The social behavior incentive: how your app can be as addictive as Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2010/01/23/the-social-behavior-incentive-how-your-app-can-be-as-addictive-as-facebook-twitter-foursquare/

<comment><USER2> Is anyone else completely turned off by most incentive devices? I don't want your damn point for leaving a comment on my friend's wall. I don't want to be "mayor" of a damn coffee shop. Ever watched a bunch of 5 year old's play before?

<comment><USER3> It's not about you, it's about users. This stuff either works on the body of users you care about or it doesn't. Whether you like it or not is irrelevant.

<comment><USER2> This is true, but I think it's a bit more complex than that. I can hardly imagine anyone proudly telling me in person, "I'm the 'mayor' of Joe's cafe!," yet they seem to revel in it online. There's something more interesting than just my feelings here.

Also: Suppose I don't feel that playing into everyone's inner narcissist for my profit is something I'd be proud of. Does that matter at all?

<comment><USER3> Clearly you must work within the boundaries of what you find ethically acceptable - either by staying away from certain things or by expanding the boundaries. Just remember that other people have boundaries drawn in different places and arguing about the one right way to draw them is not very productive for pretty much any definition of productive we should care about on this site.

You're right in that there is more going on here - the fact that you can't imagine what is clearly going in in front of you suggests that you project your system of values on other people to such an extent that it deprives you of empathy to those people. If you don't get this under control this will seriously hamper your (future) business in pretty much any area other than serving people who are exactly like you. This blindness is not likely to be confined to narcissism. People revel in all kinds of crazy stuff, but you seem to think that one kind of crazy stuff is more worthy than the other.

<comment><USER2> It's not that I consider it unethical: it's not wrong, but it does seem like taking the easy way out, rather than making your product strong enough to stand solidly on its own. Then again, you can't always predict how things will play out. For instance, I don't think Apple intended for the iPod and later the iPhone to target the narcissist within, but as they became popular, they became status symbols, and it happened anyway (and less artificially).

To the latter half of your response, I'm working on it. Even if my original comment was a bit snarky, it was a still a prompt for conversation on the matter. I'm well aware of the popularity of things like this (Farmville, anyone?), and I'm trying to understand it.

I'd be interested in your response to my suggestion that people are much more obvious about this online. While people certainly do things for status in the real world, almost all would take offense if you gave them a gold star for getting a date. Why are people so willing to cede authority (judgment) to a website? The game element doesn't seem to explain it all.

<comment><USER3> What is the opposite of the "easy way out" for you? In other words, what is your true goal?

You seem to want both a financially successful product, and one that is "strong to stand on its own". My spidey senses are telling me there is a lot of baggage in that latter quote - it looks like you want your contributions to the world to be not just financially successful but also noble in a way, or real-manly (the opposite of "the easy way out"). These two are very different goals - one is of financial independence and the other one is of advancing up the Maslow's hierarchy to "Esteem" level.

There are several ways to go about it:

1) Give up on the money part and set about satisfying the Esteem need by getting a very esteemed job (which may not pay very well) - policeman, polar explorer that kind of thing.

2) Get the Maslow's urge under control via artificial means, and remain absolutely cold-blooded in business. When you make enough money the urge will let go of you, and even if not you will have means and training to attack a harder, worthier problem. The first business is not the end of life.

3) Keep building the business but surrender to the urge and let it control you. It will give you a lot of staying power, but it will also periodically send you on the wild goose chase (like writing your own high-scale online storage because real men only eat what they kill). It's a very round-about way about getting there.

<comment><USER2> Very insightful breakdown. I guess I still feel it must be possible to reconcile the two goals, but I have a feeling you may be right that I should try and put one off for now. Food for thought, certainly. I really appreciate you discussing this with me

<comment><USER3> I was explaining it to myself as much as to you and I am thankful for the opportunity. That's really the only case when I am compelled to speak of such things - to gain more clarity myself.

I am not entirely over this either - far form it. I do iPhone apps with a loyal user base but modest revenue, while my friend is making crazy money on affiliate marketing. I should really just go and join him, yet I can't bring myself to do it. Unlike you I don't find appealing to users base instincts beneath me, to the contrary I think that emotional engagement is something people crave and I must provide to create a great product. The basic problem however is similar - I have a seemingly more profitable opportunity that I am not pursuing for reasons that are not entirely rational.

<comment><USER2> Funny... your situation is very similar to mine, actually. I also have friends/acquaintances making big bucks with affiliate marketing, and I've dabbled in it myself, but I can never seem to muster enough enthusiasm to put much work into it. I can't help feeling like I'm not really adding value, though I do think AM can add value, if done right.

Also, I wouldn't be so quick to assume you're not acting rationally. Not robotic, certainly, but a rational human would consider the way his work makes him feel, etc. I realize this may seem contradictory, as rational/emotional are often seen as opposites, but we are human and we have emotions, so ignoring them entirely must be irrational. In other words, working towards maximum profit is not necessarily rational.

I'm torn on appealing to base instincts... I believe it can enhance an experience, but I have a hard time stomaching out-right manipulation. Naturally there is room in the middle, but I guess it's up to each of us to draw that line for ourselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if I agree with every point in the author's list but it's a good start at listing attributes that differentiates between one site and the next.</comment>


A personal Dropbox replacement based on Git - <AUTHOR> http://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/dvcs-autosync <comment><USER2> This is (yet another) "Dropbox replacement" project publicized in HN that grossly misunderstands what Dropbox is, why it's popular and is not a "replacement" in any meaningful way.

Here are just a few characteristics of Dropbox that this project doesn't have:

* cross-platform (windows, mac, linux)

* an easy to setup GUI client that is possible to setup by people who don't necessarily know how to enable inotify in linux kernel or copy autosync.py to location in $PATH

* won't fall over when a merge conflict happens (and a merge conflict will happen and even I, who uses git daily, would be unable to resolve it)

We are good at extrapolating and making connections but in this case extrapolating from "files, sync" to "my linux-only python script is a replacement of Dropbox" is about as valid as extrapolating from "wheels" to "my home made unicycle is a replacement of Toyota Prius".

<comment><USER3> At least he's making something. We should foster an atmosphere of encouragement, even if the idea seems silly. Who knows what it could grow into one day?

You might not have intended to be so mean-spirited. I know I've sounded that way in the past. What helped me was to offer some kind of suggestions for improvement along with whatever criticisms I was dishing out. (Rather than just pointing out all of the flaws.)

<comment><USER4> My suggestion for improvement would be:

"Don't advertise your project as a 'Dropbox Replacement' unless you actually are."

<comment><USER5> I think he advertised it as a 'Personal Dropbox Replacement' which suggests he probably just made it for himself and is releasing it to everyone if they wish to use it.

This project is open-source, has no domain name of it's own, no fancy video explaining how it works, no bullet-points explaining why people should dump Dropbox and start using his project, and the author doesn't seem intent on making money from it by advertising it as a 'personal Dropbox Replacement'. It's quite evident that only programmers are going to use this product, considering the dependencies and relative complexity of install procedure.

I don't see anything wrong with the way he has advertised his project as a 'Personal Dropbox Replacement'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I looked through the source, and it doesn't seem to have any conflict resolution. As far as I can tell, it simply executes the push and pull commands without checking their exit codes to see if they succeeded.

</comment><comment><USER7> Joey Hess just blogged[0] about ShareBox[1] which creates a fuse filesystem built on git-annex. I don't know either well enough to comment on them.

[0] <http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/new_git-annex_use_cases/>

[1] <https://github.com/chmduquesne/sharebox>

<comment><USER8> The dvcs-autosync author is also looking at making it use git-annex for large files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What makes dropbox special is that I can access it on my home iMac, my work macbook, my linux netbook, my android phone, my iPad and the web interface when I feel so inclined. On top of that, I select different directories to sync on each machine and often share file between friends and colleagues.

An uber simple interface that supported on every major platform is what makes it so awesome.

</comment><comment><USER10> Won't the space taken up by revisions monotonically increase? Deleting files won't free up the space, since the old revision is still tracked.

Dealing with gigabytes of files & revisions isn't git's forte.

<comment><USER11> You are right. It might increase very slowly if you actually store a source repository composed of many small files and then only some of them change periodically. But if you store large binary blobs and all of them change often then git won't work that well.

You'd at least want to have the option to blow away some history as you run out of space or become confident that you'll never need it -- can't do that in git without re-writting the whole commit history from scratch and filtering out some commits.

In think in this case there is some confusion between backup and synchronization, both can be thought of as separate and git might not do well for either one in the general case. It might not be as good for backup, because you might want to blow away old snapshots and in case of synchronization. As for general bidirectional synchronization, you'd need some way to plugin in custom merge conflict resolution (can git do that?). For example you might have a policy that whenever you modify a file on the your laptop it should take precendence over the same file modified on your iphone, or some text files can handle merging while others should be replaced based on timestamp, or something like that.

<comment><USER12> > But if you store large binary blobs and all of them change often then git > won't work that well.

True, default git won't work well. But you can handle large changing files git-style with a different approach; the bup backup system using git comes to mind (see <https://github.com/apenwarr/bup> & <http://lwn.net/Articles/380983/>) where what is stored are chunks of files, where xdelta and other diffs work efficiently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's funny - I was reading up on Camlistore yesterday, and realize that what it proposes to do very much resembles Dropbox (and - to a certain degree, Git).

