Neat Algorithms - Harmony Search - <AUTHOR> http://harry.me/2011/05/07/neat-algorithms---harmony-search/

<comment><USER2> Beautiful CoffeeScript code for metaheuristic optimization. The visualizations are done in Protovis. A common misconception is that Protovis has its own language, since Protovis code is usually in

      <script type="text/javascript+protovis">

tags, which lets you write code like

      function(x) x*x

This is actually JavaScript 1.8 (see <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/New_in_JavaScript_1.8>); Firefox can handle it directly, but Protovis down-compiles it to standard JavaScript for the benefit of other browsers.

That design decision made a lot of sense before CoffeeScript existed, since standard JavaScript becomes extremely unwieldy in a Protovis context. I expect to see a lot more Protovis code done in CoffeeScript in the future.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very detailed and chock full of great visualizations, but I still can't figure out how harmony search is fundamentally different than your run- of-the-mill genetic algorithm. What am I missing?

<comment><USER4> It's not different. Both are random search algorithms packaged in a (somewhat complex) human abstraction. The convergence properties are the same as for other search algorithms using meta heuristics, including the classic simulated annealing algorithm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The metaphor with jazz music isn't terribly illuminating.

The short of the algorithm is that it generates a set of random vectors and evaluates the objective for each one. It then stochastically chooses between perturbed components from elements in that set and new random components to build a test vector. If that vector performs better than the worst one in the set, it replaces the worst one.

I'm pretty sure that process doesn't look very similar to jazz improvisation. It's also not nearly as complicated as it's made out to be. I also am a little frustrated that neither of his problems were good fits for an algorithm like this and so I dunno if I can walk away calling this a neat algorithm.

I am super inspired to play with protovis though.

</comment><comment><USER6> While it doesn't have the demo or Coffeescript code, I found the wikipedia page much easier to comprehend what the algorithm actually does. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_search></comment>


India will become number 1 source of PHP developers soon - <AUTHOR> http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/99-India-will-become-number-1-source-of-PHP-developers-soon.html

<comment><USER2> hey, hey...don't pick on india, they're still emerging - they'll make it through this php problem. we still have a lot of people using php here...the thing's contagious.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sooner same will be true for other languages as well

<comment><AUTHOR> Although I don't have any hard evidence, I think this is less true with Ruby on Rails, probably Python/Django as well. I just can't imagine that legacy Rails applications are going to be getting outsourced anytime soon. It will probably take another 15 years before Ruby even comes close to the widespread usage of PHP.

<comment><USER4> 15 years is such a long time to predict anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Expect your PHP related projects to be outsourced in a big scale very soon.</comment>


Surviving the post-employment economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/11/surviving-post-employment-economy-201311373243740811.html <comment><USER2> Great article, and a topic much discussed in my family and friends social group. The situation will get worse, with some of us having it easy while more and more people are falling through the cracks.

For the shamefull people who have little empathy for people who more of less have done the right things in their lives but struggle anyway, I say to you: congratulations for becoming corporate shills or shills for the elite.

I especially liked the last paragraph in the article about lending a hand.

<comment><USER3> So wait, they did the right things, but still failed?

Define 'right things'.

<comment><USER4> "Right things" => Things that seemed to be the correct decisions, reinforced by family and community and authority figures.

<comment><USER3> So although obviously there's an issue here, perhaps the issue lies in society's lack of evolution to recognize the facts about our educational system's value addition?

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's solely a matter of the educational system. There is an issue of availability and _discoverability_ of careers (and more generally, lifestyles) where one can be "successful". Certainly, the educational system _could_ fill this role, but it can add substantial value without doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article claims 9% of CS majors are unemployed, but the article they reference ([http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/07/...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/07/30/tech- job-unemployment/2595669/)) actually states that 9% of recently graduated CS majors are unemployed. The USA Today article referred to was written in July and does not specify what they mean by "recently graduated." In any case, amazingly bad fact checking on the part of Al Jazeera.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Explanation and analysis of the idea of a 'post-employment economy', i.e. increasing corporate profits and decreasing employment, is given in 'The Lights in the Tunnel' by Martin Ford (which I found to be a good read, although a little verbose).

The main argument is that cheap computerized automation is displacing human workers, and corporate incentives are such that the trend is likely to continue. The long-term problem is that if systemic unemployment grows then the economy as a whole starts to flag b/c consumers no longer have the funds to drive the consumer economy.

His solution is rethinking corporate tax (reducing/eliminating pay-roll taxes which discentivize hiring, and potentially increasing corporate revenue tax). If displacement becomes extreme, he suggests that corporate taxes could fund a basic income for displaced workers to prop up the consumer economy.

<comment><USER6> I'm extremely pessimistic about any proposed solution that involves politics (changes to the tax code, basic income, etc), especially in the US. The populace at large doesn't have the interest or imagination to consider changing the game like that, and there's too much money mixed into the political system and the mass media to allow game changing ideas to enter the mainstream. (When I say "the game" I mean the political and economic system we've accreted, with its associated ideas about things like property and ownership.)

The only path out of this situation that I've ever been able to imagine that doesn't involve a swift, massive shift in popular consciousness is a gradual transition to worker control of capital. In other words, entrepreneurs found and grow worker cooperatives (a la Mondragon Corporation) that provide their services and/or goods preferentially to other cooperatives.

The pieces are out there to start doing this. There aren't any real legal obstacles to growing a new system inside the one we have now. For example, you can find pre-written C-corp bylaws online that spell out how a worker co-op functions and the ways it's protected from co-option by non-cooperative entities. It's just a matter of convincing individual entrepreneurs that it's not only a viable option but actually a socially positive (perhaps even necessary, in the long term) thing to do.

That's understandably a hard sell in the modern startup world where seemingly everyone is dreaming of astronomical wealth and willing to sacrifice every aspect of their life in its pursuit, but it should be easier to change a few key minds one at a time than to convince greater than 50% of the voting public that drastic changes need to be made.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that currently the populace at large might not understand what is going on, but if structural employment continues to grow, then I think the nature of the problem will become more clear. In the limit, if the percentage of displaced workers becomes sufficiently large (>50%), then something like basic income seems to become politically tractable.

I do like the idea of worker cooperatives and do not know enough about them to understand if they are a realistic or preferable option to changing governmental policy. Do you have any good references related to the idea of cooperatives giving preferential treatment to other cooperatives?

<comment><USER6> By the way, here [1] is a very good resource on cooperatives in general. Don't be put off by the title ( _The Cooperative Solution: How the United States can tame recessions, reduce inequality, and protect the environment_ ) -- it's primarily history along with a survey of the cooperative economy circa 2012.

[1] [http://www.thecooperativefoundation.org/images/Cooperative_S...](http://www.thecooperativefoundation.org/images/Cooperative_Solution_6x9-h_copy.pdf) (PDF; 136 pages)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Its missing some stuff..

Put it this way, the money taken out of the system when mortgages blew up did not just accumulate over night. But its the multiplying effect that is the Big thing that was taken away...that multiplying effect did in fact trickle down to USA job growth for the middle class.

Now we do not have it..

Its different than other economy transitions, in other transitions for example from farm to industrial you had higher industrial wage jobs spurring young farmers to move to the city to work. Now we have what?

We may be looking at a 0-n problem being solved in that does a 'StatUp' economy get established..

Other's thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER8> The one saving grace about automation is that there Is rarely enough time to automate everything. The automation software will need to be tweaked to manage the infinite variability of the future.

I think getting rid of, or reducing payroll, tax is a good idea in the medium term though.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't know a single computer scientist struggling for work. Infact the opposite it true.

<comment><USER10> There does seem to be some hollowing out of the bottom end of IT work. There were people in 2002 making decent livings doing basic PC repair and low end web dev (frontpage etc).

Harder to do that now.

<comment><USER11> That's been replaced by basic mobile repair shops and low end app dev here. Friend of mine who used to do PC repair runs a little mall kiosk selling phones, accessories, repairing screens and updating roms. He already expanded to 5 F/T employees and another kiosk.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Tee Shirts: Wear the Gear of Your Favorite Startup or Founder - <AUTHOR> http://startupteeshirts.com/

<comment><USER2> Why does everyone's ecommerce site need a "daily deals" email sign up form now? What works for a coupon site is not likely to work for a T-Shirt site.

Show me some products and there's a slim chance I might buy something.

Show me nothing but a form to REQUEST spam every single day for a product i'm not even sure if I want? Ctrl+W.

<comment><USER3> Agreed

What's even worse is the model that asks for additional friend e-mails after you provide yours to get an invite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of (the now defunct) Startup Schwag (<http://www.startupschwag.com/>). I'm a sucker for stickers and tshirts with a cool company logo so it sounds awesome.

I would take a look at what Startup Schwag was doing - if I recall you got a 'goodie bag' each month that had a shirt and some stickers, buttons, pens, etc.

<comment><USER5> Or feel free to email me, I ran StartupSchwag - I'd be happy to answer any questions.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "From the blog: <http://bit.ly/startuptees>

This started as an idea to save money on laundry. We've visited the offices of Dropbox, Twilio, PB Works; even new startup Piazza, and we always accepted free t-shirts because it means more to wear and less to wash. Our ambitious goal: Sell 25 startup tee shirts for $25 each from 25 of our favorite startups. "

<comment><USER6> Er...we've barely had to wear the same startup tee twice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "25 startup tee shirts for $25 each from 25 of our favorite startups."

