseware/ch- sql/seq-exercise-sql_movie_query_core/) [https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/cours...](https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/courseware/ch- sql/seq-exercise-sql_movie_query_extra/) [https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/cours...](https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/courseware/ch- sql/seq-exercise-sql_social_query_core/) [https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/cours...](https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/courseware/ch- sql/seq-exercise-sql_social_query_extra/) [https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/cours...](https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/courseware/ch- sql/seq-exercise-sql_movie_mod/) [https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/cours...](https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/DB/SQL/SelfPaced/courseware/ch- sql/seq-exercise-sql_social_mod/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Lukas Eder has a fantastic blog about SQL, Java, FP, and his library jOOQ: [https://blog.jooq.org/](https://blog.jooq.org/).

One of the things I sometimes find tricky with SQL is pattern matching a problem to a solution. It can be tricky to describe what you want and sometimes direct human help can't be beat so I do recommend Stackoverflow (normally I have mixed feelings about SO). There are few power users on SO like Craig Ringer and the horsesomethingsomething (can't recall the actual handle) that are helpful and friendly.

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/index.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/index.html)

Postgres has an excellent manual. It has an internal scripting language called PL/pgSQL which is (to put it politely) not intuitive at all. The manual was enough to help me write a query to implement a binary tree search.

</comment><comment><USER15> I really recommend the books by Stephane Faroult, especially "The Art of SQL".

Unfortunately I could never find anything online by him, except these videos: [https://tonguc.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/good-sql- practices-v...](https://tonguc.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/good-sql-practices- videos-by-stephane-faroult/) and not sure if this is what you are looking for.

<comment><USER16> +1 The Art of SQL is pretty old now, but is still the most lucid explanation of how queries should be constructed and why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I created a set of videos for Udemy, but they complained about audio quality so I added them to YouTube. I cover a variety of basics (joins) but also get into subqueries, correlated subqueries, window functions and all along use a freely available database. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLImyDqSBQbdm09n4BhGwK...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLImyDqSBQbdm09n4BhGwKhnPrdHgN1-da)

</comment><comment><USER18> I just finished learning Postgres! I used codecademy's SQL session for the intro, but then just decided to play around with queries. This diagram was my most useful resource, and one that I still look at on a daily basis when trying to create queries - I hope it helps! [https://www.sqlite.org/images/syntax/select- stmt.gif](https://www.sqlite.org/images/syntax/select-stmt.gif)

I also look at the postgres docs very frequently for syntax and format and those help me a lot. Stack Overflow is also a great resource!

<comment><USER19> I found that course excellent as well - although these days if you don't have the "pro" tier of Codecademy you miss out on the quizzes and other things. Still, it was good and pretty advanced. Learned a lot.

<comment><USER18> That's very true, I actually ended up subscribing to pro because I was also learning JavaScript and HTML/CSS at the time (new programmer), so I found the pro stuff useful. However, if you're not wanting to drop the $20 or so for the month, I'd say that you can find plenty of fantastic online resources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are a lot of good resources to learn the "how" of SQL, but not the "why".

The first reason is that the relational model is a combination of logic and set theory, which happens to be great for a lot of business applications.

The second reason is that people have adapted SQL surprisingly well to other kinds of data, like JSON. Even if you try to build a database system specialized to JSON, it will still probably come out worse because getting things like storage, replication, administration, etc. right takes a long time.

The third reason is that data has more value when combined seamlessly with other data. So if you have business data (which everyone has) and JSON, you are better off with a single system that is great at business data and OK at JSON, than two specialized systems.

Keeping these things in mind makes it easier to understand SQL in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure if this is the level you're looking for, but if you need a better mental model of SQL, you should take a look at Jennifer Widom's course on Stanford Lagunita on Databases: [https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/db/2014_1/...](https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/db/2014_1/about)

Starting from the relational model and going through SQL really makes the language make sense.

If this is too basic for you, then, at worst, you'll spend a few hours reviewing the basics and strengthening your foundation.

<comment><USER22> That is an excellent course, and a good jumping off point. It is somewhat technical and expounds ideas that most DBAs probably aren't aware of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> One of the useful things that I learned as I began to use SQL is to learn how to use and analyze query plans.

This will take you from the theory of indexes to actually seeing how it is used by the SQL engine.