Have you considered making a personal Dropbox replacement using it? I hear Brad Fitzpatrick is writing it as _his_ Dropbox replacement.

(Also: competition is bi-directional - it's interesting to take a look at Camlistore's suggested usecases <http://camlistore.org/docs/uses> and think that Dropbox can do the same ...)

</comment><comment><USER14> What do you think about this is better than AeroFS (<http://www.aerofs.com/>, previous discussion at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1538731>)?

<comment><USER15> One thing that's better is that it's available now. I can't use aerofs. It's a closed beta.

<comment><USER14> I can get you an invite if you like. I got my code shortly after asking for one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a similar approach as SparkleShare [1], albeit less/not focused on UI (and using XMPP for notifications to update the repository).

1: <http://www.sparkleshare.org/>

</comment><comment><USER17> I would have thought the personal replacement for Dropbox is just rsync. I guess it depends if you want / need full history. But personally I never use the history features of Dropbox.

<comment><USER18> rsync isn't bidirectional (see unison: <http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/>), but it can be hacked on to make it store snapshots (see <http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/>, but it's a full volume snapshot, not a per-file versioned history).

<comment><USER19> Unison is great, I use it as a way to keep several machines in sync for large content (several gigs) using a personal server as hub.

<http://gitorious.org/mist>

It's not a dropbox replacement, but it does the syncing job nice and simple with nothing else but unison, ssh and a shell script. I will eventually make a daemon using inotify so that it can sync in the background as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Using a git backend for this kind of service is great since it would provide a common synchronization engine for all your files. Thus if I have 3 or 4 of these services pointing at the same folder everything should work.

</comment><comment><USER21> What I love about this is that the project uses XMPP for server-to-server communication! Someone had poo-poo'd that idea in a previous post, but I think it has tremendous merit.

</comment><comment><USER22> or just GitHub with private repos. then you can control exactly how and when the synchs across various clients occur. less moving parts too.

</comment><comment><USER23> git doesn't really expose a great UI for this model of behavior. This needs a good UI for many things, for example, looking through history and cherry- picking old versions of files to revert to.

Also, it doesn't give you access from public computers the way dropbox does. You'd want a non-bare repository with gitweb or an apache directory listing, at the least.

<comment><USER24> There are a couple of FUSE modules that implement a filesystem based on a bare git repo.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Curated list of companies using WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/minthemiddle/powered-by-wordpress <comment><AUTHOR> Curator here. WordPress is popular but also has a reputation of being beginners only and not suited for bigger projects. With this curated list I want to counter that impression. Sites are sorted by category and ranked by Alexa global score. Blogs and news sites are left out for now as the goal is to show that you can build CMS systems that go beyond a regular blog.

Contributions and contributors are very welcomed.

How do you like the idea of promoting popular high-quality WordPress sites?

</comment><comment><USER2> Wordpress has also come to a point where you need to throw at lot of money at it in the corporate space. Being a wordpress consultant is the new money maker/waster.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. There are quite a few business cases where you need premium plugins. Some of these cases should be covered by WordPress Core but are not. Custom Fields is the best example here, ACF the (well performing) benefitor of a poor core. Forms are another area where core should provide more. What I find most troubling though is that decent development environments and migrations are only possible with a very expensive plugin (WP Migrate DB) or with a very complicated and not often reliable process (WordMove).

Oftentimes, WordPress ends up being as expensive as a premium CMS like CraftCMS but with the disadvantage of different (and often lacking) documentation and no or diverted support.

I still think that WordPress excels at providing a simple user interface for editors and can get customized with open source tools. But there are few accessible resources on how to tweak your WordPress instance with CMB2 (custom fields) or Timber (twig template engine for WordPress)</comment></comment>


James Heartfield on Demythologising the Second World War - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Is8h3GbMM <comment><USER2> That the British couldn't take Iraq without Soviet agreement is on the Soviets, surely. There was tension between the U.S. and Britain over extending the life of colonialism, resolved in favor of independence in not too many years. Not much revision in that. The struggles between democratic nations in the years between WWI and WWII over colonies are much more eye-opening; giving no evidence that democracies would hang together or defend anyone else's freedom. Yet indeed they did. We assume democracies will defend each other and feel they have a common interest. Pre-1939 almost no-one imagined that this was so.</comment>


Ask HN: If everyone can learn programming for free, why is the salary high? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's only free if your time has no value.

In reality, programming is a highly skilled profession that requires considerable investment in time and hard work to get good at it. If you make that investment and gain those skills, you can use them to generate a lot of value, and that's why it pays relatively well as an industry.

<comment><USER3> I'll go further than that. It takes a certain kind of thinking that not everyone can do well, regardless of time and effort that they are willing to put in. (Of course, those people may also be less willing to put the time and effort in, because they can tell that it's not a good fit for them.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Free, doesn't mean easy.

Everyone can be physically fit, for free, yet not many achieve and or maintain it.

<comment><USER5> This is one of my favorite responses to the OP's question due to the simple truth it tells.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone can slap down some code and get something to marginally work from a tutorial they read online.

The skill (and subsequent value) comes in when priorities change, things need to be refactored, and you need an experienced developer to come up with a solution that works well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Despite the fact that there are plenty of free tools to learn the technical skill, not many people want or have the time to invest into learning it. There is a pretty high demand for programmers but the supply is comparatively low. This leads to high salaries.

</comment><comment><USER8> Imagine if all learning was free, would this eliminate well-paid specialists?</comment>


Ask HN: Who is hiring entry-level/junior developers? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Isn't there an automated one of these?

</comment><comment><USER3> lol that's what H1-B visas are for...</comment>


World wide cost of living rankings for 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings.jsp <comment><USER2> As an aside: The website uses jQuery's grid plugin ( <http://www.trirand.com/blog> ) to present the data.

There is a newer plugin called DataTables ( <http://datatables.net/> ) which I find to be much nicer, especially when combined with JQuery DataTables Editable ( <http://code.google.com/p/jquery-datatables-editable/> ).

<comment><USER3> The interface is horrible, both the table and the map. It's so easy to add info bubbles on Google Maps, not sure why that was left out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, this is definitely not entirely accurate. It has Phoenix, AZ as being more expensive than San Jose, CA. Having lived in both places I can say the cost of living in Phoenix is about half that of San Jose so its entirely wrong on that. I suppose its just mean to give a general idea overall and maybe was taking in data in some strange way to where it counted a large rural area that also included San Jose, or something, against just the urban area of Phoenix.

</comment><comment><USER5> The small map image seems out of sync with the live map.

I'm in Darwin, Australia. The small map (correctly in my view) shows us as bright red -- quite expensive -- because of the combination of isolation (high fuel, food, labour costs) and land shortages (ie high rent).

I see people in SV and NYC complain about the rent. Well I pay that much ... and I don't earn SV / NYC wages. And I don't live in one of the Earth's great commercial or cultural epicentres.

I would if I could.

So quitcherwhinin'.

<comment><USER6> Darwin looks kind of relaxed and suburban compared to cities with serious geographic constraints. Sydney, San Francisco, Manhattan, and West Vancouver are all jammed tight because of ocean and rivers. They're also stacked to overflowing with tall towers if not simply wall to wall buildings.

You're certainly right about the isolated part, though. Might as well be half way around the world from your nearest neighbor!

<comment><USER5> We have legal and political constraints that are not visible on a map, mixed in with generous lashings of political incompetence.

Basically the same as everywhere, minus the natural advantages to trade.

Apart from the ruinous cost of living, Darwin is a city I like living in. I just don't like _working_ here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Suspect. The grocery index for Chicago is 72 and in Baltimore it's 101. Are groceries really 40% more in Baltimore than in Chicago? They're likely not more at all. In fact, on the whole, Chicago is more expensive than Baltimore. That's just a fact. But the figures here say otherwise.

<comment><USER8> Agree - looking at 2011 Moscow, Russia, it shows it as way cheaper than most US cities, but Moscow routinely ranks in top 5 most expensive cities on earth. Real estate prices there are comparable to NYC and food prices aren't cheap either (was just there few months ago).

<comment><USER9> Have not been to Chicago in a while, from my older (several years old) recollections it is not drastically different from Baltimore. However: Moscow is definitely cheaper than its usual "top 5" ranking. For a middle class visitor or city dweller, anyway (cannot say for a very short-term business visitor). Caveat: knowing Russian would help greatly but is not mandatory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to see where Perth sits on that scale. There's a pub here that charges $18 (~$19US) for a pint of Hoegaarden and an average pint of beer is $10.

<comment><USER11> I'm from Perth but now live in NYC and I've lived in London, Zurich and Germany.

I can tell you that the erosion in the real standard of living in Australia, particularly Perth, in the last decade is mind-blowing.

The way I see it the resources boom has driven up the cost of construction both directly (through infrastructure projects) and indirectly (increased demand for residential housing from net migration). It now costs anywhere from $1500-2000/m2 to build a house.

That's _insane_.

That cost is then passed on through wage demands, the cost of running any business and so on. Rent is at or above New York levels (my old apartment in West Perth is now more expensive than my apartment in _Manhattan_ ).

Apart from roughly comparable rent in NYC, _everything_ else is significantly cheaper.

Increased population pressure, property prices and construction costs are also reflected in the skyrocketing price increases in food, water and power.