I can't tell if you're selling a T-shirt for $25 or 25 T-shirts for $25.

<comment><USER8> The key word is "each", meaning $25 per tshirt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Feel free to submit the tees to my startup: <http://rumplo.com> :)

<comment><USER6> Just shot you an email.

<comment><USER9> Didn't seem to get it, you can always try @cameronsmith on twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> hmm, are there no copyright issues involved with using another company's logo (I suppose I'm assuming a trademark was filed)?

<comment><USER4> I think the idea is to work with the companies involved, they get some money from selling the shirts and the startups get brand exposure.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. This is our version of "Obama O's" (AirBNB); we really did get the idea form wearing startup tee shirts to save money on laundry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would love to add our shirt to this. :)

<comment><USER6> Send me an email; it's in our profile.</comment></comment>


Doing application updates via version-control - <AUTHOR> http://mooseyard.com/Jens/2008/07/doing-application-updates-via-version-control/

<comment><USER2> Something like <http://xdelta.org/>?

<comment><USER3> Something like that, but with rollbacks, test builds, multiple versions installed and available in parallel, and more, all more or less for for free.

When I say "for free", I'm assuming that modern DVCSs are efficient with large binary files. Even if they're not, the idea is compelling for other reasons anyway.</comment></comment>


The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/slpj-book-1987/start.htm <comment><USER2> Links to djvu and pdf: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/papers/slpj-book-1987/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was just reading this lately; really interesting stuff. However, I wonder how much has changed in the last 25 years since this book was written? Or to put it in a different way: what to read next?

<comment><USER4> A lot has changed. If you're looking at other strongly-typed functional language, particularly if you don't have to handle laziness, Compiling with Continuations is a fantastic book ([http://www.amazon.com/Compiling- Continuations-Andrew-W-Appel...](http://www.amazon.com/Compiling- Continuations-Andrew-W-Appel/dp/052103311X/) ).

There is still a lot that has changed since then. In particular:

1) Control-flow analysis has become much more well-understood, and there's a lot more you can do in your optimization phases to dramatically speed up code and reduce allocations (allocations and heap accesses are the bane of functional language implementation, btw. Unless you're Haskell, and then you also have to deal with mutation for shared lazy computation results).

2) Certain tricks such as monomorphisation (<http://mlton.org/Monomorphise> ) dramatically improve the ability of the compiler to generate optimized code from originally polymorphic inputs without paying huge representation overheads.

Unfortunately, #1 and #2 are mainly written up "in the source" of modern functional language compilers or at best in JFP (Journal of Functional Programming) articles :-( But the Appel book provides most of the fundamentals you'll need to get bootstrapped with anything more modern, so I'd recommend it anyway!

<comment><USER5> Which papers do you recommend about this subject, for reading after the Appel book?

Something that I found interesting is that polymorthic types on .NET are also implemented with monomorphisation.

<comment><USER4> If you are still interested in learning more about writing compiler optimizations after reading the Appel book, there are two really fantastic Ph.D. theses:

Olin Shivers, Control Flow Analysis in Scheme

David Tarditi, Design and Implementation of Code Optimizations for a Type- Directed Compiler for Standard ML

The first can be a bit mathematically hairy, particularly if you have either a weak or engineering-focused math background. Fortunately, you can skip it and still get a lot out of both the static analyses and particularly the optimizations listed at the back. There are several he lists that still offer promise and that folks are even now trying to figure out how to implement efficiently (i.e. super-beta).

The second is a wonderful implementation-focused thesis that covers in even more detail than the Appel book how to perform those optimizations on a typed IR. A typed IR is much tougher than an untyped IR because in order to maintain a valid IR can be quite tricky (i.e. if you change a function to take an additional argument, you need to update its type... and everywhere that type occurs, including possible in tuples passed to functions that pass them to other functions, etc.). Further, he includes proofs of correctness that will prepare you for the kinds of things that appear in more modern coverage of compiler optimizations.

Beyond that, getting to specific journal papers, you really can't go wrong just browsing TOPLAS and JFP and looking at particular topics you're interested in. There are some that are, of course, particularly good, but generally the editorial staff on both is just fantastic and you can't go wrong. If you have specific interests, feel free to drop me mail directly for a pointer to a good entry paper in the area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be great if one of our resident HN functional geeks could give a short review of the book and why it and lambda are still relevant (more relevant?) now.

<comment><USER7> In addition to the other comments (at the time of this writing: silentbicycle and dons), I would say:

\- Regarding the importance of the book: it's discussion of the G-machine (probably also interesting is another paper by SPJ, "The spineless tagless G-machine") is very comprehensive and textbook style. I think this is very important to study/compare the other model of virtual machines used for implementing functional programming languages, viz. the SECD machine (named after the four stacks necessary, Stack, Environment, Code, Dump.) The book I first read about the SECD machine is Peter Kogge's "The Architecture of Symbolic Computers" and I recommend it dearly.

\- Regarding the use of lambda calculus: It's not just the equivalent of a Turing machine, but much more fundamental in the theory of implementing programming languages: Aside of the eager/lazy evaluation of functional programming languages (corresponding to applicative and normal order evaluation of terms), the typed lambda calculus for instance is fundamental for studying type systems, one of the more important research areas of the last decade. Besides it is also the basis of LISP ( _eval_ and _apply_ functions.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is in no way new, and is fairly easy to find for anybody looking for this sort of material, so why post it to HN? It's a good book, I used it myself for a school project, but it has been available for free for at least 5 years now.

<comment><USER9> HN is a way to find interesting stuff. This includes older material. If people don't find it interesting, they won't vote it up.

<comment><USER8> You are of course 100% correct (although it seems to me that most stuff on HN is "new" stuff). My gripe is that I use the RSS feed so I see EVERYTHING that gets posted to HN, and this is one of those posts where I feel like the target audience is quite small, and those who need it will have no issue finding it themselves. But I guess I'm just biased because I have actually used this book before, and therefore don't find it interesting at all when it is brought to my attention at a time where I have no further use for it.

<comment><USER10> I don't have the links handy, but there are RSS feeds that only serve up HN items that hit certain point levels, such as 20, 50, or 100 points. I like them because there is often a lot of noise getting submitted to HN and often only want to see what has managed to garner some attention.

<comment><USER11> I believe this is the link you're looking for: [http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news- overlo...](http://talkfast.org/2010/07/23/a-cure-for-hacker-news-overload)

It has rss feeds and twitter accounts for stories that get 20, 50, 100, or 150 points or more.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC - <AUTHOR> http://pangoly.com <comment><USER3> Your obvious rival here is PCPartPicker. Having used that extensively, here's some things I don't like about yours:

Expert mode removes compatibility checks. This shouldn't be the case - as soon as I select an item, it should cull the results and show me only the intersection of items that are now compatible with my chosen piece of hardware.

The lack of an ability to filter. Maybe I want to splurge more on a graphics card, but I need one that has at least 4 mini-display port outputs to drive my monitors. Right now there doesn't seem to be a way to say "show me only gpus that are nvidia, above $500, and can drive at least 4 monitors".

One of the biggest things for me: lack of reviews. You have a pangoly score. That's great and all, but you're a brand I don't (yet) trust. If I'm buying a component that costs multiple hundreds of dollars, I want more than a single score from a company I haven't heard of. I want to know what the reliability is like, and I want to hear it from people who have had hands on experience with it. I want to know how loud the fans are, what temperature it runs at passively and actively, etc.

Visually your site is really nice, but your expert mode leaves a lot to be desired, and I think you have a ways to go before you catch up with the competition. If I were you I would try and find your niche - either target users who are switching over from console gaming, and want to build their first computer, or build out a bunch of more expert features and target regular hobbyists.

<comment><USER4> Speaking of compatibility:

Does nobody care to check the mainboards support site for compatibility lists?

This one, for example: [http://uk.pangoly.com/en/build/configure/pro](http://uk.pangoly.com/en/build/configure/pro)

When you select the asrock mainboard, you are presented with these three choices of RAM: [http://uk.pangoly.com/en/review/corsair- vengeance-16gb-2x8gb...](http://uk.pangoly.com/en/review/corsair- vengeance-16gb-2x8gb-1866mhz-ddr3-non-ecc-cl10-xmp- cmz16gx3m2a1866c10/8f7e007f-e656-e311-9403-00155d0f1805)

[http://uk.pangoly.com/en/review/patriot- viper-3-16gb-2x8gb-2...](http://uk.pangoly.com/en/review/patriot- viper-3-16gb-2x8gb-2133mhz-ddr3-non-ecc- cl11-pv316g213c1k/b1156c19-8d57-e311-9403-00155d0f1805)

[http://uk.pangoly.com/en/review/corsair-vengeance- pro-16gb-2...](http://uk.pangoly.com/en/review/corsair-vengeance- pro-16gb-2x8gb-1866-mhz-ddr3-non-ecc- cl9-cmy16gx3m2a1866c9/ef50e71e-8c57-e311-9403-00155d0f1805)

And if you venture to that mainboards support site, it shows you a list of compatible RAM: [http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty%20Z97%20Professional...](http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty%20Z97%20Professional/index.us.asp?cat=Memory)

End Result: Not one of the mentioned RAM options is on that list.