This will go a long way to building the right indexes and SQL tuning in general.

I would suggest learning how to generate the query plans for your SQL engine of choice.

<comment><USER24> This!

This is key. I cannot count how many times I go to a client that is complaining that their software is slow and ends up that is because they don't have the right indexes

<comment><USER23> The difference between a poorly performing product that uses an RDBMS backend and a highly performant one is purely down to SQL query tuning and finding the right indexes.

It is the lowest hanging fruit to improve performance.

Even if you don't have the flexibility to change the SQL on a project, you may still have the ability to create/rebuild the indexes to make the query faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I dont know if this is the right place to ask it, but I will go:

Sometimes I see job offers that ask for experience with large websites, large databases, large servers, etc, etc, etc (you get the idea).

How do you land those jobs if getting in that kind of subject is impossible alone? You can't simulate that kind of things at your home, so unless your side project grow and you must learnt it the hard way, or you had luck to be at a company where they allowed you to be involved, how do you learn that? Thank you

<comment><USER26> You don't need to work for a company with large datasets to start learning and playing with large datasets. There are freely available repositories of data you can play with. Checkout the AWS public datasets - [https://aws.amazon.com/public-datasets/](https://aws.amazon.com/public- datasets/). There should be more then enough there for you to start playing with "big data" tools and getting familiar with how to store, ETL, and query large datasets.

<comment><USER25> Yes, but when a company asks for experience they aren't thinking in playing with large datasets unless you create an open source tool that becomes useful for a lot of people. Just playing with them wouldn't be suffice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> [http://www.postgresguide.com/](http://www.postgresguide.com/) [https://pgexercises.com/](https://pgexercises.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> what do you find lacking about the postgres docs? [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/index.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/index.html)

In particular: [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/sql.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/sql.html)

[https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/server- programmin...](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/server- programming.html)

[https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/sql- commands.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/sql-commands.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> I love the Periscope Data blog. [https://www.periscopedata.com/blog/](https://www.periscopedata.com/blog/)

</comment><comment><USER30> [https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/queries](https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/queries) is a fairly good resource for practising queries and for looking at others queries against a relatable dataset.

</comment><comment><USER31> This book is good

[https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Celkos-SQL-Smarties- Fourth/dp/012...](https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Celkos-SQL-Smarties- Fourth/dp/0123820227)

<comment><USER32> Props to Joe Celko's books. I found they helped me reconceptualize how to get SQL to solve problems that I thought required another language.

<comment><USER33> I'll also thumbs up Celko's books. He takes hard problems and solves them with SQL. His books do assume you already know SQL, and are now looking for better ways to apply that knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I found that looking at the query plans for the SQL I wrote really improved my SQL skills. It is amazing how it builds a mental model in your head. You learn very quickly what looks good and what actually works, plus you get a really good feel when the optimizer is going to walk off the cliff.

</comment><comment><USER35> Gamify! Play the SQL game, The Schemaverse [1]. I don't know if this matches the request for "more advanced queries", but it is entertaining.

[1] [https://schemaverse.com/](https://schemaverse.com/)

<comment><USER36> With the ability to use pl/pgsql within the game, it can get as complicated as you want :)

It doesn't necessarily teach each advanced technique, but it does give you a good place to practice what you've learned.

(Thanks for the mention!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Code School has 3 courses on databases, 2 on SQL and 1 on NoSQL. [https://www.codeschool.com/learn/database](https://www.codeschool.com/learn/database)

The Try SQL course is free, the other 2 you have to pay for. [https://www.codeschool.com/courses/try- sql](https://www.codeschool.com/courses/try-sql)

</comment><comment><USER38> I would start with the Mode Analytics SQL tutorial. It's fairly robust and gets into advanced topics: [https://community.modeanalytics.com/sql/tutorial/introductio...](https://community.modeanalytics.com/sql/tutorial/introduction- to-sql/)

That will get you pretty far but the advanced SQL topics will require the study of what the underlying database provides and how it works. Every database is different in terms of how it implements advanced features, if at all. For example, MySQL doesn't have window functions. For postgres related topics, the documentation is excellent, postgresguide.com gives a high level overview, or you can follow craig's blog ([http://www.craigkerstiens.com/](http://www.craigkerstiens.com/)) that provides a gentle introduction to many of these topics as well.