London is (or at least was the last time I visited) reasonably expensive.

Zurich has a reputation for being expensive but honestly it's not anymore. Fact is, you can still get a studio in the city for maybe under CHF1000/month (something you can't in Perth). Yes food is more expensive but you pay lower taxes and everything else is, at worst, comparable in cost. I look at property prices in nice towns like Zug or Luzern and (IMHO) it's way more affordable than Perth.

So ignore whatever the CPI tells you about Australia. IMHO it's not a place you want to live now unless you have owned property for at least 10 years (and thus rode the property boom and are reasonably cashed up) or are rich. Either way it's one of the most expensive countries on the planet now.

<comment><USER5> Perth's main disadvantage is that it is wedged between the hills and the sea, which is why it is steadily growing into one of the longest conurbations in the world.

On the other hand, public transport on the north-south axis is reasonably good thanks to an uncharacteristic degree of planning foresight starting in the 60s.

If you don't have to live in the CBD or adjacent, Perth can be very affordable. You just have to shop around or put up with a 30 minute commute on a train (oh noes!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems to me there is some good money to be made where high and low cost of living adjoin.

For example Vienna and Bratislava.

If nothing else, if you can work in the high cost of living place, and live in the low cost area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or where it's easy to fly from one place to another. It explains why there are so many hackers in Portland. It's a nice place to live with noticeably cheaper cost of living than Seattle or San Francisco. I know folks who consider it a bedroom community to silicon valley, only 550 miles away.

<comment><USER4> I'm a bit intrigued by this, could you elaborate a bit more? Are they working as contractors commuting once a month for meetings, etc or doing their own ventures where they are coming down for meetings with investors?

<comment><USER13> I, for example, am a regular telecommuting employee of a large company in San Jose. Nominally, I'm in San Jose for one week every quarter, though it has been less than that lately. I spend a lot of time on the phone and on video conferences.

PS: Nit. It's about 650 miles from Portland to SJ.

<comment><USER4> If you don't mind my asking, I am curious if you got the job also while living remotely or did you live in northern California, got the job and then later moved out of state to work remotely? I'm currently out of state, looking to move back to California as its where I'm from so I'm wondering if there is a possibility for finding a job where I work remotely which would certainly make the move a lot smoother, already have a job there.

<comment><USER13> Sorry for the delayed reply.

I lived in SJ from 1992-2001. I knew my current boss from that time. Sometime around 2006, while I was living here in Oregon, he emailed me and asked if I might be interested in doing X for him.

I've gotten my last seven jobs through friends. The last two have been since I moved to Oregon. The last time I applied for a job where I didn't know anybody was 1985.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seeing this makes me wonder, because I've dabbled with the thought of living a year in NYC ever since I visited this summer, but I have been put off by all the warnings here on HN and elsewhere stating that the cost of living there is insane. My current city of residence, Trondheim, Norway is ranking top for consumer price and second for consumer price + rent in this ranking. And still, living as a single male on state scholarship and loans (which adds up to about $15k a year), I live in a pretty ok standard apartment with a room mate and don't save on food etc. at all. I have zero credit-card debt etc. (I could easily do the same in Stavanger, Norway, which ranks higher for cost of rent.)

What am I missing?

<comment><USER15> Looking at the methodology [1], I have some doubts about the validity of all these numbers. Apparently they're at least partially user-submitted, which implies to me that there's likely to be some bias, depending on who actually took the time to submit information.

For example, the site claims that residents of Indianapolis, IN have the most (average) purchasing power of anyone in the world, by an incredible margin. Indianapolis is nice enough, but I'd be shocked if that were true.

Still a cool/interesting site, but I would take it with a grain of salt.

[1] <http://www.numbeo.com/common/motivation_and_methodology.jsp>

<comment><USER14> Yeah, you're right, the methodology doesn't really inspire confidence in the results.

As an anecdote though, when I was vacationing there this summer all groceries, restaurants and similar felt incredibly cheap, and although rent on Manhattan was steep, I found a comparable apartment to my own in Williamsburg that had a slightly higher cost than what I am paying now. Maybe what I'm missing is health insurance? How much does it cost a normally fit 21 year old male for full coverage insurance?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most folks who are fit and 21 just go without health insurance. If you've got a job and aren't contracting, then you usually get insurance through work.

<comment><USER14> So.. If I got ill, what would happen? In reality I would have insurance by the norwegian government, but assuming I was american. What does the regular student that doesn't get help from his parents do?

<comment><USER15> From what I recall, students can be covered by their parents' health insurance until they're 26 as long as they're still in school. That's what most college students do.

If they're not in school, and they don't have their own job that provides health insurance, well...honestly, if they don't have a job that provides it, then they probably don't have a job that pays enough that they can afford to get it independently either. Most of my friends in that situation just gamble and try not to go to a doctor unless absolutely necessary. If they do have to...well, then they're going to be in some serious debt.

It's not a very good system, but it works for the people who have influence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This totally flies in the face of Wolphram Alpha's data: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chicago+vs+phoenix+vs+d...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chicago+vs+phoenix+vs+dallas+vs+san+jose+vs+new+york+city+vs+san+francisco+vs+austin+texas+vs+denver+vs+las+vegas+vs+atlanta+vs+los+angeles+vs+seattle+cost+of+living)

Phoenix, where I live, is cheaper according to Wolphram Alpha than Dallas, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Devner whereas it's more expensive according to Numbeo's list.

</comment><comment><USER17> As a Canadian, surprised they didn't include Vancouver. Which I suspect would be at or near the top of the list for this country.

<comment><USER18> Vancouver is on page two, ahead of Toronto by a few spots (but well worth the cost difference in my opinion)

<comment><USER17> Bwah, you're absolutely right.

Full blame goes to the UI. If I type a query into a search box, I expect it to search the full list. Not just the handful of entries on that page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How do I compare cities? (e.g. Axxx with Zxxx)

</comment><comment><USER20> I think they mean for 2011 (more precisely, Q4 2011), as we don't have data for 2012 yet. This doesn't inspire confidence in the accuracy of the numbers.

<comment><USER21> Use the year drop down at the top of the page. That loads the 2011 data. You're correct in that the 2012 data is too patchy to be taken seriously.

Any list of expensive cities not topped by Oslo is kidding itself. That place is insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know why the purchasing power is so high in Indianapolis, IN?

Seems odd.

</comment><comment><USER23> All indian cities comfortably sit at the bottom of the scale!</comment>


Creating an Institution That Lasts 10k Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.edge.org/conversation/alexander_rose-how-to-create-an-institution-that-lasts-10000-years <comment><USER2> Aren't institutions evolving on their own like super-organisms?

The origin of modern universities is kinda funny. Basically, a flock of students, a few erudite scholars, and local landlords fought with each other until they reached an agreement about a set of rules that everyone was happy with, then institutionalized it.

The process is roughly 1) a few scholars stayed together in one small town in Italy, which attracted a flock of knowledge-hungry students 2) local landlords charged high rents for the students 3) students unionized to fight against landlords 4) student union became powerful enough to put pressure on teachers too 5) teachers also unionized to counter student union 6) fights among student union, teacher union and local landlords continued 7) they reached agreements about the syllabus, grading, tuition, dedicated real estate for classrooms, and admin department to handle all these.

[http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=8014010064367...](http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100643670&fa=author&person_id=445)

<comment><USER3> If one takes a meta viewpoint about evolution not as how single organisms evolve over time but instead the complex processes that happen to be occuring on the surface of the Earth, then you don't actually need to separate your thoughts about biological, cultural, or technical evolution. It's all part of one big ball of mud rolling down the same hill! The only reason that humans seem to think that microchips and sailboats and GIFs are fundamentally different than oxygen and proteins and honey is that humans think other humans are Very Important.

<comment><USER2> Sounds like Evolutionary Dynamics or Complex Adaptive Systems.

<comment><USER4> See also: complexity thresholds in Big History: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_History)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> It's unclear if civilization started because we could ferment things, or we started fermenting things and therefore civilization started..._

Wait, aren't those two ways of saying the same thing? I would think the alternative would be "or civilization started and therefore we could ferment things."

<comment><USER6> >Wait, aren't those two ways of saying the same thing?

Yup. Both posit causality from fermentation -> civilization.

<comment><USER5> I suspect the second part was supposed to read "or we started fermenting things _because_ civilization started..."

<comment><USER7> Maybe we're a little fuzzy from too much fermented stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's an interesting idea but I don't think it makes much sense. Society changes a lot during that time so what could such an institution be based on? Closest is probably religion but considering that most religions are based on the understanding of the world at time of their creation they would either be obsolete after 10000 years or they would have to preserve the status quo and limit scientific progress. The Catholics tried that for a while but could hold progress only for a few hundred years.

<comment><USER9> > The Catholics tried that for a while but could hold progress only for a few > hundred years.

The Catholic church is more vibrant than ever, and still holds substantial sway over many many people. Most modern organizations are unable to hold as much sway over members as the Catholic church does. If anything, the church is a case study in how to make an organization relevant over the course of millennia.

Your point on scientific progress is especially obtuse, given that the entire reason for the study of science in the West was at the behest of Christianity. I can't think of any time the church sought limiting scientific progress as an end unto itself.

<comment><USER8> It's true that the Church supported science but there are plenty of examples where it didn't like the results and tried to bury them.