Why would that be important? Well, for one thing, it it weren't, there wouldn't be the need for the asrock people to maintain such a list, right? And, speaking from personal experience, I have had brand new builds bluescreen like nobody's business. Was the RAM faulty? Nope, send it back and got replacement of same make/model. Still bluescreens. It was only after I checked the mainboards compatibility lists and chose a RAM from that list when the bluescreens stopped! Nothing else was changed. And both types of RAM were "the same" as far as part pickers like this one is concerned. So, same Type, Speed, Dual Channel etc. The "only" difference here was that the one that caused bluescreens was not on the mainboards compatibility list.

<comment><USER5> I've had this issue as well, but that was over a decade ago, when using a smaller brand (ECS) mainboard for an Athlon XP. Eventually it was discovered that the mainboard didn't support Corsair memory, and the shop traded me some Kingston modules.

I have built many systems for myself, friends and family since, and never encountered this issue again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Beautiful execution and a well-done site. Nice visual choices and a good responsive layout. Great example of waiting until a product has some polish before a Show HN.

Yesterday, Forbes did an article[1] about how console gamers are moving towards PC.

I think you could really knock it out of the park if you capitalized on that trend and added a portion of your site for folks looking to migrate. Something that shows how specs from different sets of cheaper hardware could mimic and beat the console they may be trying to migrate from. Perhaps something with a bit more of an educational front to it.

You could even go as far as video demonstrations showing how the performance of a $400.00 PC from your service could rival or beat a console.

There's a big trend/meme on the Internet right now regarding the "PC Master Race"[2] that I think you could explore for some inspiration, if you haven't. The trend started a few years ago[3] but has started to pick up more and more.

You may even find some great success with a section specifically for building customized, beautiful "Steam Boxes"[4] that are starting to appear more and more in living rooms in place of consoles.

[1] - [http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the-c...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the- console-war-is-over-the-pc-already-won/)

[2] - [http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/](http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/)

[3] - [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-glorious-pc-gaming- master-...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-glorious-pc-gaming-master-race)

[4] - [http://gizmodo.com/13-steam-boxes- ranked-1496078448](http://gizmodo.com/13-steam-boxes-ranked-1496078448)

<comment><USER7> > PC Master Race

Please don't perpetuate this inane meme. It is needlessly inflammatory and would probably alienate a healthy portion of your target market.

<comment><USER8> Perpetuating the meme is perhaps unwise (and alienating as you pointed out).

That aside it is worth pointing out the advantages of a proper computer over cut down entertainment devices. Especially in a format that lets you customize and meet a certain price point.

Shame it's not easy to have comparative benchmarks against console hardware at this time, despite the newest generation being effectively x86 hardware we have no means of comparison due to the platforms being too locked down.

<comment><USER7> >That aside it is worth pointing out the advantages of a proper computer over cut down entertainment devices.

Sure, but calling console players 'plebes' probably isn't the best way to do it.

<comment><USER8> Agree, hence why I said drop the meme but keep the finer points. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm the owner, so here's a brief overview of the available features:

        - Build configuration starting from user's preferred budget. The suggested components are always safe to be used in the same build and it's also possible to add optional parts like peripherals.
        - Automatic build creation starting from user's preferred component.
        - Sharing: once the build is completed it's possible to share it on the most popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit), on forums (BBCode) o by Email.
        - Build guidelines: for every component type we provide general guidelines and best practices for the picking, also suggesting the highest rated products currently available on the market.
        - Product reviews: our rating, pros and cons, q&a, price history, suggested PC builds for the selected component and compatibility.
        - Price analysis and trends.
        - Multilanguage and multicurrency.
        - Responsive design: the website provides an optimal viewing experience on all devices (desktops, tablets and smartphones).

<comment><USER9> One thing that I noticed was the lack of Xeon processors for Intel. When I built my current rig, I could get an i7 level chip for an i5 price, but without integrated video. This is totally fine for gaming rigs and something that isn't uncommon. Was that a specific decision?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool! Some humble UI suggestions:

\- I don't really need to see big pictures of everything (except the case and peripherals). It's kind of visually noisy, and it doesn't help me make any decisions. Maybe just a small thumbnail would suffice.

\- It'd be nice to be able to instantly visually compare the most important traits of each component. For example, for SSDs, I'd like to see Price, Size, and Speed. If you just had a bar for each of those things, I'd be able to instantly see the tradeoffs I'm making. The hover-over info is nice too, it's good to see if I'm trading price for durability, or some other less common metric. Maybe this kind of info could replace the big images?

<comment><USER11> To add to the tradeoffs point - it would be great it you could generate a pareto efficient frontier given the users "desired traits".

This may just be my own personal gripe but I get serious information overload from component buying. A nice frontier could filter the dozens of options to just a handful with meaningful tradeoffs worth considering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I build a PC, the number one feature I want is ECC memory. It can be tricky to find a non-server configuration that supports it (you historically need a "good" bios that is smart enough to enable it for AMD, and you typically need a Xeon flavor CPU + workstation level board for Intel; caveat, it has been 2.5 years since my last build).

I was hoping that this tool might make finding non-server parts that support ECC easier, but alas, that does not seem to be the case.

<comment><USER13> I'm genuinely curious, why is it your number one feature? I know that ECC provides error correction, but aside from server use, is it really that critical?

<comment><USER14> Memory errors are a significant cause [citation needed!] of system instability. If you want a reliable machine, even a desktop, that is going to keep working, then ECC is very useful.

If you've decided upon ECC as a must, then it would be great for a system builder tool to then show you options based upon that choice.

<comment><USER15> And for some high end use case you might want to be looking at xenon's or even dual xenon's.

I could see a big data or HPC developer wanting to have a desktop that used the same processor as the cluster they are writing for - mainly in the case where your tuning for max performance and want to able to develop using the same complier flags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's some advice:

I can never remember any details regarding the Intel chipsets. Is a given CPU a Haswell processor? Ivy bridge? Should I wait for Broadwell? Am I misremembering code words entirely? I would love it if this site helped me figure out which chipset I'll be getting, in case I care.

<comment><USER17> For the record, the naming scheme is something like this: e.g. i7 4770K

i[digit] is the series, i3 means starter, i5 mainstream and i7 performance (that's not entirely accurate but it is accurate enough).

Then the four digit number is of no obvious logic across the generations. But, the first digit shows the generation, so 4 means haswell, which is the fourth Core iX generation. 3 is ivy bridge, 2 is sandy bridge and the lack of it means nehalem. And beyond that, the higher the number, the more powerful it is.

The last letter is optional. K means unlocked, S or T mean low power consumption.

<comment><USER18> K also means virtualization features are missing. Hugely important, these days.

<comment><USER19> I thought 'K' meant unlocked multipliers.

You're right about virtualization, though. Some features are missing.

[http://ark.intel.com/compare/75123,75122](http://ark.intel.com/compare/75123,75122)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really like it but I think it can be simplified. At least the original presentation of options. e.g.

* The names Advanced and Pro are too similar.

* "For AMD lovers, a cheaper alternative of the Gamer configuration" OK, but then this could be folded into the Gamer configuration as an alternate flavour.

Can you get this down to three or four options and move the rest to the expert users section?

<comment><USER21> Agreed.

It would be nice if for each tier there were an Intel option and an AMD option ... and an ATi and nVidia option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems like there's a good mid-ground between pre-configured systems and expert mode. A mode which offers some alerts for silly mistakes (or prevents them from being made in the first place) would be nice. i.e. an Intel chip paired with an AMD socketed motherboard.

<comment><USER23> Indeed. But alerts would be a nice addition to expert mode anyway. You can't build a PC with a processor that does not fit in the socket, expert or not. Pre filtered list of motherboards or cpu based on selected cpu or motherboards would be nice. Anyway, great website.

<comment><USER24> Can someone tell me what he used to code that website? Javascript and bootstrap or something else?

<comment><USER25> [http://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fpangoly.com%2fen%2f](http://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fpangoly.com%2fen%2f)

Have you used BuiltWith? Looks like asp.net, jquery, bootstrap, and what not.

There's a chrome extension too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why can't you perform compatibility checks on hardware in free build mode? That would take so much headache out of the composing, and be an awesome middle ground between the prebuilt ones and the completely free builder.

</comment><comment><USER27> I like how polished this site is. It would be a good companion to this parts recommendation guide: [http://www.logicalincrements.com/](http://www.logicalincrements.com/)

However, I disagree that a "Pro" build is necessary for software development, as suggested by the description. I've gotten by writing software on a netbook.

<comment><USER28> Likewise, I've gotten by writing software with a pen and paper.

There's an unfortunate consequence of the tendency for developers to have "Pro" hardware: their software often doesn't get tested on older hardware. Some examples:

About 8 years ago, I tried to install a KDE-based Linux distribution on a PC that was then only 2 years old. The screen resolution defaulted to 800x600. I opened the settings panel to try and adjust it to 1280x1024 (the maximum for that monitor), but the settings window was larger than my screen, and the icon for screen resolution was off the bottom of my screen! I couldn't get to it.