<comment><USER39> Thanks for the mention, I also have an article that walks through not what I'd call advanced but it's at least intermediate SQL here as well - [https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2016/09/12/fun-with-sql- compu...](https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2016/09/12/fun-with-sql-computing- run-rate-and-growth-with-ctes-and-window-functions/)

Whenever I do come across blogs that have good articles we aim to feature them in Postgres Weekly, so if you want a regular stream of that type of content it's worth checking out - [http://www.postgresweekly.com](http://www.postgresweekly.com)

<comment><USER40> The Postgres Weekly newsletter is a really valuable service. You not only aggregate information but filter for quality. Thank you for providing this! I've said this before but it warrants re-mentioning :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Not online, but SQL Antipatterns is the book that had the largest impact on my thinking:

[https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Antipatterns-Programming- Pragmati...](https://www.amazon.com/SQL-Antipatterns-Programming-Pragmatic- Programmers/dp/1934356557/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484685482&sr=8-1&keywords=sql+antipatterns)

But as you said, you haven't actively learned SQL, so probably need to find some free data sets to work with.

You can probably start with Data is Plural. That will, at least, give you some raw data sets so you can get started on learning how to build up a database from unorganized data first:

[https://tinyletter.com/data-is-plural](https://tinyletter.com/data-is-plural)

Edit to add: First and foremost, you have to learn normalization. Without that, you aren't doing any SQL.

</comment><comment><USER42> A little bit unorthodox, but check out [http://sql-ex.ru/](http://sql-ex.ru/) (even though it is in .ru , website itself is in English) especially their advanced exercises.

<comment><USER43> +1 Also present at [http://www.sql-ex.com/](http://www.sql-ex.com/)

Not shiny, but very functional. It's been around 5+ years and has lots of great practice for advanced queries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The thing about advanced is I keep learning there's further levels of advanced.

<comment><USER45> I learned in college that the words "Introductory" and "Advanced", when appearing in technical book titles, often don't mean what you think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I took the Stanford Database MOOC course. A lot of work, but you get a pretty deep understanding from it: [https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/db/2014_1/...](https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/db/2014_1/about) [https://henrikwarne.com/2011/12/18/introduction-to- databases...](https://henrikwarne.com/2011/12/18/introduction-to-databases-on- line-learning-done-well/) My review of the course:

<comment><USER41> Oh Goodness, please don't suggest the Stanford Database MOOC. They teach in outdated standards.

<comment><USER47> _Everyone_ teaches outdated standards (eventually). The important thing is to come away with an understanding of the principles (which is what I interpret the OP to be asking for).

I took the Stanford course when it was first offered online, and I regard it as one of the best things I ever did. You're absolutely right in that there's a lot of newer stuff that it didn't teach me, but the database's documentation is usually sufficient to plug that gap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> [https://pgexercises.com/](https://pgexercises.com/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Others have posted some really good resources. I paticularly like Periscope Data's blog ( ex : [https://www.periscopedata.com/blog/effective-revenue- chart.h...](https://www.periscopedata.com/blog/effective-revenue-chart.html) ) , they have covered a wide range of topics. Get a public dataset and start querying for unique insights.

I would also encourage you to learn a bit of Relational Algera if you really want to improve your mental model.

<comment><USER50> > learn a bit of Relational Algera [sic]

This. SQL is just a tool for expressing your thinking and learning it doesn't help you to problem solve. The theory, both relational algebra and set theory, will teach you how to think about the problems, not how to express your thinking. That's what's necessary to solve difficult SQL problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> To get a good mental model of a SQL database, there is this pretty technical but great write up from researchers from Berkeley, MIT, and Microsoft research:

[http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/fntdb07-architecture.pdf](http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/fntdb07-architecture.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER52> You should try to understand how databases in general work, it will help you with your query writing.

One thing you have to realize is that once you get a little advanced, you have to get to the details of the single SQL implementations, it's not about SQL but about Postgres.

I've found these books really valuable

# SQL Performance Explained Everything Developers Need to Know about SQL Performance

[https://www.amazon.com/Performance-Explained-Everything- Deve...](https://www.amazon.com/Performance-Explained-Everything-Developers- about/dp/3950307826/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1484664477&sr=8-1&keywords=Sql+performance&linkCode=ll1&tag=akhn-20&linkId=c4b9565b49e6d7df8926ea4b2c38638d)

This book fundamentally talks about how to effectively use and leverage the SQL indices. Talks about all the important implementations (Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server).

# Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

[https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive- Applications...](https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications- Reliable- Maintainable/dp/1449373321/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1484665055&sr=8-1&keywords=data+intensive&linkCode=ll1&tag=akhn-20&linkId=5f573b2aa511a8838b79a7d5f5803425)

This book gets mentioned a bunch around here and for a good reason. There aren't too many concrete resources on making your systems "webscale" and this one is really good.

# PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance

[https://www.amazon.com/PostgreSQL-High-Performance- Gregory-S...](https://www.amazon.com/PostgreSQL-High-Performance-Gregory- Smith/dp/184951030X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1484664742&sr=8-4&keywords=postgres&linkCode=ll1&tag=akhn-20&linkId=11bb358d3fad4c80793189b0e21a5c20)

Discusses all the different settings and tweaks you can do in Postgres. It's crazy how much of a perf gain you can get just by twiddling the parameters of the database, i.e. all the tricks you can do when the single instances are bottle necks.

There's a similar book for MySQL [https://www.amazon.com/High-Performance- MySQL-Optimization-R...](https://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-MySQL- Optimization- Replication/dp/1449314287/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1484665854&sr=8-8&keywords=mysql&linkCode=ll1&tag=akhn-20&linkId=8c680a5cf6e65cb85ad917475d9974be)

# PostgreSQL 9 High Availability Cookbook

[https://www.amazon.com/PostgreSQL-9-High-Availability- Cookbo...](https://www.amazon.com/PostgreSQL-9-High-Availability- Cookbook/dp/1849516960/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FADS1X7JMJPNAPRE5C38&linkCode=ll1&tag=akhn-20&linkId=baffc3717a5b7408752f3aad1ce8e909)

Discusses how do you go from 1 Postgres instance to 1+ instance. Talks about replication, monitoring, cluster management, avoiding downtime etc i.e. all the tricks you can do to manage multiple instances. Again there's a similar book for MySQL [https://www.amazon.com/MySQL-High-Availability-Building- Cent...](https://www.amazon.com/MySQL-High-Availability-Building- Centers/dp/1449339581/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484665620&sr=1-1&keywords=mysql+availability&linkCode=ll1&tag=akhn-20&linkId=ec2d4c3da47d241a31a054af41e0894c)

Last but not least check out the postgres documentation, people consider it a standard of what good documentation looks like [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/index.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/index.html)

Also last but not least, read up on relational algebra (the foundation of SQL) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra). I've always found SQL to be extremely verbose (the syntax reminds me of idk COBOL or smth) but there's another query language called Datalog, that's for our purposes similar to SQL but the syntax is much more legible.

E.g. check out these snippets from these slides (page 29) (and check out the whole class too)

[https://pages.iai.uni- bonn.de/manthey_rainer/IIS_1617/IIS201...](https://pages.iai.uni- bonn.de/manthey_rainer/IIS_1617/IIS20161019.pdf)

Datalog:

s(X) <\- p(X,Y).

s(X) <\- r(Y,X).

t(X,Y,Z) <\- p(X,Y), r(Y,Z).

w(X) <\- s(X), not q(X).

SQL:

CREATE VIEW s AS (SELECT a FROM p)

UNION

(SELECT b FROM r);

CREATE VIEW t AS

SELECT a, b, c

FROM p, r

WHERE p.b = r.a,

CREATE VIEW w AS (TABLE s)

MINUS (TABLE q);

</comment><comment><USER53> Two of the best resources I've ever seen/read:

Database Design for Mere Mortals - [https://www.amazon.com/Database-Design- Mere-Mortals-Hands/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Database-Design-Mere-Mortals- Hands/dp/0201752840) (not an affiliate link)

Legend of the Drunken Query Master - [http://www.joinfu.com/2008/09/slides- from-drunken-query-mast...](http://www.joinfu.com/2008/09/slides-from-drunken- query-master-and-joinfu-talks-at-zendcon/)

</comment><comment><USER54> Once I understood what a Cartesian product was and how it really relates to joining tables in a query, then I felt everything clicked and building complex queries was no longer daunting.