<comment><USER10> From my understanding, it's more that the personalities of certain powerful individuals in the Church didn't rub well with the personalities of certain influential citizen-scientists (@Galileo, principally), and the former individuals abused their power to torment the latter. The actual results were much less important to the people involved than the prestige of "being right".

For context, these inquisitions happened at a time when the printing press was democratizing ownership of authoritative information (i.e. the Church) – not too dissimilar to today, where the web's information is upending traditional news sources. The inquisitions were a reaction to a perceived loss of power.

From that POV, it was less an ideological, Church vs Science thing (although this conflict is real today, though it seemed to be less real in the past), and more a butting of egos. Many people today experience zero dissonance between their religion and their scientific beliefs, and this observation is an old one (see the writings of any number of religious scientists throughout history). Anyways, just my 2¢! :)

<comment><USER8> Yes it was a power play. My point is that a 10000 year organization will have a tendency to do so because otherwise progress will quickly make it obsolete. It needs to control progress so it has time to adapt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Of course I immediately thought of "Anathem" by Neal Stephenson ;)

<comment><USER12> Anathem was inspired by the 10K clock project in the first place right?

<comment><USER13> It's probably fairer to say that Neal was involved with The Long Now anyway, and wrote a novel about it and also some Liebniz he wanted to tell you all about.

<comment><USER14> hprotagonist on a Stephenson thread, glorious.

<comment><USER15> Movies, microcode, and pizza delivery.

<comment><USER13> and ancient sumerian, let's not forget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That is very inspiring thoughts. I love The Long Now project.

I think more people should get interested in those topics and in general on the long standing impact of humans.

</comment><comment><USER17> Libraries appear to be pretty durable - as an idea.

</comment><comment><USER18> My university was fond of saying it expected to serve students for thousands of years to come. Always thought that was laughably naive. It was maybe 70 years old at the time.

</comment><comment><USER19> The way progress has been accelerating... "Vanilla" humans are not going to be important 10,000 years from now, and might not even exist.

You can debate whether we will see radical improvement through genetic engineering or brain-computer interfaces, or whether AI makes humans obsolete, or global warming wipes us out. But all of those reach "tipping points" way before 10,000 years from now. We just don't know which will strike first (I am betting my time and money on brain-computer interfaces).

<comment><USER20> What isn't political and should be political is the nature of change on this planet using technology. It's taken for granted that change is a constant and constantly necessary. That stability is impossible, though this is not factually true -- stability in short time frames like 10,000 years is historically definitely possible at many levels. That infinite competition is necessary and that the people are simply cogs in that system... where that system should serve people. Instead people serve the system. In such a system open to constant change and destruction it is rather difficult to create other systems that survive the destruction of the meta system that contains them.

<comment><USER21> I think it is necessary. If you stop improving then it means that anybody that could've benefitted from the improvements that would've happened don't get those benefits. Furthermore, if some part of society ignores your drive for stability and still keeps trying to improve, then over time they'll simply take over, because they'll be more advanced in many ways.

<comment><USER20> That's really the crux of the issue. That it's a global political matter and because we're organized in nation states which are competing against one another it is impossible for anyone to stop or change the terms of the agreement. It's really a constant economic war fought with weapons of technology, which perhaps sorely needs disarmament.

<comment><USER21> I don't think it's due to us being divided into nation states. Even inside a nation state you have different groups fighting one another. The side that stops improving disappears.

I don't think any kind of "disarmament" could ever work either, because the problem isn't limited to _technology proper_. We have constant advancements in "social technology" as well. Think about how many "hacks" happen nowadays. It's usually not through vulnerable software or hardware, but theory social engineering instead. If you took a modern smart person and threw them into the 1800s then they could probably get a lot of power, because they could use ideas such as pyramid schemes to amass a lot of wealth. People from that time are unfamiliar with these kinds of "social technologies" and would probably fall prey to it. Even ideas like ponzi schemes are part of that improvement and if you don't keep up then eventually you won't even know how the other group took power. Eg I think that what Trump managed to pull off is probably one of those moves that people in the future will find obvious, but to many of us it was baffling (the idea that he said outrageous things so that the media would constantly keep talking about him, because familiarity often breeds fondness).

<comment><USER20> Everyone knows how to build and use an a-bomb. Yet no one does. Why? MAD. Similarly any piece of technology you can know how to use it, you can keep doing research on it, you can accumulate more knowledge about it and its uses. You just can be limited from making use of it publicly and even privately through surveillance. And how do you stop people from doing anything if it's known, fines and jail through policing. You can't control nation states as they don't answer to no one except each other. Individuals answer to the state.

<comment><USER22> A-bomb is rather hard to make in your backyard and materials are relatively easy to detect and control. Lots of cooperation and time is needed. Imagine though a technology more lethal and easier to produce, available to everyone. For example bioengineering advanced to the point every script kiddie with a cheap biofabricator from aliexpress can design a contagion on their holodeck.

Sure, serious people will have orders of magnitude more advanced techniques to fight it, but could they be deployed fast enough to save half of the megapolis attack was released in?

See Nick Bostrom's Vulnerable World Hypothesis for other examples. Summary and link here: [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Tx6dGzYLtfzzkuGtF/the- vulner...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Tx6dGzYLtfzzkuGtF/the-vulnerable- world-hypothesis-by-bostrom)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hinduism

<comment><USER24> Traditionally, many Indian classics were transmitted orally. This supposedly led to a lower error rate over time because if I mistranscribe a letter in a written text, all descendants of my text will have the same error, but a single misspeaking in oral transmission is unlikely to persist. On the flipside, the classics tend to be shorter and gnomic and rely on commentary to make them intelligible. They also needed to create a system to preserve old Sanskrit pronunciation even after the spoken language changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great discussion. Institutions have to deal with continuous changes over long time spans. Most are "made for their time" and thus cannot survive when the deviations are big enough.

Memes can survive way longer than institutions. Here's some memes that have been with us since the paleolithic: gathering around a fire at night to tell stories; fear of spiders; smiles, hugs and kisses. Any others that are as old or older?

<comment><USER26> That's quite a loose characterization of the word meme. Campfires predate the Internet by about a million years. but on this note you do bring up an interesting point about archetypal action and behavioral psychology. an old girlfriend of mine explained to me once that kissing is suspected to come from bird moms feeding bird babies. Other things that are very significant are simply sharing a meal. (Break bread together) did you know that a blind person will put their hands up into the sky victoriously when they win the race even without ever having seen another human being do it? some of the nature of your interested in is more innate than can be known by the eye alone.

<comment><USER25> A meme is a unit of cultural transmission. At some point long ago, humans did not have these behaviors, they were not innate, they were learned and continuously passed on to the present day.

I hope you don't think memes are limited to pictures with some witty text on them.

<comment><USER27> It used to be that you could mention the word meme in the Dawkinsian sense without it being conflated with funny internet pictures. Ironically, the concept of a meme is itself a very weak meme.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, and the Earth is actually Terra. Swimming against popular parlance and convention is not gonna win any points. Well, maybe on here. But not many other places! _shakes fist in Dawkins ' general direction_

<comment><USER25> you kids get off my lawn!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Am I the only one who finds The Long Now obnoxious? Mostly rich people who spend their money and time thinking about 10000 years from now as some kind of grandiose, pretentious, self-important hobby.

Spending millions burying a clock isn't helping anyone: [http://longnow.org/clock/](http://longnow.org/clock/)

<comment><USER29> One could say it's helping advance research into how to deliberately create lasting institutions, which benefits the future of the human race.

<comment><USER30> Given the rate of climate change and how little we're doing, trying to make 10000 year institutions seems foolish. We can't even manage the institutions we have now.

<comment><USER31> Because of short term thinking. Nobody cares about what will happen beyond the next election cycle, the next quarter, the next iPhone release. A bit more long-term thinking would not hurt anybody.

<comment><USER28> No one is objecting to 20-100 year thinking and even then planning is hard if you look back 100 years and see what has changed. I would be very happy if these people were putting their time and money into solving problems on this scale like the Gates foundation etc. This is just a sci-fi hobby.

<comment><USER31> My point stands. Uber has been a public company for all of 5 hours now, and their stock is a few dollars less per share than it opened, and everybody is freaking out and wondering what it all means.

It's not about planning out 10,000 years, or even 100; it's something more abstract than that. What will your legacy be? Your family's legacy? Your country's? Humanity's? I don't have any personal connection to somebody who will be alive 1000 years from now, or even 200, but I still don't want to leave them a dead, depleted planet.

Is the clock a bit frivolous? Sure. But it's not about the clock. The clock is merely a symbol, that we have considered our place in history, that we recognize we are part of something larger, and we want to be good stewards of our future.

<comment><USER28> Fair enough, if you think mere symbolism is more important than putting the money ($42M) towards tangable things like childhood education which has an actual 70 year impact. Having so much time and money to spend on symbolism is pretty obnoxious when there are actual long term issues we can actually solve for real people.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dueling algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/dueling-algorithms-0318.html <comment><USER2> What a joke. Microsoft can't beat the Google algorithm, so they fund a paper to state that competition is overrated anyway.</comment>


Ask HN: What is a lightweight web framework? - <AUTHOR> I'm building something targeting legacy devices. The devices are run on an old Webkit, able to run basic HTML/JS/CSS but not even things like CSS3.<p>We tried Angular 4 but it was too heavy. It does run with Node/express hosting a HTML file. What are some lightweight frameworks we can use between this? <comment><USER2> Given _legacy devices_ , I'm not sure that vanilla JS is the best way to go, despite being a lightweight option.