About 4 years ago, I was taking a Software Engineering course where our assignments were doled out with Eclipse project files. No problem, I installed Eclipse on my Macbook (which at the time was only one year old), and fired it up. It was using over a gig of RAM, and OS X using another half a gig. I couldn't open a web browser without swapping.

Today the problem is even worse. Modern software gobbles so much memory -- it's ridiculous. Web browsers and desktop environments are especially bad, and systemd uses loads of RAM, too. I realize it's not all bloat, but this memory explosion is leaving users with older computers in the dust. Not everyone can afford to upgrade to the latest and greatest every year.

I urge developers to keep their end users (even other developers) and their potentially meager hardware in mind.

<comment><USER29> > Web browsers and desktop environments are especially bad

Most web browsers are actually pretty memory efficient these days. Unfortunately, the websites they're viewing aren't because they're designed and coded by people with "pro" hardware too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice. One comment - I think it's not always showing the 'best' options in the initial 3.

e.g.

1 - Select Advanced

2 - the two processor options shown are (+11% cost, +13% perf) and (+7% cost, +3%perf). If I expand "more options", I can see a (+9 %cost, +16%perf) in there which is preumably superior to either of the two shown.

But this _is_ awesome - please keep it going and improving it :-)

<comment><USER31> Maybe the algorithm scores based on more than just cost and performance - perhaps review scores as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Although i'm unsure of the legality, you might want to add hackintosh/OSX86 setups in there as well, matching the right hardware combos is a big part of getting it all setup and the latest configs change often

<comment><USER33> I'd (figuratively) kill for that feature as well. If you aren't following Hackintosh guides regularly, you fall behind far too quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> While it's pretty, the site doesn't allow for much in the way of customizing one's criteria. Or it's very non-obvious on how to do so. For example, I might want a gaming system with a apx $150 video card rather than a $200 to $300 one. Perhaps I have hard drives already and don't need a new one. Why the rather pricey power supplies? The CPU choices are limited and don't reflect current options. What about cooling options? Why the limited case choices? etc, etc, etc.

<comment><USER35> I agree - since I'm in the middle of building a machine, I would think that I would be the target market. One of the first things I noticed was that the power supplies were overpriced but the mobo combinations were entirely based on price as opposed to features. The site looks good but I think it needs more tweakability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Reminds me of Ars System Guides

I haven't read in a while but they're still doing them:

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica- system-g...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-guide- bargain-box-april-2014/)

they have decent forums too

[http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewforum.php?f=8](http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewforum.php?f=8)

A hackintosh section would be good. The one I used to build mine years ago is gone..

</comment><comment><USER37> So the business model is based on piping customers to amazon ? thats neat, however i found that amazon germany lacks the diversity that many of the big online hardware retailers have around here. Is it only stuff that amazon sells or also marketplace ?

<comment><AUTHOR> How can you suggest builds for the budget if you don't have a real store providing updated components prices? Amazon is by far the most popular online store so I think it's a safe bet using it as a de facto standard.

<comment><USER38> Did you read the question?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It seems like a beautiful tool, however not having options to pick components I have a strong preference for such as Hitachi hard drives, and Silverstone cases for instance means I can't use it to build systems I might actually want to build ever.

I agree with other comments that if you want it to appeal to hobbyists you need a pretty massive build out of options.

</comment><comment><USER40> Looks great so far!

Any thoughts into a comparison tool?

I have a PC that was pretty powerful when I built it, but has aged (5-6 years old now).

I'd love to find a way to easily compare my current system to these ones. For instance, the 'AMDicted' sounds good, but I can't easily tell if it's an upgrade from my current rig or not.

</comment><comment><USER41> It really needs a section for "Operating System". Windows isn't free, and most build-your-owns will be a Windows machine. Other appropriate options should be available (linux/bsd/etc) along with a 'no OS' options, for people who might already have a free license.

</comment><comment><USER14> This tool looks fantastic.

I recently put together a couple of machines from parts, and having not done so for many years, found it extremely difficult to do so. A tool like this, that could highlight compatible CPUs, motherboards and so on, would have been very helpful!

A few (highly specific) features that would be useful:

* For the cheaper machines, there are some very good value case/PSU combos on Amazon (and elsewhere). It would be great to include these in the list of components. I know bargain-basement PSUs have a reputation for being poor quality, but there are reliabile ones out there (I ended up buying three different cheap case+CPUs and they have all been perfect under high load)

* I found it extremely hard to discover which CPUs came with their own heatsink+fan. Any way to clarify this would be very useful.

<comment><USER42> Agreed! It's extremely impressive in terms of design + functionality.

If you're not worried about spilling secret sauce, I'd be interested in a post (or link if you've already got the information there) about what data sources you have hooked up to various metrics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> One thing that bugs me at first glance is that after I pick a preset denoted with a "starting price", when it gets to the next page with the component breakdown the starting price is $100-300 higher.

</comment><comment><USER44> May I suggest including linux compatibility for hardware? [e.g. graphics cards tends to not always support it]

</comment><comment><USER45> I really really hate browsing shops and reviews and manufacturer sites and all that, trying to find the build I want.. so a website to help with that would be nice. Unfortunately this is not it. The selection is not there, and it doesn't really allow me to set any criteria (without which I could buy anything and there'd be no problem to solve). The site also fails to provide an easy-to-glance overview of the differences between alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER25> I pretty much bounce between newegg and tigerdirect when building a machine. Once you have a case and motherboard, everything falls into place based on my budget.

I'm looking to start a new build soon. This case is speaking to me.

[http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item- det...](http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item- details.asp?EdpNo=9113957&Sku=C69-0008)

<comment><USER46> Have you tried [http://pcpartpicker.com/](http://pcpartpicker.com/) ?

I used it for my last build. You can select a variety of different vendors, browse parts compare prices, etc. It does a pretty good job doing the compatibility checks for you as well (I can do them myself, but my heart just wasn't in it this time, so it was handy).

I basically assembled my build with pcpartpicker, selected newegg, amazon and microcenter, then bundled it all up and ordered it. The microcenter one was neat because they actually found the processor I wanted at a local microcenter, for in store pickup, at a hundred bucks cheaper than anywhere else (not a technically crazy hurdle, but really convenient and pleasantly surprising).

Wondering how it compares to the site linked (I haven't looked through it yet; they could be totally different, but I'm going to check it out in a sec)

<comment><USER47> Seems like PCPP makes it much easier to filter on specific criteria (say, you only want to see 7200RPM HDDs) but the linked site seems much more user friendly, particularly for beginners.

Edit: Also, the first several builds I made to test the site out all appear to be shipping from Amazon. Not sure if this supports multiple vendors or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The hardest part for me about building a pc is making sure I get the proper RAM config, and this doesn't seem to help much. I want LOTS of ram (32gb), so let me pick a motherboard with 4 slots easily, and then make sure the selections have to be compatible. Same sort of issue with a video card. I want dual DVI for output to 2 monitors, that is more important than speed for me.

</comment><comment><USER49> A HTPC option would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER50> I wish somebody would make a similar web tool for the power users. I spend at least few days every few years browsing countless sites and forums trying to choose an optimal build when upgrading my desktop. It should satisfy at least these requirements:

1) include most of available parts, not just few trendy ones (in this site I got only 8 motherboards and 6 CPU's for AMD)

2) do price/performance analysis on fly (with referenced to sources) and unobtrusively show better candidates on this aspect in the same price range

3) show small summary on parts when clicked: exhaustive specifications, release date, current price (depending on region), available newer versions or successors (if any)

4) no ugly tablet orientated design with big pictures (and why would I care how my RAM looks like anyway?), but clean, slim list with advanced details. This site looks super ugly on my 22", full HD monitor.

I understand that the biggest problem is to maintain up-to-date database, but I would even pay few bucks to use such tool to save my time.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is awesome. I remember building my first computer at 12 years old. :) A nice fat gaming rig with dual boot to Linux. My parents bought it for me after I got all "E's for effort!"

At the time all I had to go by was a "how to build your own computer" book. I would have loved something like this.

<comment><USER52> Did your mobo have soft-jumpers?

<comment><USER15> Kids today :-) I remember upgrading a IBM compatible using DIP chips on the mother board.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Hello

I haven't used pcpartpicker, but went to have a quick look compared to yours. I can see a lot of work has gone into it. I like that you don't have to navigate away from the page.

1) Images are bit big 2) At first I struggled finding the divisions of parts. Maybe close all accordions except the first. This way it might feel more like steps. Currently all "steps" are open and options seem endless as its a page full of objects. Remember when scanning over a page, we basically first see a sillhoutte of major objects. 3) Maybe number accordions, so seems more like steps 1) Motherboard 2) CPU 4) Show important information without any action require by the user. Example some of the CPU's cannot immediately identify the Speed without reading the whole title.

Well done. Hopefully you see comments not as negative but constructive.

All of the best forwards

</comment><comment><USER54> I like it a lot, but it would be cool to hear some of the technical details. Such as:

\- Technology stack?

\- How do you keep product pricing up-to-date? Do you have a persistent process that iterates over your known product list, querying Amazon's Product Advertising API (staying within rate limits)? If that's the case would love to hear more details on language and libraries used as I'm working on something similar.