</comment><comment><USER55> For Microsoft SQL server,

I recommend reading all things what Brent Ozar [1] has to say

There is also another blog from Dr. DMV on SQL Server performance [2]

[1] [https://www.brentozar.com/](https://www.brentozar.com/) [2] [http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/glenn/category/dmv- queries/](http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/glenn/category/dmv-queries/)

<comment><USER56> Awww, thanks! For the record, BrentOzar.com is also written by my excellent staff, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I recommend Database Design for Mere Mortals [https://www.amazon.com/Database- Design-Mere-Mortals-Hands-eb...](https://www.amazon.com/Database-Design-Mere- Mortals-Hands-ebook/dp/B00BHEY5C2/ref=dp_ob_title_def)

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm super late to the game on this. But I made a website [http://selectstarfrommovies.com/](http://selectstarfrommovies.com/) with the intent to help people have motivation to learn SQL. Check it out.

</comment><comment><USER59> If I could ask something related to this question - what is the best way to grok the OVER clause, such as RANK() OVER? I'm having a bit of difficulty trying to really understand how it works and how to use it effectively.

<comment><USER17> Best way is to see it in action and experiment. A few videos I made (b and c relate to common queries written for BI or CLTV stuff).

a) row_number over() and partition: in the abstract: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X3eIyZV728](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X3eIyZV728)

b) applied to customer value analysis: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHxJvF0tZOA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHxJvF0tZOA)

c) applied to time differences (also uses materials from b above) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f8tF4U70Ic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f8tF4U70Ic)

After a while you can write these from scratch and they generally work the 1st or 2nd time, but it takes lots of trial and error at first when setting up the partition and ordering clause within the OVER() expression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> You can learn through SQL Injection too, and it's way more fun :) [https://redtiger.labs.overthewire.org/](https://redtiger.labs.overthewire.org/)

</comment><comment><USER61> Kind of depends on the db and engine being used, but for MySQL, this book has been very good in helping me optimize sensitive queries:

High Performance MySQL by Jeremy D. Zawodny

</comment><comment><USER62> To be blunt, the best online resource is a production server being hugged to death. Human alertness, survival, and performance emerges at its very best.

</comment><comment><USER63> Any great resources explaining normalization, ideally with real-world examples of when to stop normalizing?

<comment><USER64> For examples of not normalizing, I would look at books on data warehousing

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Joe Celko's books !

</comment><comment><USER66> This's what I want to know

</comment><comment><USER67> Amazon.</comment>


Show HN: Bootstrap styled tooltips for d3 - <AUTHOR> http://bl.ocks.org/2981335

<comment><USER2> Tooltips that follow the cursor, rather than stably label the element they describe, seem against the clean and rigorous Bootstrap/D3 aesthetics.

<comment><USER3> They're also harder to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed on both counts.There is some neat stuff going on with Voroni diagrams in this thread[0] that I am probably going to try and work in next. Any suggestions for how to label something like this[1]?

[0]<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/d3-js/wSAoKPg125s>) [1]<http://bl.ocks.org/2869946>

<comment><USER2> Maps are extra hard to do in an automated/general fashion. Perhaps a translucent label always at the center of the region? (Though, with small regions the label would also tend to be overlapped by the cursor which popped it.)

A compromise between 'always stable' position and 'follows mouse' is for the position to stay stable for any one pop (so that it perhaps is cursor-entry influenced), but then vary on next entry.

<comment><AUTHOR> The pop compromise is an option now. Thanks. Should push out a better version in the next week or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For me, the topmost few tooltips show up flowing to the left and get chopped by the edge of the block all the dots are in; all I can see of the very top one is "?".

Safari 5.1.7 on OSX.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a "feature". Poor design on the example's part, pushing a new and improved one this week with all the suggestions so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice! Im'm currently working on a similar project with bootstrap adm decided to use qTip. It plays nice with bootstrap

</comment><comment><USER6> Neat, a pity I didn't have this a few weeks ago, when I wrote my own (for showing the value on hover in a time series)

<comment><USER6> I have to say, my version had fixed placement instead (using the dot position and a relative adjustment respect to its size)