Sometimes I think if you're dealing with an old browser(s), pick a technology of its time--in this case, perhaps jQuery (lightweight and ubiquitous).

It's like a time machine, where the old browser can say: "Oh god, thank you. Finally someone I can _understand_. Why do these kids keep asking me for promises? Promise what?!"

</comment><comment><USER3> If this is a web based app (rather than a local app based on web technologies, like webos or windows phone), you should move as much of the processing server side as possible. Aim to not use a client side framework at all, if you can get away with it.

Obviously there's a trade off to be made between performance and development speed, but the more work you make the client do on a legacy device, the worst the user experience will be.

</comment><comment><USER4> How fast is the network connection, if present? There's been massive strides in optimizing JS performance in the past few years, so a system prior to those is going to struggle with many of the modern frameworks. If the network is fast, you might get snappier results doing more things server-side.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the devices themselves don't hold a lot of memory but the network connections are fast. Everything has always been done server side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does the application do? Why legacy devices? Why do you need to use a JS framework?

</comment><comment><USER6> I think you can be this fancy with your CSS:

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

And use vanilla JS.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've always liked raw JS, but frameworks are useful when there's dozens of API calls.p

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mithril always seemed pretty lightweight to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why do you need a framework?</comment>


Yahoo hack warning: What happened and should you be worried? - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/02/16/yahoo-hack-warning-happened-should-worried/ <comment><USER2> How could someone forge a cookie after stealing the source code? Did yahoo use a hardcoded private key in the code? Then any developer at yahoo could have broken into an account. That cannot be right.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't answer your question precisely, but I asked a similar (albeit more incredulous) question a few months back [1] and got a thread full of educated speculation from current and former Yahoo devs.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180234](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180234)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "After disclosing two distinct hacks late last year, one of which implicated a billion users, Yahoo ..."

This is a weird place to use implicated as it makes the reader think those billion users are to blame for the hack. If that's true, it's a human-scale DDOS - no IoT devices needed.

<comment><USER5> Grammatical error, along with many others in the article. Nothing sinister about it.

<comment><USER6> Implicate has a negative connotation in common usage, and for that reason probably isn't the best choice, but it really just means "entwine." In that more traditional sense, the wording makes sense, it is saying they were caught up in the hack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think it's a new hack it's just that the internal investigation has lead to more findings of the already talked about cookie hack: [https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/featured/more- yah...](https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/featured/more-yahoo-users- warned-of-malicious-account-access-via-forged-cookies/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Remember that if you deleted your account the last time a breach was reported, DO NOT attempt to login to that account to check, as this will reset the decativation window of 90 days before permanent deletion.

I made that mistake last time, "deleted" my yahoo account when there was a breach, promptly forgot about doing that, then about 75 days later another breach was announced, so I logged in to "delete" my account....now I have to wait another 90 days before it's gone.

<comment><USER9> I'd recommend deleting all content associated with the account and removing the address from any third party site (recovery etc).

I would however never actually delete the account.

My concern with deleting the account is that it exposes you to some really nasty impersonation attacks. It is free to keep. Just keep it.

<comment><USER10> I don't know about Yahoo, but most services will not allow to reregister a previously deleted account.

<comment><USER11> I vaguely recall that yahoo does recycle old email addresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has anybody ever seen Y! Confidential link pop-up in the bottom right corner of some Yahoo! articles which seemed to redirect to an internal corporate site? It came and went away at least a dozen times and in some instances it stayed for days.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.google.com/search?q="Y%21+Confidential"](https://www.google.com/search?q="Y%21+Confidential")

Certainly lots of very confused people keep seeing it.

<comment><USER14> Most of the answers seem to suggest this is some sort of tracking or malware. It is not but you still shouldn't be seeing it. That is only suppose to be seen by Yahoo employees and the internal links are there so they can report bugs easily. It's also present on betas but shouldn't been seen on the outside. It looks like somebody messed up and let it go to prod without having an employee check.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yahoo has been useless to me and others for years. It's just a holding company for Ali Baba, that also has an email service and a Japanese website.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how many people got that "a forged cookie may have been used" email. I suppose they're sending it even if the chance is remote

</comment><comment><USER17> Dear Yahoo user,

We are writing to inform you about a data security issue that may involve your Yahoo account information. We have taken steps to secure your account and are working closely with law enforcement.

What happened?

In November 2016, law enforcement provided Yahoo with data files which a third party claimed was Yahoo user data. We analysed this data with the assistance of external forensic experts and found that it appears to be Yahoo user data. Based on further analysis of this data by the forensic experts, we believe that an unauthorised third party stole data associated with a broader set of user accounts in August 2013, including yours. We have not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this theft. We believe that this incident is likely distinct from the one that we disclosed on 22 September 2016.

What information was involved?

The stolen user account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. Not all of these data elements may have been present for your account. The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text form, payment card data or bank account information. Payment card data and bank account information are not stored on the system that we believe was affected.

What we're doing

We are taking action to protect our users: We are requiring potentially affected users to change their passwords. We invalidated unencrypted security questions and answers so that they cannot be used to access an account. We are constantly enhancing our safeguards and systems that detect and prevent unauthorised access to user accounts. What you can do

We encourage you to follow these security recommendations: Change your passwords and security questions and answers for any other accounts on which you used the same or similar information used for your Yahoo account. Review all of your accounts for suspicious activity. Be cautious of any unsolicited communications that ask for your personal information or refer you to a web page asking for personal information. Avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails. In addition, please consider using Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates the need to use a password on Yahoo altogether.

For more information

For more information about this issue and our security resources, please visit the Yahoo Account security issues FAQs page available at [https://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?locale=en_AU&page=content&y=...](https://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?locale=en_AU&page=content&y=PROD_ACCT&id=SLN27925&actp=productlink). Protecting your information is important to us and we are constantly working to strengthen our defences.

Yours sincerely,

Bob Lord Chief Information Security Officer Yahoo

</comment><comment><USER18> Jeez, how do they still have a positive net worth? Like seriously, obviously their users & user data is worthless, they don't care about it getting stolen, nor do they seem serious about fixing their dilapidated, insecure systems.

This is just a case of poor management, if Google, Facebook, Twitter and others can figure out how to secure their sites, Yahoo can.

<comment><USER19> And you think those other sites are more secure? The differences are slight. Giant public websites are tricky. It is very hard to deploy real security across such a large team/platform. Even if you make the effort, some security measures simply wont fly, especially in regards to change control or network segmentation. This sort of bug is only one level of the issue.

Open up any random NIST, ISO or even PCI doc to see what is involved above and beyond bug squashing.

<comment><USER20> I took the OPs comments as referring to the fact that management either:

a) didn't know the company was hacked.

b) claimed they didn't know they were hacked,

c) didn't bother to do proper discovery to quantify the extent of the hack until years later.

<comment><USER19> And that would have been covered under nist or iso or any other resonable standard. My point is that once you look into these companieas, get beyond the tech stuff, virtually none implement proper security on such large deployments.

<comment><USER20> >"virtually none implement proper security on such large deployments."

Can you provide a citation for this? Otherwise it seems you are suggesting because Yahoo was lacking that this means all SV tech giants are lacking.

<comment><USER19> Well, without ndas make it hard to find actual reports, but take ashley- madison. Millions of users, talk of a billion-dollar ipo, and the post-hack report by the canadian and austrailian privacy ministers found they had no formal security plan.

<comment><USER21> so according to your logic, one massive hack means all sites are insecure ?

<comment><USER19> No.. working as a compliance attorney, along with all the industry contacts that entails, allong with a steady stream of reports such as the OP (also target et al) gives me grounds to say that proper security is not an industry norm, that the opposite is more likely.

In doubt? Ask around for how many organizations have a dedicated ciso or privacy officer.

<comment><USER20> And Yahoo the company we are discussing has a full time CISO, now at Facebook:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/alex-stamos-leaves-yahoo- to-b...](http://www.businessinsider.com/alex-stamos-leaves-yahoo-to-be- facebook-chief-information-security-officer-2015-6)

As does Google: [http://www.csoonline.com/article/2928798/security- leadership...](http://www.csoonline.com/article/2928798/security- leadership/googles-new-cybersecurity-chief-or-chef.html)

As does Twitter: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcoates](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcoates)

as does Uber: [https://newsroom.uber.com/joe-sullivan-joining-uber-as- first...](https://newsroom.uber.com/joe-sullivan-joining-uber-as-first-chief- security-officer/)

As does Apple: [http://www.reuters.com/article/apple-encryption-executive- id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/apple-encryption-executive- idUSL2N16Q23O)

As does Amazon: [https://www.rsaconference.com/speakers/stephen_schmidt](https://www.rsaconference.com/speakers/stephen_schmidt)

So I would say its pretty common. Just because its not common at the Ashley Madisons and Targets doesn't mean its uncommon elsewhere.

<comment><USER19> Lol, that is like 1% of the industry. For every facebook there are 100s of smaller shops with websites taking money and handling pii. Being not-facebook doesnt mean you arent in the big leagues with millions of customers.