\- How do you discover new products to list?

\- What storage backend do you use to store historic pricing data? Regular relational database or something more exotic like InfluxDB?

\- Any plans on introducing new retailers besides Amazon? If so, how will you correlate products into canonical listings if the product does not have UPC information?

Things like that.

</comment><comment><USER55> I found myself looking for a 'upgrade your shiny old PC' section...

Site is appealing, but would be more useful if you could put in everything you already have, then look at which piece/pieces could be upgraded, with $/wattage/performance changes...

</comment><comment><USER56> Very nice.

I'm sure I'm not alone in having kicked around ideas for something like this for a long time.

Comparing PC builds has been an informal competition / game on various forums for many years.

I expect having more in the way of features to share, compare and feature/track builds could be very popular.

There are people who take great pride in meticulous builds. Giving them a platform to share their work would be great.

Likewise, have a look at any 'Lets Play' vid on YouTube or whatever and you'll see dozens of questions about the configuration that produced the video.

Hooking up with a popular 'caster such that they link to 'their' builds on Pangoly could be a great source of traffic.

Looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

<comment><USER57> > Comparing PC builds has been an informal competition / game on various > forums for many years.

Exactly... the good ol' days at XtremeSystems forums come to my mind... :rolleyes:

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is really cool -- now when people ask me how hard it is to build their own PC I can show them this site... Usually my answer is "it's just as easy as picking the right things, and putting round pegs into round holes"

<comment><USER59> This doesn't seem very different from PcPartPicker.com or the LogicalIncrements.com guide. Nearly every hardware review site will also have a running list of recommended builds.[0]

[0][http://www.pcper.com/hwlb](http://www.pcper.com/hwlb)

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, you mentioned similar websites but I think they have different purposes compared to Pangoly. PCPartPicker offers a huge set of components with different stores so you can find the best price available for almost anything, but it struggle with users having little building experience that are trying to find what's the current best build options for their budget. On the other hand logicalincrements offers a nice viewing experience of components tiers but it lacks building customizations. I think having another option and point of view is not harmful at all :)

<comment><USER60> Exactly, competition is great don't let anybody discourage you. I already shared your site with some friends and they all like it a lot.

<comment><USER58> +1 -- I made that comment after sending it out to a friend of mine at work

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Does anyone else remember Geek.com's value/mid/high end gaming PC build articles? Each month they'd revise each setup and I always used it as a guide when building or costing machines.

I tried to find them this morning, but didn't have luck. Did they ditch this feature?

Edit: What I liked about the feature is that despite being a "tech" and having built several PC's in the past, I can no longer keep current with hardware developments. The Geek.com guides allowed me to jump right in, without a weekend of research to get up to speed on the latest CPU's, GPU's and various hardware components.

<comment><USER59> If you're looking for something similar that's always kept up to date, check out the PcPer hardware leader board. They have a low/mid/high/dream system suggestion.

[http://www.pcper.com/hwlb](http://www.pcper.com/hwlb)

<comment><USER62> They don't update as often, but I've always liked the Ars Technica system guides, e.g.: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica- system-g...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-guide- bargain-box-april-2014)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> First of all, what is that shiny gold motherboard [0] on the front page? Secondly, I recommend that you add Amazon reviews as another feature - <USER2> like price and performance. Also, I think you should add in some kind of metric for mice and keyboards - # of buttons, DPI, activation weight, etc. Finally, I really like the UI of your site. Although it may not be as feature- rich as some competitors, it seems many HNers have forgotten the importance of a good design.

[0] [http://pangoly.com/images/main-mb1.png](http://pangoly.com/images/main- mb1.png)

<comment><USER64> > First of all, what is that shiny gold motherboard [0] on the front page?

It's the ASUS Z87 Deluxe ([http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87DELUXE/](http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87DELUXE/))

<comment><USER63> THANK YOU! That was driving me insane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Suggestion: on the starting page, the "Highlights" for each starting configuration include both technical details ("AMD APU A6/A8 Series Dual/Quad Core") and a blurb describing what this configuration is good for ("Ideal for browsing the Internet, watching movies and chatting"). Furthermore, the latter always comes last on the list. I think that the blurb should come first, and that it shouldn't be part of the "checklist", but should rather be in highlighted near the top somewhere (maybe above or below the price).

</comment><comment><USER66> Love the idea. A maybe tangential question for you or sites like yours...

So this might be all "tyranny of choice". But what is the difference between certain parts? Like if there are two motherboards and both of them cost ballpark $200 and support the same mainstream inputs/components, how do I know which one to choose?

It's moments like those that paralyze me from taking advantage of these services. Or why I like buying Apple where I don't really have a choice (implicit to the fact that I don't care which motherboard I'm getting other than Apple-curated).

</comment><comment><USER67> This teaches a very good lesson I'll never forget. I have to invest more of my idle time on my side projects. I bought a domain to do this but never got around to finish it. Wonderful execution. Kudos.

</comment><comment><USER68> Maybe it's just me, but I don't really care how my motherboard looks like. Means: I don't need to see those product photos, they could make space for more important information.

</comment><comment><USER69> This is perfectly timed (for me) as I plan to build a gaming computer soon. I've lived off a laptop and an older desktop for a bunch of years but have money sitting saved for a new desktop.

Overall, I really like the site rating and the rational pros/cons between the different options.

The description of the AMD gamer computer made me realize there were more options than three, I didn't intuitively realize I could scroll down for more computer builds at first. That is probably more a me problem than a mass problem, however.

</comment><comment><USER70> I would like to offer some critical feedback. I just took a look at PcPartPicker and it seems so much better.

On my monitor I can see at most 9 components at a time on your site. On PcPartPicker its about 28. I don't see the images serving any purpose. Why should I look at an image of the processor's box? What information does it give me?

I also recommend the book Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It's in the YC library and its fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'd prefer to be able to have motherboards suggestions based on requested features. Like, so many USB ports, SATA ports and this socket for AMD CPU.

</comment><comment><USER35> I first hit this on mobile and it was just about unusable. I couldn't find out how to switch over to the desktop version and had to wait until I was at a desktop to take a look.

Other than the mobile issues, it's a nice idea and pretty clean looking site. I'd reduce the images in size, especially the gigantic brand logos scrolling across the bottom. Make it more of a dashboard and less like a slideshow.

</comment><comment><USER72> I'd be interested in a service such as this for building custom servers. I currently custom design and pay to have them built for my company.

<comment><USER73> Serious question: why? I would think that for servers, the lower cost and easier replaceability of buying standardized machines from an OEM would outweigh any benefits you could get from hand-selecting components.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> In the UK there has existed for several years something almost exactly like this in the form of [PC Specialist][0]. Well worth checking out and in my experience more pleasant to interact with than this website (a simpler interface, without all the unnecessarily huge images and so on).

[0]: [http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/](http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER75> It would be nice if after configuring a pc, I could just copy the URL and send it to someone and have it display the pc I had configured.

Still, cool site!

</comment><comment><USER76> Ditch the notices/warnings. Eg:

      > Don't worry about hardware compatibility, the following components are safe to be used in the same PC build.

It looks like an error, which it isn't. Instead, convey this in the UI--eg a small "100% compatible" / "compatibility guarantee" badge next to each product.

</comment><comment><USER77> The most daunting part of building a custom computer is usually validation of the component quality and, more importantly, how they'll wind up working together.

A rating / review of component selection by power-users is all that's missing here for me.

Beyond that this is brilliant and simple - I'm surprised that NewEgg doesn't offer something like this.

</comment><comment><USER78> I find it unfortunate that I can't completely remove the graphics card from the mid-range system, and I'm not allowed to select a SSD for it either. If I could do those things I would be able to compare this site directly to the PC I built yesterday.

Also I notice that you're missing estimated tax, shipping, and a Windows license from the price.

</comment><comment><USER79> #1 Almost all games are created by PC, and port to console, not the other way around.

#2 Almost all games can play on PC, maybe just with lower setting.

#3 PC games are for people who like to discover => example how someone found out how to enable watch dog's E3 graph setting. But you have no control over console.

#4 Almost all console games are created by Pc, oh wait.

</comment><comment><USER80> Feature request: I want to buy a new gaming machine but the sticker shock is a little much right now. Is it possible to save my configuration and get price alerts when a component goes on sale? Bonus points: could I configure multiple acceptable components and get an alert when any of those products goes on sale?

</comment><comment><USER81> It's cool :-) I've also been working on a similar project [0]. A side project, started around an year ago. Initially it was focused primarily on Indian users, now, I'm adding support for other currencies as well.

[0] [http://assembleyourpc.net](http://assembleyourpc.net)

</comment><comment><USER82> Missing the new devils' canyon intel CPUs. If I were building a PC right now, it would use an i5-4690K.

</comment><comment><USER83> A well-executed and beautiful site, but it would be nice to have Xeon options for the professional builds.

</comment><comment><USER84> Having two extra configurations for Linux gamers (open source and proprietary) would be pretty cool!

</comment><comment><USER85> The site looks great, but the "Learn" section is badly in need of some copy editing. Subject/verb pluralization disagreement and odd grammatical structure (to a native English speaker, many of the sentences sound awkward) are the biggest issues.