<comment><AUTHOR> People keep bringing that up and I agree. I am trying to figure out how to make it general though. Ideally someone should be able to call this function on any svg element, whether it's a point (circle), path, or what have you. Still thinking through how to make that work.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I understand. I wrote a mouseover method for the dots, which kind of works but it's a mess as soon as you have several graphs on the same page (hint: rewriting the callback definition of the csv reader saved my day after all...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice work Zack. D3 and Bootstrap work really well together stylistically.</comment>


A dying mall near Apple's headquarters: a fight over Silicon Valley's soul - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/A-dying-mall-near-Apple-s-headquarters-is-13417634.php <comment><USER2> _"According to the sales pitch, the new housing units would include low-income high-density housing apartments," his presentation said. "This would mean that we would have uneducated people living in Cupertino. A lot of other residents and I are concerned that this would make the current residents of Cupertino uncomfortable, and would split our city in half."_

Wow, I guess the individual believes its fine for these people to clean and cook for them, but they should really be bused in from somewhere else so they don't scare the children. What a friggin depraved understanding of the lives of people just trying to get by or pull themselves up by what means are available.

<comment><USER3> That was one random school student's comments.

Meanwhile, keep reading:

"Its recent plan doesn't include more than $35 million in city fees compared with an alternative project. It doesn't have a traffic mitigation plan and calls for taller buildings, up to 240 feet, close to the height of San Jose's tallest towers."

So, _no_ traffic mitigation plan (essentially all traffic being dumped onto Wolfe Road there, with the rest dumped onto Stevens Creek Blvd) and _no_ standard development fees (where are those low-income kids going to _go to school?_ ).

and

"Vallco's SB35 affordable housing plan includes low- and very-low-income units, but _not moderate-income units that are typically available for teachers_."

 _Zero_ moderate-income units and only enough below-moderate income units to qualify for SB35 exemptions.

<comment><USER2> I really don't care about the rest. This person got away with saying something as asinine as that. The fact I got down-voted and you defended that comment just makes me a bit sick.

<comment><USER3>
      you defended that comment

No, I _dismissed_ it. No one ranting youth sets policy.

Fortunately, neither does someone who doesn't care about the critical facts of an issue.

<comment><USER2> You backed up the comment with a bunch of points from the rest of the article. Why bother replying to me with that when my point was about the attitude shown by one person that seems to have gone unchallenged? In the context of my post, I really don't care about the "critical facts" because I was commenting on the attitude of someone testifying. "I dismiss his comment but he's actually right and here is why" isn't really interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Plex Media Server on Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.plex.tv/features/cloud/ <comment><USER2> For those wishing to use Amazon Cloud Drive with their own Plex server [https://amc.ovh/](https://amc.ovh/) has some great instructions. I've been doing this with very little issues for a few months now.

EDIT: More up to date instructions at [https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/58uhmo/guide_to_using...](https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/58uhmo/guide_to_using_amazon_cloud_drive_and_encfs_for/)

<comment><USER3> Wow. "Unlimited" for $60/yr. Do you think they'd be ok with me uploading my entire 12tb library? I wasn't able to find any limits in the fine print.

<comment><USER4> Plenty of people on Reddit's /r/DataHoarder have done far more than that, easily into the tens of TBs. The problems come when you upload unencrypted copyrighted content or try to download more than 1TB in a single day.

<comment><USER5> Wait, what happens if you upload unencrypted copyright content? I legally own quite a bit of that, as I suspect most people do.

<comment><USER6> Well, you have a _license_ to use the material, but that license probably wasn't written with the intent of you streaming it from someone else's server.

<comment><USER7> Hmm... there are laws allowing you to make backups of licensed content. Can you explain more about how license would forbid you from storing those backups on Amazon server?

<comment><USER8> perhaps streaming would in the law as a form of broadcast, thus storing it would be fine but as the purpose of storing in that situation is to broadcast that would be illegal (not saying that is the case, just making a reasonable scenario)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have an lifetime plex pass membership. I think it cost $120. I am not sure how they will be able to continue to offer me plex cloud, as servers which plex are paying for must be doing the transcoding. The bill for CPU must be fairly hefty if people really start to use this.

<comment><USER10> Maybe transcoding won't be needed eventually for a majority of users ? A lot of media right now exists in h264 which newer devices can anyway play. Since AV1 has broad industry support, it might be also become ubiquitous.