<comment><USER20> And that 1% of the industry is exactly the context for these comments, the company being discussed here is Yahoo. I guess you didn't read the part where I specified "SV tech giants"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there a better source? That link just mentions it in the title and then plugs other articles they've posted for the rest of it.

EDIT: This seems like a better source: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/02/16/yahoo- hack-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/02/16/yahoo-hack-warning- happened-should-worried/)

<comment><USER23> And it ends in a quick how-to for deleting your Yahoo account!

That's surely a death knell for Yahoo, as if it needed another?

<comment><USER24> You can delete your account here: [https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user](https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user)</comment></comment></comment>


Is BackPropagation Necessary? - <AUTHOR> http://deliprao.com/archives/191 <comment><USER2> Short answer: Of course it's not!

Slightly longer: The brain almost certainly does not use it, as BP uses nonlocal feedback. Somehow the brain works anyway (well, for a given meaning of "works" ;-), ergo: No BP needed.</comment>


Now the public decides the price - <AUTHOR> http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1986876&cid=35148166

<comment><AUTHOR> Context: [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32855/Nintendos_FilsAime_...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32855/Nintendos_FilsAime_LowPriced_Mobile_Games_Among_Biggest_Risks_To_Industry.php)</comment>


Ask HN: Programming forums/blogs besides proggit and LtU? - <AUTHOR>

As the title says these are my two main goto forum & aggregation websites about programming. I tried searching HN for others and was unable to locate any other popular ones.<p>Any suggestions on which ones you find interesting that I should check out? I don't have a particular language requirement, just a forum or blog about any programming which is more than just introductory learn the language type information. <comment><USER2> I really like Jeremy Kun's Math Intersect Programming ([http://jeremykun.com/](http://jeremykun.com/)). This past HN thread might also be worth checking out: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4928762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4928762)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a Marie Kondo for coding? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://suckless.org/](https://suckless.org/) I guess.

</comment><comment><USER3> Uncle Bob maybe?</comment>


Why is the wedding industry so hard to disrupt? - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/1/18246428/wedtech-wedding-startups-zola-the-knot <comment><USER2> >According to The Knot's annual survey, the average wedding in 2017 cost $33,391, a slight dip from $35,329 in 2016, but still more than half of the median annual household income in the United States.

Uhhhh... I absolutely hate when the media uncritically (or at least without context/a disclaimer) parrots The Kont's "Real Weddings Survey" as meaningful, because, IMO, this number is somewhere between very misleading and complete bullshit.

Some issues:

-Selection bias - only includes people who sign up for wedding websites, (or in the case of Brides magazine's "American Wedding Study," subscribe to wedding magazines) which, by definition, excludes people who have reasonably priced weddings. People whose weddings are a BBQ in the backyard aren't signing up for wedding websites and subscribing to wedding magazines.

-Reporting on average without including median, which is much, much less. One million dollar wedding can skew the average very high, and like I said before, the low side isn't even included in the data set to offset the Chelsea Clintons.

-Conflict of interest - the wedding industry itself is the only one reporting these figures and the wedding industry has a vested interest in reporting astronomical numbers because it gets you primed to spend spend spend.

[https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/03/average-wedding- cos...](https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/03/average-wedding-cost- published-numbers-on-the-price-of-a-wedding-are-totally-inaccurate.html)

<comment><USER3> How can someone with a straight face report _mean_ wedding cost against _median_ salary?

So little jounalistic quality/scientific integrity.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, it's very challenging to hire wedding scientists nowadays, since the HFT firms have snapped them up.

<comment><USER3> I'll settle for journalists with an understanding of high school stats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I spent some time researching this mostly because I was curious, but basically the answer to "why are weddings so expensive" and also "why is it so hard to disrupt the wedding industry" are largely the same in my opinion:

Because people have extremely high expectations for the major expenses of a wedding (venue, flowers, band, etc.).

The joke (and I even see it here) is that you can go to a baker and say "I want a cake" and they'll say "$20" but if you say "it's for a wedding" the price becomes $100. Why? Because if one iota of that cake is decorated incorrectly, the baker will hear hell about it - maybe not from your wedding party, but for every reasonable wedding party there are 99 expecting perfection.

So, it's not a huge surprise to me that wedding vendors have been hard to disrupt - it seems logical to assume that mass market usually comes with a reduction in quality compared to bespoke (or at least a bespoke-like experience), and people mostly refuse that and are willing to pay a huge premium for weddings (begrudgingly, admittedly).

<comment><USER6> I don't know if I believe the price goes up that much because of the fear of a Bridezilla.

I would compare it more to, a regular cake has like, 2 9's SLA of being what you wanted. But for a wedding cake, people want 5 9's. They want enterprise Cake, that's always available and exactly as they expected.

So that's what they pay for. If I was working with a vendor, a plain-old regular cake with 2 9's availability would be fine for me. I'm unwilling to pay 4x as much for something, just to chase a very diminishing improvement.

<comment><USER7> Interesting, how about RAIC(ake)? Order several of the 2x9s cakes and use the best one(s) on the day.

<comment><USER8> Even better, _display_ the best of the cakes but _serve_ them all. The honour of having the cake displayed - ahem advertising - goes to the baker with the best cake.

<comment><USER6> This is how Jeff Bezos would plan a wedding. Just like how all those cities made pretty proposals for HQ2. Oof, too soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At least Vox has pointed it out: An app/website cannot replace a building for a venue. An app cannot replace the band. It cannot replace the photographer.

What can it do? Attempt to be a middleman that extracts wealth from the sellers' margins.

In this case, the workers are not "gig economy" but professionals. They cannot be bullied nearly so easily as Uber can do with lopsided agreements and pittances in money to the desperate.

They can try to make it easier to connect these professionals with couples, but since people like to talk directly with these professionals and get the planning as part of the "experience", the two groups will bypass the middleman app's rent seeking through direct negotiation.

So the industry resist control by a tech company, simply because you cannot distill the whole process into swipes in an app + a credit card. This means the tech company needs service. It cannot have explosive tech-only growth where the only things needed are another few devs and more rented cloud servers.

<comment><USER10> This seems like one of the more salient comments on this thread.

When I got married, there's no way that I would have selected any of the vendors through an app. Even if I were inclined to discover them that way, my wife and I met with every vendor in person to evaluate their work, personality (as a proxy for reliability) and discuss pricing. It is an intimately personal affair, and I simply don't see room for a middle man. Even with a wedding planner, the couple getting married still often go through all of those steps.

MAYBE what could be done is to provide a party planning system; specify type of occasion, select from suggested categories of vendors, and let the system manage an assortment of the necessary details, including meeting times. Even in this situation, it's going to be extremely location-dependent. Imagine the complexity of organizing data for Door Dash or Grubhub, multiplied by all of the other categories of vendors (venue, supplies, decoration, setup, cleanup, so forth).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Startups win on creating efficiency: saving time and/or money. Compare that to a hobby, almost the entire point of which is to consume time and money...

Wedding planning feels more analogous to a hobby. My wife and I enjoyed the time we spent together while planning...tasting cakes, "dates" at caterers, looking at flowers, picking out attire, etc. Yes, there were some stressful moments, but if we had a startup that was designed to "streamline" everything, we would have missed out on that experience.

<comment><USER6> Maybe all of the discrete parts (the venue, the entree, the dessert) are more- or-less commodities, but it's how we package these things together that prevents an end-to-end commoditization of "wedding as a service".

It cheapens the experience if planning a wedding is as simple as going to a McDonald's drive-thru. For something that's supposed to be once-in-a-lifetime, I don't think people would want an app where they could just customize a few options, and have an entire wedding planned. The point of it, really, is that it isn't supposed to easy.

<comment><USER12> Maybe I'm a minority, but I love a management layer between me any anything. Any sort of software that offers a checklist, reviews, comparisons, contact management, status updates, progress bars, gantt charts, budgets, registries, seating, warnings about conflict or missed deadlines. I should be able to open the "my wedding app" click food, and within a click be able to contact any of my vendors. People helping me plan should be able to read each others communications so they can pick up where I left off. I should be able to add anyone in the wedding party, and even guests, and they see information that is relevant to them. Yelp+Slant+Mint+Intercom for the planning industry sounds great.

The thing that just a budget and schedule lacks is being able to watch each others progress and preferences.

<comment><USER13> I assumed (and I see there are) all sorts of online tools that purport to help with planning. Many people also set up websites these days. I assume these have affiliate links and the like but they're not exactly disruptive applications.

<comment><USER12> Some of them all do one or a couple parts of what I described, but they are all designed to be "easy and simple" more than powerful. And I really doubt most of them do things like watch my credit card to keep track of how much has been paid out.

There's plenty of room for innovation, with some more imagination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are a lot of properties in common with real estate: for buyers the experience is rare and intense, at a huge information disadvantage. For service sellers, the transaction is repeated endlessly, in the same local market with the same people. There are many incentives and opportunities for service providers to work together to resist disruption.

<comment><USER15> Considering that the biggest expense of a wedding is the venue, then services (band, photographer), I could see the direct correlation to real estate.

I'm not sure you could get the venue owners to drop rates, because it sure doesn't seem like many have much of a demand shortage. Wedding venues seem to be booked way far out in advance, and don't seem to have any issues with vacancies. And I'm sure they are well aware of each others' rates.