</comment><comment><USER86> I've been looking for a site like this for a while. The only issue I had was picking the $605 configuration and wanting 16 gig of memory and blue ray. What you initially choose sometimes limits capacity later, though not with hard drives.

<comment><USER87> Are you familiar with [http://pcpartpicker.com](http://pcpartpicker.com)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Really neat! I'd like to see something where I could say "I want 32GB of RAM" and that would constrain my motherboard choices, for example. I could also see the same kind of thing working with power supplies and video cards.

</comment><comment><USER89> Accessories should be part of the options. You need cables for example to connect the HDs to the MB, DVI adapters for older monitors, etc. Some people may have a spare one, while others will have to make an additional trip to the store.

<comment><USER59> SATA cables are included with the motherboard, and DVI adapters are included with the video card. Neither of those should be an expected purchase when building a new machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice site! Some suggestions:

* Allow users to specify a form factor (like HTPC, μATX, mini ATX, ATX, ...) and filter components like mainboard and case by this.

* Allow users to use a different Amazon site for pricing info (.de/.fr would be nice for me personally)

<comment><USER90> Agreed on the form factor filter. I'm currently planning out a high-powered mATX gaming/dev machine, but this site as it currently functions wouldn't let me do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> How does this compare to pcpartpicker? I don't see any option to use euros as the currency without getting an italian user interface. Are the prices at all localized, if so, do you have plans to support any other countries?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, more countries and localizations are on their way.

<comment><USER91> Great. Looking forward for Dutch prices, that would be great. FYI an entire translation seems unnecessary, and in my experience (at least with dutch peole) most will prefer an english interface though that is usually because translations are so bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> Incase you were unaware, these guys ([http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc](http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc)) _are_ your target audience. And your main competitor is pcpartpicker

</comment><comment><USER93> Looks great, but I spent forever trying to figure out why clicking the tiles didn't do anything. I finally found that _touching_ the tiles works.

I'm on a windows 8 touchscreen laptop, running the latest version of chrome.

</comment><comment><USER94> Why no info on multi-processor systems? Google provides their chrome engineers with 16 core, 64gig systems. Dreamworks provides even larger machines. So anything labeled "Expert" seems to need better options

<comment><USER25> I don't work for google, but I wouldn't build specific machines but instead spin up a VM as needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> I would really like to to tweak the price. I.E. get a suggestion what i could get for 50 pounds more. Also I can't figure out how to select "none" for components. I.e. Most people already have a case.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like the design, but I would like a better overview when picking motherboards. Perhaps include number of PCI-E slots, number of USB slots, type of audio built in, type of video built in, that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER96> I think the only thing missing here are the CPU coolers. Edit: Nevermind, found them. :)

Otherwise it looks like a cool way to pick a build, especially since it's been so long since I have looked into building a desktop.

</comment><comment><USER97> Tangential offshoot topic: So for my soon to arrive Oculus Rift, what's the cheapest PC I can build with this site? Could i start with the cheapest option and just add a beefy graphics card?

</comment><comment><USER98> Not enough choices in my opinion. If it were to implement close to the amount of hardware choices as PCPartPicker then it would be very practical. The site layout and design is very nice though.

</comment><comment><USER99> This is really cool. Two things I find vital when I'm shopping for components are reviews and brands. It'd be nice to filter based on Newegg reviews or select a certain set of brands.

</comment><comment><USER100> Wow, it's been so long since I've built a desktop I had to look up APU. (a CPU that does more than just central processing, possible a GPU on the same chip)

</comment><comment><USER101> This is really really awesome and I'm gonna need something like this in the coming months. Only bad thing is that I need the price in € as I live in France.

</comment><comment><USER102> Not sure if it would be possible to add the price for a similar configured PC from the major pc vendor sites like HP, Lenovo,Dell etc for comparison purposes.

</comment><comment><USER103> This is a really cool tool for beginners or just shopping around to get the best deal. I def would have appreciated this when I first started out.

</comment><comment><USER104> Buying a new PC these week, started with the custom selection and went to choose the motherboard (Asus Maximus VI) it wasn't there, gave up.

</comment><comment><USER105> Nice work, really like the UI, much simpler to use than other tools.

It'd be nice if you could add some mini-itx options for HPTC and/or Steam Machine.

</comment><comment><USER106> Bummer, I already have the stuff they have under "Pro" in my desktop and my laptop, and I think it is still too slow :-/

</comment><comment><USER107> Looks good, I'll be putting together a lab computer pretty soon, and will give this a shot for comparing possible configurations.

</comment><comment><USER108> failed for my first attempt: how can't i customize my dual-socket opteron 64Gb RAM workstation ?... ( mobo ASUS KGPE-d16 )

</comment><comment><USER109> Cool project - Wish I could remove some of the mandatory components - I could not figure out a way to remove the hard drive.

<comment><USER110> no need to. remove it from Amazon cart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> Really cool. How do you browse shared builds?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here: [http://pangoly.com/en/build/list](http://pangoly.com/en/build/list)

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> I'd really like to see some Mini-ITX/Micro-ATX choices on there for people that want to build smaller systems.

</comment><comment><USER113> Always dreamed of a site like this when I was a kid, still do, but now it looks like it's finally here! Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER114> Very well built. Kudos to the founders. Also should add other options like home media centers and other stuff.

</comment><comment><USER115> Nice service for those of us who find it hard to follow the ever changing hardware landscape. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER116> For Power Supplies what is "80Plus Bronze"?

Why isn't the Power listed in the on hover dropdown?

<comment><USER59> 80+ Bronze is a certification of power efficiency. It's really the minimum quality you should be buying. Some people might prefer 80+ Silver, Gold, and Platinum rated PSUs, but they are not generally worth the slightly improved efficiency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> With any mild usage these guys are looking to make a killing in Amazon affiliate earnings.

</comment><comment><USER118> I can't assemble an i3 with 16 GB of RAM and no graphics card. Some work is needed.

</comment><comment><USER119> Thats a really nice way tool to generate income from amazon referrals. :)

</comment><comment><USER120> This looks really cool.

I haven't built my own PC for a number of years and probably wouldn't consider it any more to be honest (MacBook FTW). I will however recommend this to anyone who does ask me about self-builds :)

<comment><USER121> Modern laptops have been adequate for most tasks for quite some time (T61 ftw, personally). On the other hand, if you are CPU/GPU/RAM limited (eg rendering..), then you will still greatly benefit from the additional power a desktop build will bring. And it's refreshing to see the continuing progress of stats, while laptops have seemingly stagnated (6 cores and 64GiB RAM? Nifty!).

OP, I think you have a ways to go to match the utility of pcpartpicker. But if you want a possible leg-up on them, then look into supporting workstation builds with Xeon/Cxxx/ECC (they don't really cost more than comparable "consumer" builds, and if you value stability more than overclocking, they make a lot of sense). Niches can be powerful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER122> What does this do that PC Part Picker can't?

</comment><comment><USER123> DesktopHound.com circa 2008 did the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER124> Am about to buy/build PC right now. It will be a six-core socket 2011 CPU with a couple of 780s. All the CPUs are little 1150s. Guess I'm not your target audience?

</comment><comment><USER125> Works automagically for Canada, awesome

</comment><comment><USER126> very nice site. operating system options are limited to windows though.

</comment><comment><USER127> Wow, this is really neat!

</comment><comment><USER128> s/Wattage/Power Usage/?

</comment><comment><USER129> completely rip off!

</comment><comment><USER130> Does anyone use a PC? Most use a Macbook.</comment>


'Run, Hide, Fight' Is Not How Our Brains Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opinion/sunday/run-hide-fight-is-not-how-our-brains-work.html <comment><USER2> I'm tired of the media (NYT in particular) acting like mass shootings are actually a significant danger in the USA today.

Going back to 2010, there have been 182 fatalities[1] in the United States due to mass shootings.

In the same amount of time, there have been about 158 fatalities due to being struck by lightning.[2]

In 2013 alone, there were 611,105 fatalities due to heart disease and 56,979 due to influenza and pneumonia.[3] The stats are a bit out of date, but from 2005-2009, ~3,500 people drowned (in "non-boating accidents") each year.[4]

If you're worried about yourself or a loved one dying, don't worry about dying in a mass shooting. It's about as likely as being struck by lightning.

[1]: [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass- shootings-m...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings- mother-jones-full-data)

[2]: [http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/fatalities.shtml](http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/fatalities.shtml)

[3]: [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of- death.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm)

[4]: [http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water- Safety/wa...](http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water- Safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html)

<comment><USER3> You are technically correct. However:

* Fatalities due to being struck by lightning are largely avoidable by educating oneself on how to behave around a lightning storm. [http://hikingdude.com/hiking-lightning.php](http://hikingdude.com/hiking-lightning.php)

* Fatalities due to illnesses occur mostly in old people, after the child bearing years. It's much easier to cope with the death of a parent than it is with the death of a child.

For young people that don't engage in reckless behavior, you have not refuted that mass shooting are unfortunately a comparatively large risk.

<comment><USER2> I didn't do quite as much research for this one, but here's CDC's "leading causes of death" table for 2013.[1]

#1 for 25-34: unintentional injury with 16,209 deaths.