<comment><USER11> Most of my transcoding usage in Plex isn't for a target codec or target resolution, but for a target bitrate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> crooked-v This has the big limitation, at least at the moment, that the supported providers all cap out at 1 TB for any kind of reasonably-priced storage.

<comment><USER12> It's also painfully slow. I've been using it for the past few months, and it rescans my library every time I access it. Half the time it shows my libraries as empty. Overall it feels very unfinished.

<comment><USER13> I figured it would be too slow for daily use for my own needs, based on my current setup. I have a Nvidia Shield TV as the Plex server and living room Plex client, with a home-built NAS running OpenMediaVault for media storage. The Shield and NAS are both connected to Gigabit Ethernet, and I occasionally run into slowdowns if I'm trying to watch in the living room, my wife is watching in the bedroom via Roku, and my sister-in-law across the city is watching via her Roku. I've narrowed it down to a saturated network, the Shield was barely breaking a sweat transcoding the files.

With that said, using the Shield as the server greatly improved our previous streaming situation. Before using the Shield, we'd struggle to maintain two good quality streams at once, whether both were local or one was local and one remote. The previous server was no slouch: Core2 Quad with 8GB of DDR3 RAM, but it seems the Shield is well qualified to handle server duties.

<comment><USER14> Which CPU was it? I doubt Plex are using the latest ffmpeg, but I saw big jumps between the i7 920, 2600k and then finally the 6800k. That said, my current Plex box is an Atom C2758, which seems to handle 1-2 streams just fine (1 direct, 1 transcode).

<comment><USER13> Core2 Quad Q8400. That machine is now being used as a Linux/BSD testbed every now and then, and it's still plenty fast enough for modern desktop duties.

The other concern the Shield mitigates is power inefficiency; that C2Q is a power hungry beast, and the entire Shield box uses less wattage at full load than the Intel CPU alone at idle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So uh, how does this work? What's to stop me from sticking my data up there and sharing it with 1000 friends? Where is the trancoding done?

I was a member of a private plex group with about 8TB of media. He was constantly running into problems due to people sharing accounts, causing his server load to become unfeasible.

<comment><USER16> Because you would have to give your 1000 friends the Plex login to your paid Plex account, and this would likely be noticed and your account suspended.

<comment><USER10> I don't think that's necessary. They can all have their own logins. Plex allows coarse sharing for free and more fine grained sharing in their paid product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Plex is one of my favorite services. One of those companies that makes it easy for me to donate.

<comment><USER18> I was really annoyed, though, when they released version 1.0 and removed access to all previous downloads. Turns out, 1.0 (on Debian) was broken and I could no longer FF on my Roku. The forums were filled with people complaining, but they would not make the older, good release available. After a week or two someone provided it to me via dropbox.

You might ask why I didn't have the previous download? Because the way I was building my plex docker container would download the latest one, directly. I removed the previous container before I verified all features were working. And, at that point, I wasn't backing up containers (they are stateless, so why bother?), so I was royally screwed for 2 weeks (in terms of FF).

The fact that they are closed source, and behaved this way. It really soured me on them.

<comment><USER19> > I removed the previous container before I verified all features were working

I think I found your problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am going to assume, a lot of people are storing Copyrighted Materials.

1\. This essentially allows you to store all your favorite collection, what happens if Google Drive decide to wipe all those out?

2\. Why not do this on a NAS?

<comment><USER21> > 2\. Why not do this on a NAS?

NAS boxes capable of running Plex media server are not inexpensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> this is a failed project - there was a lot of expectation when they initially started with Amazon Cloud Drive..with a technical limitation that they faced with Amazon Cloud Drive - they completely eliminated Amazon Cloud Drive from its storage options..I called it failed, because there is no way, I will pay loads of money to Dropbox or Google for the Terabyte of my Homelab videos.. Amazon Cloud Drive would definitely been an option - that I would consider, since they have a fixed 60$ for unlimited data..

<comment><USER4> You can get unlimited data from Google Drive and Dropbox for about the price of 1TB, you just need to use a business account. This seems to be the main solution for the people I know who are using this.

<comment><USER23> Dropbox is $100/year for 1TB but $20/month for unlimited. That's more than double.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why didn't they use S3 or GCS as the backing store? Why do we need upload & sync? Seems like you only need just upload and go.