Anecdotally, I also see large disincentives to lower costs for the other major services. Musicians who play weddings do so because the gig pays well, not because playing crappy covers is what they really want to do. Pretty sure the same goes for photographers - if the wedding business wasn't so lucrative, they'd probably just go do something else with their lives. They're all professional, but I'm not sure many would identify as a "wedding singer", just "musician" or "photographer". But, I'd guess they too are very aware of each other's rates, which gives them no reason to work for less money.

Not sure what there's to "disrupt" here other than culture. And if there's one true rule I've learned: Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

<comment><USER16> I've gigged as a pianist and it's really not worth it, financially speaking - I only do it for the fun/joy of making music. Have you considered the cost of gear, the rehearsals, transit, tear down/setup, down-time without music, and dealing with shitty clients who expect more than the verbal agreement? When you deal with all of that, the money is not good, it's just about bringing joy with my piano music, having an audience that is often very complimentary and provides meaning to the 1000's of practice hours I have put in.

Financially, I make the same in a single 8 h day of coding that I do in my average "2 h" gigs, which really take 5 hours or so all inclusive, and which only occur 5-10 times per year. If I quit my full time position and tried to get more gigs, I'd get maybe 2 or 3 times more, and my income would go down about by 50k or around 75%.

<comment><USER15> Lemme clarify that "pays well" meant "pays well in comparison to their other gigs". Which is still pretty bad, in comparison to doing pretty much anything else. Just a sad fact that almost all musicians make absolutely nothing.

Given that music is already the #2 cost for weddings, I'm not sure how you "disrupt that" other than not hiring musicians.

<comment><USER17> _I 'm not sure how you "disrupt that" other than not hiring musicians._

I haven't been to a lot of weddings, but non of the weddings I've been to the past few years had a band. So maybe that's already happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As someone who is planning a wedding, I don't really see what they are trying to "disrupt"? I am thinking the major costs for a wedding are:

\- Rings \- Dress (wedding dress/men's dress) \- Venue \- Food \- Cake \- Photographer \- Music/"DJ"/MC \- "extras"

Many of those can be rolled up into a venue (i.e. the venue supplies food, DJ, Cake, etc.), and personally, my fiancé nor I want to spend a lot of money on it.

So it feels like where they are disrupting are the "nice to haves" (expensive dress, cards, etc.) and not focusing on the "need to haves" (Food, venue, etc.)

<comment><USER19> > (i.e. the venue supplies food, DJ, Cake, etc.), and personally, my fiancé > nor I want to spend a lot of money on it

That's where we were at - we ended up renting out a restaurant for the evening - as long as they made what they normally make for an evening they were happy to have less people come in. They went all out on the food as they were feeding 30 people with it instead of the usual restaurant crowd. Our wedding cake was a nicer version of their regular chocolate cake (again, included in the food cost). Our music was the restaurants usual music. It was an excellent.

In regards to the dress, if you're non-traditional there's a ton of off-white non-wedding dresses that look perfectly acceptable and cost a tenth of the wedding varieties.

<comment><USER18> I am leaving it up to the person wearing the dress. She was looking at used, but I do ultimately want her to be happy with it too. Thank you for the suggestion though!

We considered the restaurant option as well. But I think we are going to work with one event space that is actually very reasonable and fairly inclusive with everything.

The pricing variance between venues was insane (some charged to rent the space, come charged a price minimum, some charged for things other did not, some just had some different requirements).

<comment><USER19> >I am leaving it up to the person wearing the dress. She was looking at used, but I do ultimately want her to be happy with it too. Thank you for the suggestion though!

I'd never suggest otherwise. My wife couldn't stomach the thought of spending thousands of dollars on a dress, so she went for a cheaper alternative.

We were married directly in the restaurant (like I said, we're non- traditional), so it was just the one venue for us. The restaurant was incredibly helpful the whole time - they seemed to really enjoy being able to provide fine dining and change up their menu and venue as well.

Just thought I'd offer up my experience. Best of luck with your wedding, and I hope it's the start of a long and happy marriage.

<comment><USER18> Thank you! I appreciate hearing your thoughts on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Companies that use "total spend on weddings" as a proxy for their total addressable market are either naive or disingenuous.

For couples having a "big wedding", 80%+ of the cost goes to: catering, venue, photographer, dress, flowers. All of those require a business with a local presence - a web startup isn't going to be able to replace any of those.

The companies mentioned in the article are actually tackling wedding line items that represent a much smaller fraction of the wedding's budget: stationary, registries, wedding websites, and wedding planning tools. Median spend for websites and planning tools is probably $0, because most couples are fine with free website creators (often provided as a loss leader) and Excel spreadsheets.

They're also aiming to collect referral fees or advertising spend from the vendors that actually provide the big line items. However, the total market there is "advertising budgets of other wedding vendors", not "total wedding vendor revenue".

</comment><comment><USER21> Because weddings are based on emotions, not based on money or logic. The average wedding in San Francisco is $80,000, which is fucking insane. But it's just how it is, and you won't get someone to change that with "facts". Many things can get disrupted, but when the entire industry is based on emotions, you can't change people's minds.

<comment><USER22> Exactly this. They are buying a fantasy, a dream. Who wants a $500 dream? They are only doing this _once_ and it is the most important day of their entire life so money should be no object!

<comment><USER23> Even the "doing this once" is us giving into our emotions and assuming that absolutely nothing can go wrong in marriage.

"Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions." ― Elizabeth Gilbert

<comment><USER24> Engaged couples have to give in to those emotions though, or the entire fiction of marriage falls apart.

If people seriously thought the risk of a marriage going wrong was significant why would they ever get married? So anyone who actually goes through with the wedding has to be completely emotionally all in already. Arguing against giving into emotions is tantamount to arguing they shouldn't get married in the first place.

<comment><USER2> I don't think this is accurate.

The risk of business failure is similar to the risk of divorce yet people don't consider starting a business a "fiction entirely based on irrational emotions." It's not, just like marriage is not.

And since more unmarried couples split up than married couples, you're actually arguing against romantic relationships entirely.

Using this logic, since you usually lose touch with many friends over the years, why have friends at all then? You're probably going to outlive your pet, so why get a pet at all if it's just going to die?

Just because something ends doesn't mean it wasn't worth it for the time it lasted and even if it wasn't, taking some risk isn't entirely irrational.

<comment><USER24> I'm actually very sympathetic to your views, but I also don't think that mainstream culture agrees with this at all.

Take a look at these wedding vows, which I think are still representative :

[https://allseasonsweddings.com/wedding-ceremonies- readings/t...](https://allseasonsweddings.com/wedding-ceremonies- readings/traditional-wedding-vow-full)

Do you think it's at all common that engaged couples would be happy to give up the vow of lifelong commitment (literally until death) or that mainstream culture would agree with you? I highly doubt it. Whatever the pragmatic view you support, neither marriage vows, romantic comedies, disney movies or religion seems to go along with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Because people have these movie weddings in their minds and are willing to pony up anything for a day to remember. Personally I find the whole experience rather sad and very very overrated. I have been to many weddings and opted out of the entire experience when it came to ours. Best decision I've ever made. Wife mostly feels the same but occasionally wonders what it would be like to have a traditional wedding. I don't know, maybe the fact that I've been to so many weddings in itself has ruined the experience for me? Everyone I've even seen married never seem to have a great time - there is always a ton of stress, discomfort, expense and cliches that feel rather silly. I know women are the ones who mostly look forward to this, so hopefully they are getting their money's worth and that day to remember.

<comment><USER26> Anecdotally, my family threw a large traditional wedding for my sister, and it was magical. Three years later, people still tell us it was the best event they've ever attended.

Don't assume that everyone who has an expensive, traditional wedding hates it - that's as bad as turning up a nose at affordable or quirky weddings.

<comment><USER25> Sure, I'm not saying everyone has a miserable time. A lot of that likely depends on your standing in society and your family. My observations most likely reflect my standing and of the people I know. I think it's great if someone is able to have an amazing time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't claim to know that much about it, but nothing I've heard suggests that there's that much room for automation in the industry. Every wedding is a one- off with at least some custom requirements, and none are ever repeated. Where does an app or website come in? The experienced people in the industry know who to trust to get it right, who can do what, and roughly what it costs. They have the human ability to take care of the small problems without bothering the family, and know what issues to escalate to them.

Maybe the planners would like and be willing to pay for some tool that helped them organize things, but there's probably too much individual customization needed to make any such solution practical to build cheaper and better than Excel or something.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think when people spend $30K on a wedding they don't start by saying I am going to spend $30K. It just comes out in drips. Like $500 for flowers, etc.

<comment><USER29> IDK, perhaps it's cos we're 31 and 32 so a bit more mature and had been warned and been able to talk to friends who've done it. But once we got enough info to get an idea of cost per head for food, venue hire fee, we then put together a spreadsheet and were bang on. YMMV, but it's really not that hard to anticipate most of the costs.

<comment><USER2> The wedding industry is _really_ heavy on the upsell and some people are really susceptible to it, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've worked in the wedding industry.

You have _one chance_ to get it right for your clients - there are no do- overs. People only get one wedding day and if you screw it up, you've ruined it for them and they will talk about it for decades to come.

There is no "fail fast" in this realm. Tread lightly.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's because there is no "wedding" industry. There is an events industry with its various subsets.