#2 for 25-34: suicide, 6,348 deaths (but if you don't engage in risky behavior, you wouldn't commit suicide, right?)

#3 for 25-34, homicide, 4,236 deaths - the vast majority of these are _not_ in mass-shooting incidents, of course.

#4 is cancer (3,673 deaths) and #5 is heart disease (3,258 deaths).

By the way, for felony homicides, the majority (69.1%) are perpetrated against a single victim[2].

[1] (PDF warning): [http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_deat...](http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_death_by_age_group_2013-a.pdf)

[2]: [https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2011/...](https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We don't instruct people on how to leave a burning building, we conduct fire drills. Skills can only be applied under stress if they are ingrained through repetitive practice, like a martial artist performing kata.

If we want people to react well in extreme situations, it's not enough to simply tell them what to do; we must give them practical experience to replace their instincts with better instincts.

Israel provides this sort of training for their citizens. The question we have to ask is whether such training would be appropriate for our societies.

<comment><USER5> You and the NY Times article are offering up the same thing to defend against active shooters: take personal responsibility for your safety.

But why is it that of all the nations in the civilized world only in the US do the nutjobs go on armed rampages? Why is the origin of nutcases shooting with firearms taken as a given? In the article their existence is taken as an accepted fact; it just talks about how to protect oneself from them.

How about reducing the incidence of people running amok with guns, either by restricting guns or reducing whatever precipitates the killing spree? I'm frankly sick of "personal responsibility", it's usually a sign of someone else failing to do their job.

<comment><USER6> > But why is it that of all the nations in the civilized world only in the US > do the nutjobs go on armed rampages?

I was not aware that Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany, and company were part of the United States.

> Why is the origin of nutcases shooting with firearms taken as a given? In > the article their existence is taken as an accepted fact; it just talks > about how to protect oneself from them.

You've reached a strange conclusion here. Mass shootings (and other types of mass killings) happpen. Taking responsibility for your personal safety is simply prudent. You, individually, can probably not prevent all or even one mass shooting from occuring (perhaps, if you are very lucky, you could stop ONE mass shooting in your lifetime). You can, however, make sure you are prepared to keep yourself safe from mass shootings and other dangerous situations.

The fact is, we haven't taken a serious look at the causes of mass shootings. It's a difficult problem with no clear solutions.

Gun control advocates muddy the waters further by blaming the attacks on the availability of guns, even though there is ample evidence that guns only turn the phrase "mass killing" into the phrase "mass shooting". The term "mass shooting" itself is largely political. We don't talk about "mass burnings" when people are killed with arson or "mass poisonings" when people are attack with poison gas.

<comment><USER7> > there is ample evidence that guns only turn the phrase "mass killing" into > the phrase "mass shooting".

Not so sure about that. Did you hear about the following? A crazy guy with a knife might kill or seriously would a handful of people at most. With a gun the number of deaths is likely to be much higher.

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/05/suspect- custo...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/05/suspect-custody- after-stabbing-leytonstone-london-underground-station)

>We don't talk about "mass burnings" when people are killed with arson or "mass poisonings" when people are attack with poison gas.

The phrase "mass poisoning" is in fact used, but in accord with the usual meaning of "poisoning" tends to be restricted to cases where poison was introduced into food or water. "Mass burning" is not used simply because English does not typically use the noun "burning" to refer to deaths by burning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the uk, the police have been using a similar message but with a very different outcome. Run, hide, tell is the procedure that the police want the public react in. The idea being is that a coordinated response from the police is much better than having members of the public attempting to deal with the situation themselves. Obviously the circumstances are different to the USA as the vast majority of the public don't have access to weapons, and would not have the means to fight back. But I do believe this approach is far less terrorising than asking members of the public to always be prepared to fight

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35140754](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35140754)

</comment><comment><USER9> Autonomic conditioning. Have a simple playbook in your mind of simple movement responses.. perhaps side steps, while to decide what to do next and which direction to go. The goal being to get moving automatically without "thinking", and then restart the higher order thinking as fast as possible.

</comment><comment><USER10> Run, Hide, Fight, is true in stress situations.

In normal situations the human mind is a lot more complex. But in stress situations, it's actually a good description of a humans capabilities.

<comment><USER11> Did you read the article?</comment></comment>


Diesel and petrol ban should come much faster, say MPs - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45899580 <comment><USER2> I have a hard time imagining how somebody could be opposed to this and pretend they have anything but selfish motivations.

Emissions kill people. They kill the elderly. They kill people with asthma. They give people cancer. Your car is an instrument of death even if you don't hit anyone. Parts of the UK have appallingly bad air quality (by regional standards; obviously it's not Beijing).

People are dying en masse but because you can't see it and say "my car was the one that killed them" most people just. don't. care.

Also the majority of trips are short enough to be done via bike or ebike if you give people safe routes to do so, something the UK has been completely unwilling to do.

<comment><USER3> You fix things by working from the top of highest offenders. Something tells me it's not the average people.

<comment><USER2> Indeed - so focusing on large companies selling devices causing massive destruction makes perfect sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a hard time imagining an electric car working for me. There are two charging points within a 2-mile radius and I cannot park within about 15 meters of my house so it is just impossible to charge one.

Hydrogen or something where I can still go to a "filling station" might work. Right now I view electric cars as a tax break for anyone lucky/rich enough to have a driveway.

This might all change in a few years but I doubt there will ever be enough charging points on local roads.

<comment><USER5> Before there were petrol stations everywhere, it would have been hard to imagine a car working better than a horse.

And yet here we are.

<comment><USER6> But you still can't put the cart before the horse. Tax people who don't switch to a viable, cleaner alternative from dinosaur-burning vehicles, but not before you've made that alternative viable in the first place. Much (most?) of the UK is not ready for full switchover yet.

<comment><USER7> 2032 is still 14 years away which is a long time. And according to the article it's even then just about banning the sale of new vehicles. This should be completely doable if the UK puts half a mind to it.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately the UK does not have half a mind to spare, and won't for a few years at least. One of the less noticable side-effects of Brexit is that it totally dominates the entire political landscape, to the exclusion of other issues.

In a news magazine I read[1], they had an infographic where they measured the average number of comments below articles on a number of unrelated topics it took for Brexit to be mentioned. The figures were mostly below 10 (and look at me, bringing up Brexit in _this_ unrelated issue!)

1: [https://www.slow- journalism.com/infographics/culture/infogra...](https://www.slow- journalism.com/infographics/culture/infographic-can-british-people-talk-about- anything-other-than-brexit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not raise tax instead of banning?

You can tax cars and fuel. You can make a predictable scheme for the next 20 years (i.e. fuel will raise about 4% per year,...) This gives the economy time to adopt.

But please no exceptions.

<comment><USER6> Because this disproportionally affects people who have no other alternative. Rich city people can switch to electric cars without changing habits that much, there are charging points everywhere and they're building lots more all the time.

Go to Cornwall though and it's a _very_ different picture. You need to get all these more remote regions as wired up as central London _before_ introducing any taxation, or make exceptions while you're building the infra.

<comment><USER9> You could build up e.g. Cornwall (through subsidy) with the revenue from the tax.

<comment><USER6> You could, but people would be pissed about being taxed to pay for something they don't have yet (and hence have no way to avoid the tax). While it might be a sensible strategy for raising the money it would be political suicide.

<comment><USER8> So how are they better of by banning cars in 10 or 20 years?

Communities can also take loans to build out infrastructure now and pay with the transition tax levied a bit later.

As too political suicide, there are three types of voters:

a) those that believe petrol cars should be banned

b) those that do not want to give up their cars ever

c) those that think cars should be banned but not for them now.

Therefore:

a) should be happy with an immediate tax ladder as it creates incentive to move now

b) will never be happy.

c) if that is the majority of your voters it's still better to have a a gradual change now then a sudden change in the future. They could just overturn your decision in the future just before the planned sudden change.

If MPs urge for a change that is more than one election away they are hypocrites and shouldn't be MPs.

Obviously some changes take a long time to bear fruits, but the change has to be immediate and gradual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Electric cars seems like such an obvious answer for so many issues, but still outside of US it is pretty much impossible to find a reliable and affordable options.

<comment><USER11> Rest of the world is doing alright thanks.

Ioniq, Kone, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, BMW i3, e-up, e-golf etc etc.

You can even get iPace or the e-tron will also be out next year.

Some I've listed are more expensive than others, but you cannot possibly suggest the Renault Zoe or Nissan Leaf aren't affordable or reliable.

The model 3 will be here soon too, who knows what will be here in 14 years!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> MPs who don't understand the power distribution logistics and lack of capacity problems we have here...

<comment><USER13> This is touted out so much but switching cars over to EVs would require the grid to be increased less than 50% as EVs use about 30% the energy of a combustion engine. Given that most cars will be charged over night the reality is that it would be less than this.

<comment><USER14> Currently all BEVs charge at their maximum rate the moment they are connected to the charger. Which almost always happens in late afternoon or early evening. I.e. the exact time when the energy usage is at a peak already. While there are many ideas regarding how this load can be pushed into the dead of night, nothing concrete has even been proposed, yet. So I wouldn't dismiss this issue that quickly, especially when we are talking about a (theoretical) rapid adoption of BEVs.