<comment><USER25> Most people use Plex for pirated content. If Plex uses S3 or GCS as the backing store, then they are hosting and delivering their users' pirated content and opening themselves up to all kinds of legal problems. If they're just providing a way to stream content from some external storage, they have a lot less liability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I set this up during the Beta and it works reasonably well. Cloud Libraries behave just as Shared Libraries do in the App. I didn't see a restriction on the number of Cloud Libraries you can setup and they show up as available libraries in your Plex App.

So I could see using the cloud server as a way to avoid eating up home server bandwidth if you do a lot of remote streaming. Particularly if your ISP has bandwidth caps. There might also be a performance benefit since cloud storage is faster than a lot of people's upstream connections to the internet.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm a huge Plex fan, but I'm really not comfortable using this until it supports encryption.

I would only use this for media where you have the legal rights to copy it.

<comment><USER28> encryption is a mute point unless its some sort of end-to-end encrypted thing since they host the computers.

<comment><USER29> "Moot" point, not "mute" \- [https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/moot_point](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/moot_point)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there a good option for encrypted cloud storage that this can access? Unless you want whoever scanning your stuff and seeing your collection of anime...

<comment><USER31> This is a pretty good guide for Amazon Cloud drive:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/58uhmo/guide_to_using...](https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/58uhmo/guide_to_using_amazon_cloud_drive_and_encfs_for/)

<comment><USER32> ACD no longer works with Plex Cloud.

<comment><USER2> With this setup you run your own Plex server and mount ACD as a filesystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been using this since day one. It's been a bumpy ride, but the past few weeks it's been working really well.

</comment><comment><USER34> I actually wish they would add support for HDFS- it's not a bad way to combine lots of somewhat-small (< 2TB) disks into a sizable amount of (seemingly) homogenous storage (without having to be super clever with mount points and hard links and BTRFS and junk like that).

<comment><USER35> Why bother? just add more directories of content to each library. Plex just merges them all at the library level. I have crap stashed over 5 drives, just plain vanilla USB drives, and plex handles them just fine.

<comment><USER36> Data protection. HDFS replicates chunks of files across 3 different drives by default. This is configurable, but it's one of the most simple ways to protect your data from drive failures, without the performance penalty of RAID.

<comment><USER35> yeah, that's fair.

Might want to see if the HDFS NFS Gateway works for this.

[https://hadoop.apache.org/docs/r2.7.2/hadoop-project- dist/ha...](https://hadoop.apache.org/docs/r2.7.2/hadoop-project-dist/hadoop- hdfs/HdfsNfsGateway.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Anyone have any experience with this service yet? Do you have to re-encode your videos? Curious since some MKV's i ripped a while ago are transcoded and can be CPU heavy to play. Anyone know how plex cloud handles this when played on Xbox One app or Mobile phone?

<comment><USER4> The draw of Plex (cloud or otherwise) is that it handles all that for you. It'll transcode to the correct format and even embed subtitles if you need it to. On the backend it uses ffmpeg so it should support pretty much any format. I think it even supports HEVC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Just need for supported cloud storage to become affordable i guess...

<comment><USER37> OneDrive comes with Office365 which is 90 bucks a year when found on sale.. You get 1TB of cloud storage for up to 5 family members and you get Office Pro for up to 5 PCs as well.. not a bad deal in the end.

<comment><USER39> I have around 8TB on Plex, so that won't work for me :(

<comment><USER37> well, you could create 5 accounts under the single master and have 5 tb online.. for 90 bucks a year.. just use an account for each service.. movies / tv / whatever :)

<comment><USER40> This is a massive pain, and also against the TOS. Amazon Cloud Drive is $60/year for unlimited storage.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


B2B Lead Generation: The $1.5MM Framework We Used to Grow - <AUTHOR> http://yesoptimist.com/b2b-lead-generation/ <comment><USER2> Value is becoming a major differentiator between the winners and losers. It's great that Optimist goes above and beyond with kick-ass content. Seems like it's working!

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't even just say 'value', but 'strategy' is becoming the major differentiator. I was just telling someone today that there is a difference between someone who gives advice and someone who gives actual strategy. The latter is a blueprint, while the former is 'rah-rah' imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice read! I was skeptical, but this looks like a fairly simple plan even a dummy like me could put in place. I love getting inbound leads.</comment>