<comment><USER19> It's various industries with a "wedding" multiplier. "Wedding" dresses are thousands of dollars, but roughly equivalent normal dresses are hundreds. The minute you say "wedding cake" instead of "chocolate cake" the cost skyrockets.

<comment><USER6> Why would anybody ever share that their cake purchase is for a wedding, then? Wouldn't everyone just say 'give me a chocolate cake' to save money?

Unless there's something about the cake design that obviously gives away the context of your request to the vendor --but beyond that-- it seems disadvantageous to disclose the information.

<comment><USER19> It really depends on if you want a "wedding cake" or not. If you want a wedding cake, you gotta say it, cause it has a particular look and feel.

<comment><USER6> I'm picturing a multi-tiered cake, but I don't really see anything unique about it. Maybe the designs/patterns they use to apply the frosting are different for wedding cakes?

I'll be honest, I haven't seen many wedding cakes. I've seen far more regular cakes. If I went to a wedding, and someone wanted to trick by serving non- wedding cake, I'd be fooled.

<comment><USER19> Oh yeah, we went full regular chocolate cake for ours. Wasn't a "wedding" cake, but was way more delicious.

<comment><USER6> I've been to weddings where people do cupcakes in lieu of cake. Everyone gets dessert faster, since you don't have to cut it up and serve it individually. I was a fan of the planned efficiency. The couple did actually have a small cake for the ceremonial cutting of the cake. Beyond that, everyone was OK with cupcakes, if they cared to eat dessert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The surface area of weddings as a solvable problem is insane, partially because the variance in what people want out of a wedding is huge, and since the cost is usually so high, people are less incentivized to compromise on what they do and don't want.

Then it becomes a configuration problem. You could build a platform that connects couples with wedding vendors, but you might struggle to make that platform flexible enough to allow people to search for all aspects of what they're looking for. Food is a good example of this. When I got married, I had 3 separate dietary requirements I had to meet, which most caterers weren't able or willing to accommodate without a drastic price increase.

It would've been really difficult to build a platform that vendors would fill out fully because there are probably dozens of questions to ask.

I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but that was the biggest pain point for my wedding.

</comment><comment><USER32> Fiddler On the Roof has it: TRADITION.

People get real salty if they've done something for generations and then suddenly you want to change things (or more likely things changed around them). See all rural politics.

<comment><USER33> Even most liberal women become Burkean conservatives when it comes to planning their wedding. I mean, why are flowers required? Why does there need to be some sort of feast? Why is music and dancing required? Why have a public event at all, when you can go to a courthouse, have a judge administer some basic acknowledgement with a couple witnesses, and call it a day?

<comment><USER34> It's easy to over-estimate how much average couples are spending, because basic math means you get invited to 50x more 100-guest weddings than 2-guest weddings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have a theory and so far it's always been true.

Things that people don't do frequently never get fixed!

Examples:

DMV

Customs

Weddings

Buying a mattress

Real estate

Anytime you come across high prices and broken processes check it against this rule.

<comment><USER6> Health care is something people use frequently, has broken processes, and high prices, and will seemingly never be fixed.

<comment><USER35> I'd argue the majority of people don't use it frequently.

<comment><USER6> Maybe not average aged working people, but everybody I know in the 60+ age group (mostly family) usually has regular interactions with the medical system, or at a rate far higher than 25-45 year olds.

And there's a lot of older people. As a cohort, there's only slightly fewer boomers than millennials.

<comment><USER36> Old people aren't necessarily the ones in a position to change the system. And the old people with power don't use the public system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> A few aspects of weddings _have_ been disrupted:

\- Registries: the article itself talks about Zola, for example. Although traditional registry sites (e.g. bloomingdales, bed bath and beyond) seem to still have most of the market in my experience.

\- Invitations: You can still go to someone local for this, especially if you need something customized, but more and more people are creating their invitations online.

But there are a bunch of pieces of the wedding that are stubborn to change. Other major expenses include venue, catering, photography, flowers and music/entertainment. But finding these things, which often involves driving out and meeting with someone face-to-face, or at least talking to them over the phone, is part of the process that people love about weddings.

 _Companies_ spend $30,000 on events. But most _people_ spend $30,000 (or whatever your wedding costs) are paying for the experience of planning the party. My wife insisted on driving out to sample caterers' food (which for me was the best part of wedding planning) and meeting the potential photographers in person.

If this was strictly a business transaction, then yes, an app could probably make this more convenient. But the process is part of the experience that people seem to like.

EDIT: A lot of people don't see the rationality in having a big, expensive wedding that takes a long time to plan. My brother had close friends and family at a restaurant and it was great. If more people did that, then the wedding industry would be "disrupted". But I'd venture to guess that most people spending large amounts of money on their weddings _enjoy_ the current aspects of the process.

</comment><comment><USER38> The answer is definitely brides. 5k is "cheap for a wedding dress," and 8k is "cheap for a venue."

Why must these things be so expensive? You might as well ask why engagement rings are so expensive, or why dowries used to (and in some places still do) exist.

The parties involved see this as an existential purchase, not a practical purchase. The cost and and sacrifice you must give up is a reflection of the value of the bride. Skimping on a cost or a service is seen as an admission that the bride lacks value.

<comment><USER39> This is a pretty sexist way to look at it...

<comment><USER40> I don't think it's far from the truth however. Consider the contrived societal expectation, devised by De Beers, to spend 1 month's salary on a ring. You can get an elegant diamond ring for far less, but we make a virtue out of spending in excess here and that extends to the wedding. It's not that men aren't complicit in this, but the more socially desirable the bride, and you know what that means, the more pressure there is to spend.

<comment><USER39> That's just... completely untrue, and is _definitely_ sexist.

By the way, that De Beers campaign was marketed at the _men_ , not the women, so it's men that are falling for that rule just as much, if not more, than women are demanding it.

Putting the cost of weddings at the feet of the brides is ridiculous.

For reference, I'm getting married in April, and it's been my wonderful bride who has kept costs way down, compared to my wild spending ideas.

<comment><USER41> It was marketed towards both. Men to go out and buy the rings, women not to accept rings 'beneath them'.

Advertising is absolutely just straight up sexist in a lot of cases, and people (speaking in the broad strokes that you have to when talking about complete populations) eat that up.

I definitely know someone who got turned down because the ring he bought her wasn't expensive enough. Personally I think he dodged a bullet, but that's neither here nor there there.

Advertisers use sexist advertising because it works.

[https://youtu.be/85HT4Om6JT4](https://youtu.be/85HT4Om6JT4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Well, I think it's because my partner and I avoided _the Wedding Industry(TM)_ entirely, as are every other couple we know who want to avoid paying through the nose to act out other families' stereotypes of a "good" wedding, all to make _our_ families miserable.

So we never employed anyone who Works on Weddings, and years later, our friends still insist it was the best wedding they've ever been to. All for ~$6,000.

</comment><comment><USER43> Here is how we cut our wedding bill for 120 people from 45k to 10k!

Our wedding planning experience got off to a bad start when we told our wedding planner we had no specific budget. He took that to mean an unlimited budget... and came back with a plan for a 100 person medieval-themed party in fancy dress, complete with monogrammed plates and dancing midgets. Total cost around 45k euros. (The midgets alone were 1.5k!)

So we sacked him and did it for 1/4 of the cost:

\- Timing - Switch to a Thursday, with an afternoon ceremony and evening dinner. No problems getting a venue. We decided not to stress about people who couldn't make it midweek.

\- Venue for ceremony - The venue was a medieval cloister in the middle of Amsterdam. By doing it on a Thursday afternoon, we paid their standard rates for a business meeting. We made friends with the venue manager. He was able to provide post-ceremony drinks and nibbles at much cheaper rates.

\- Celebrant - A friend who did weddings in a another region was able to register with the city council to be our celebrant. Zero cost.

\- Fancy dress - As a joke to the wedding planner's medieval idea, we surprised our best man etc with ridiculous medieval fancy dress. A cheap way to help everyone laugh even more at their speeches.

\- Flowers - The previous evening, the venue was used for the Dutch 'Wildlife Photographer of the Year' awards presentation. The friendly venue manager kept their flowers for us. Zero cost.

\- Wedding cake - Decided we could do without this if people had nice post- ceremony drinks. Zero cost.

\- Dinner - Booked out a nearby restaurant for the night. They could seat 80. That worked fine as from the 120 guests, many families with kids appreciated the option to go home after the post-ceremony drinks. The restaurant arranged all the catering at their standard reasonable prices. Very nice meal served by professional staff. Zero stress. After dessert, everyone gathered at the bar area and talked and enjoyed themselves til 1am.

\- Photographer - A friend asked if she could take photos. Problem solved at zero cost.

\- Band/dancing - Neither of us wanted this. Lots of clubs nearby for people who wanted to go out afterwards.

I definitely recommend booking a standard restaurant for a wedding dinner. Don't go to a specialist wedding venue!

</comment><comment><USER44> Why?

Because you'd have to AirBnB the destination, Uber the guests there, Blue Apron the food/cake, Facebook the invitations/web site, etc...

IOW, what I'm saying is you would have to be multiple startups in one.

</comment><comment><USER45> If you used economies of scale to bring down the cost of a wedding, then weddings would be very similar, and it's doubtful that's what the customers want.</comment>