<comment><USER15> > Currently all BEVs charge at their maximum rate the moment they are > connected to the charger.

This is not remotely close to true. Most BEVs have timed and/or location aware charging. My own Spark EV for example (a very low end BEV) can be scheduled to charge during certain hours each day of the week. I use this because our electric utility has lower rates from 11PM until 7AM. So no matter when I plug it, the car waits for the cheap electric rate period.

<comment><USER14> "Can" and "does" are not the same, though.

<comment><USER15> Well, mine both can and does because the utility makes it worth while. Your original claim was "all". Generally this problem is easily solved by adjusting pricing to encourage the desired charge times. Certainly there may be a few holdouts who don't take advantage, but a few is not a problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dear Adobe - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudomatic.com/saas-industry-news/dear-adobe/ <comment><USER2> Dear Adobe... stop making shoddy software and then charging an arm and a leg for it. Pixelmator FTW.

<comment><USER3> I bought Pixelmator when it was released. It had a lot of issues in the early days and IIRC their interaction with the community was so poor that people repeatedly questioned whether it had been abandoned.

Fast forward to now and they're regularly putting out solid updates with good communication via the blog. I recommend the application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That little menu bar thing hanging out in the middle of my text as I scroll down is really annoying. I lose too much real estate to menu bars / title bars / tabs already. Don't add a floating menu bar 20 pixels below that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know. We need to change the blog look+feel. It seemed like a cool look/feel at first, but it's actually pretty annoying.

<comment><USER4> This is (part of) why I love HN.

Loved your "some gaps to fill" article, btw.

I still think the underlying limit, though, is the lack of a federated identity management system. Certainly oAuth is a huge step in the right direction, and avoids many of the problems of OpenID. But fundamentally, desktop applications are "single sign on".

Imagine if you had to log in again to open office productivity software, then log in again to open a web browser, then log in a third time to launch your music player, and once more to balance your checkbook.

Clearly SOME people are willing to do some degree of multiple sign-on (Logging in to gmail, then Pandora, and again to open Mint, for instance.) But until these context transitions are much smoother, there will continue to be blocks in adoption even if everything else you address is fixed.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you :). I feel like Apple may release some HTML5 tools with xcode at WWDC after re-reading steve's letter. It might end up filling some of the gaps.

Identity is a huge problem. Not only for authentication, but for de- authentication as well. What if you fire someone and want to delete all their accounts you have for them on your SaaS apps? You have to deactivate each account manually: (basecamp, salesforce, wufoo, dropbox, and probably 5 others).

<http://www.onelogin.com/> is doing something interesting in this space.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that linkup!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How great would it be if I could "Save As> HTML5" from adobe's products? Bummer authorinng for the iPhone will no longer be an option, but why build native apps when you will be able to do most of it on the web?

<comment><USER6> Adobe could buy PhoneGap and integrate their developer tools in the way that you can create HTML5 apps and "package" them to run as native ones on any smartphone (iPhone OS, Andorid, WebOS etc.).

<comment><USER5> Wow just checked out phonegap <http://www.phonegap.com/> looks pretty cool. Apps/Frameworks like this will help mobile web apps explode. Also, an easy solution to port existing web apps and make them optimized for mobile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Absolutely, 100%, spot on. Adobe, please turn your attention to making great HTML5 authoring tools.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does this page do some funky interpretation of the arrow keys? As soon as I press Cursor Down to advance, the page scrolls down all the way in an uncontrollable, completely non-standard manner, and not what I expect. It makes the site unusable.

<comment><USER9> Works fine for me - Chrome on Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nobody pays for the flash player, but maybe adobe makes a few dollars off it's $4500 Flash Media Server licenses?

I'm sure Adobe is cool with killing that income stream since you wrote them this nice letter though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been trying to find stats on how much adobe makes off the flash media server product. Not sure on the long term viability of FMS anyway due to the adoption of HTML5 video.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, if it's not in their quarterly reports, it's probably secret. I know youtube uses a "pseudostreaming" trick, so they don't have to pay for FMS, and now there is also the Wowza alternative, which is cheaper.

I honestly think that adobe flash video will be pervasive much longer than you might think. Do you know how to send a live video stream in HTML5, in case you wanted to make the HTML5 analog of chatroulette? Neither does anyone else.

You won't see justin.tv switching from flash any time soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> It will take a while for it to completely go away. It may never fully go away.

Livestreaming is certainly one of those use cases that will be using flash for a while. It's beyond my area of expertise, but I think someone mentioned websockets in HTML5 might make it doable. That right there is a really big potential idea. Would love to see it built.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Your entry adds nothing new, however given that you bring it up, I have to remark on how shocking it is that seemingly intelligent people can rationalize such intense hypocrisy.

If Flash is a no go because of HTML5, why does the iPhone app market exist?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is more about a debate for the web, rather than the iPhone app market. Adobe makes tools that empower web developers. To really empower the next generation of web apps, they should focus on HTML5 rather than flash. As far as the iPhone goes: Things like appcelerator have been ok'd by apple. If Adobe bought a company like them and used that as an easier way to produce iPhone apps through CS6(?) it would be fine.

<comment><USER11> >This is more about a debate for the web

That's a cheap, unsupported distraction.

The no-Flash in the browser on the iPhone/iPad/whatever is entirely and absolutely Apple's choice, and no one can make that choice for them. They can argue benefits/detriments, but no one can make Apple pollute their platform against their will.

That is debate number 1.

The debate now has NOTHING to do with the web (and it's honestly quite ludicrous to claim that it does), but instead is Apple deciding to rewrite the rules of the app market just to exclude certain manners of developing software.

Using the web to blanket that argument as well is, quite honestly, offensive propaganda.

If Steve said "We're implementing new quality rules to ascertain the quality of apps by a panel of testers, and we're demanding that all apps use features {X} {Y} and {Z}", that would be one thing. That isn't what they did. Instead they said "Due to the fact that a lot of very gullible, very silly people will accept out ridiculously inaccurate correlation, we're blanket eliminating a broad realm of technology choices just to thwart a competitor".

Unless you work for Apple you should not be embracing that. It is a grievous offense to intelligence.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your top 5 questions to ask your prospective new employer? - <AUTHOR> As a software developer (or generally ) what 5 questions would you ask your prospective employer during the interview stage, in order to test your fit inside that company, good/bad practices, company ethics and so on? <comment><USER2> 1\. What are the biggest challenges you're dealing with on the technical side right now? \- is this going to be technically interesting? \- something you can learn from? \- are they doing super boring things or using super crappy tech?

2\. Where do you see the $(team you're interviewing for) in 2 years? \- do they respect the team or are they looked at as an annoying expense? \- do they talk about training opportunities, growth, etc?

3\. What is your favorite aspect of working here? \- If it's a stock bullshit answer, I dig more. \- If they duck it, that's a smell. \- If they answer honestly, then that's a really valuable datapoint.

4\. Every company is carrying some amount of technical debt -- what's the tech debt situation here? \- how much they think there is \- what they're doing about it

5\. How would you describe the culture and if/how it is maintained?

5a. Is there an active mentoring strategy? What does that look like?

I made a video about this a while back with a few more questions, and some people left useful comments on it with their own experiences/additions: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9XPTay-x8g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9XPTay-x8g)

<comment><USER3> what bespoke_engnr said, and also

1) If you could change one thing about this place by waving a magic wand, what would it be? (ties in with above but more open ended)

2) Who do you see as your competition?

3) What do you hope to gain by hiring somebody?

4) Why isn't this role being filled from within the company?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would and have asked: Given two employees, employee A who works eight hours/day and produces X units of work and employee B who only works four hours/day but produces 2X units of work, which one would you prefer assuming both A and B are paid the same salary?

If they don't answer the question, or answers that they prefer employee A, or claims that the scenario is unrealistic because one developer can't be four times as productive as another, then I will probably not be a good company fit.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't have 5 questions, but I have one that I always, always ask: what's your story? The reason is, you want to dig deeper into the human inside. Don't let them focus the answer on the "shallow" story, but rather on what drives them, why they do what they do, why they started this company, how did they overcome challenges, and so on. Well, now I guess you have about 5 questions =)</comment>


Ask HN: Book suggestions for mindful information consumption - <AUTHOR> I just finished reading [The Information Diet](https://www.amazon.com/Information-Diet-Case-Conscious-Comsumption/dp/1491933399), and I was left a little confused and disappointed. I felt like it was marketed as a book for the average person looking to be more mindful about their information/media consumption, however, it was more about challenging people to look at both sides of the US political spectrum and to get more involved in local politics.<p>So, with that, any suggestions for books along the lines of being more intentional about the information/media we consume? It's a difficult thing to do in this day and age, but as I'm now a parent, I want to learn to be better at this, and model this for more children as well. <comment><USER2> Pound's ABC of Reading[0] has been popular since its publication. I would inlcude Adler's How to Read a Book[1] as well. While these focus on literature, I think that there is a lot of overlap in technical and CS based writing. The primary disctinction would be that the later would be repeatable or implemented by the reader.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_of_Reading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_of_Reading) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book)

<comment><AUTHOR> These seem to be more about how to read poetry and literature critically. I guess I'm looking more along the lines cutting back how much information I take in, and choosing better what information to take in.</comment></comment>