Braces Have Made Snoring a Modern Health Problem - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us//blog/braces-have-made-snoring-a-modern-health-problem <comment><USER2> The article says that jaws got smaller due to agriculture making food softer, and this evolutionary change causes both snoring and crooked teeth, which in turn braces are a bandaid for. The point made in the heading isn't really discussed except in a parenthetical ("braces may also make this worse"). Baity headline.

<comment><USER3> what was really surprising was that they made the connection that modern day hunter gathers do not have the teeth problems we have, but then jumped to stating our jaws evolved smaller faces/jaws.

Evidence does not seem to coincide with that hypothesis, and even their statements are contradictory. There is growing evidence that because we eat soft food as children now, our jaws do not grow to their evolutionary designed size.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. "Evolution" would imply that humans with bigger jaws were somehow disadvantaged and died before they could pass on their genes. Really bad article.

<comment><USER5> I don't have an opinion on whether the subject is a case of gene selection or gene expression, but your binary caricature of evolution is misleading. A trait can be weened from the gene pool simply because it costs energy without providing a benefit, causing those with that trait to underperform compared to those without it. Even if individuals are living and passing on their genes, a trait might fade from the gene pool over time because competitors are able to claim a bigger proportion of resources, reproducing quicker and more often.

The human appendix is like that: it isn't directly harmful, but it's shrunk simply because it's a waste of energy.

<comment><USER6> The point is the trait hasn't been lost at all. If people with this problem had a kid and fed them hard foods from the get go then, supposedly, they would grow the larger jaw and not have the problem with cramped teeth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems pretty tenuous. As the article alludes to, snoring is considered a key symptom of obstructive sleep apnea. As far as I know, the strongest known independent risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea is neck circumference. Obesity has a larger raw correlation, but that's because it's both a cause and a symptom (sleep disruption impedes physical activity and alters metabolism and appetite); with neck circumference the correlation is still present even when it's measured at birth.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't seem so tenuous to me.

The entire working mechanism behind snoring is predicated on the airway narrowing enough to vibrate, producing sound.

As you know, obstructive sleep apnea is a condition where the airway narrows so much that it collapses, causing cessation of breathing.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what your objection is. What I find tenuous is the link between snoring/apnea and jaw size, not the link between snoring and apnea.

<comment><USER8> Assuming the link between snoring/apnea and jaw size -- not the link between snoring and apnea -- is actually what you originally found tenuous, consider that the most effective surgical treatment for OSA: the maxillomandibular advancement (MMA) with 80% to >90% success rate wrt some measure of a "successful" outcome. MMA is a procedure that literally increases the jaw size by moving the jaw forward, which enlarges the airways.

FWIW, I've spent a lot of time researching OSA since I've had severe sleep apnea (AHI ~30 apneas/hour) since childhood. Some startup really needs to figure out a more comfortable way of treating sleep apnea than CPAP or highly invasive (and $100k not-covered-by-insurance) jaw surgery...

<comment><USER7> I'd never heard of this procedure, just the approach of using a dental appliance to advance the jaw, with poor success rate (something like 20%). The only surgery I've seen widely referenced is turbinate reduction, which supposedly also has a < 50% success rate in treating OSA. I'm surprised I'd never heard of MMA since it apparently does have a very good success rate even without diluting the analysis with practically meaningless effect sizes (mean AHI reduction of 47.8 in a recent meta-analysis [1]).

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26606321](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26606321)

<comment><USER8> Do you have a reference RE poor success rate of mandibular advancement dental appliance? I'm curious because I also had the same poor result when I tried one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know about > 100 years ago, but I strongly suspect that the reason snoring is more common now than it was in the early- and mid-20th-century is because it's so much less common now to have one's tonsils taken out. In my grandparents' and parents' generations, it was typically a standard practice, at least in the places where they lived.

I'm well within the "healthy weight" band, but I had sleep apnea until I was 25. I was finally able to find a doctor who was willing to take out my tonsils after years of problems with them, and got amazingly improved sleep as a side- effect.

<comment><USER10> I had my tonsils out a decade ago and I still snore and wake myself up all the time. For me, it seems that weight has more to do with snoring than my tonsils did. When I'm thinner, I don't snore. When I let myself go, I do.

<comment><USER11> Considering how increasingly important sleep is, that sounds like a pretty good reason for you to get back into shape.

<comment><USER10> It's not by choice. I partially crippled myself in an accident and am still recovering. I had to learn to walk again and I still cannot lift anything with my left arm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had the idea of using my tongue to simulate the forces of braces. Did you know the tongue should rest against the roof of the mouth? No dentist or ortho consult ever mentioned that one but one little web page did. It's working, my teeth fit together better and jw shape is changing, after at least 8-12 months. I'm keeping photos for record. I found out my fundamental problem is an obvious tongue tie... instead of fixing that, the dentist took his cut and extracted my top molars due to 'crowding'... technically true, of course. But you can uncrowd them yourself.

Pretty much everything dentistry is a scam, er, free market capitalist endeavor with A monopoly... it's all on the Internet. Is saying this illegal? I'm not a dentist, this is for comedic relief... Fruitarian warrior diet is the only way (eat mostly fruit, with some veggie based food like Huel for mass building). I doubt I'll ever go to a dentist again, except to fix problems they've already created if I can't avoid it (non-interventialist).

<comment><USER13> This sounds really interesting if true but also sounds somewhat dubious, would you be able to provide any links to find out more about what you're talking about or any images of the jaw growth?

<comment><USER14> My dentist actually recommended using the tongue after my braces was removed, to avoid regression. She said it was a good way of applying the same pressure.

<comment><USER15> How much pressure exactly? How is it sustained?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ridiculously absent is the lack of mention of the fork.

Europe got the fork about a millennium ago, and children now use forks to spatula unchewed and underchewed food down their gullet, leaving the lower jaw to atrophy. Nobody notices because everybody grows up this way.

Not that complicated a concept, but a ridiculously difficult social norm to overcome, even if you want to do better by your own kids. By picking my battles, I guess I'll just start saving for the orthodontist and oral surgeon (wisdom teeth!) now.

<comment><USER17> Oh this is interesting, do you have more I can read about the possible evo effects of forks?

<comment><USER16> Mailed you a chapter from my upcoming book.

<comment><USER18> This is an hilarious response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> moretai mentioned Orthotropics:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17284090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17284090)

But it deserves to be on the main thread. The idea is to expand the upper jawbone to provide room to advance/restrict growth of the lower jawbone with appliances to correct an overbite/underbite, instead of moving the teeth with braces. In other words, orthotropics corrects the mismatch in the bone, whereas braces are a cosmetic treatment that doesn't always fix the underlying problem(s).

I had braces for many years too long, which left me with a small mouth and narrowed pushed back canines (babyface). I've been wondering why I've been so tired lately, and just discovered that it's likely due to my lower jaw continuing to grow as I got older, but stopping against my top teeth which were moved back by braces (so it grew towards my throat). So I have an appointment scheduled with a sleep apnea specialist.

I've done a lot of research on this and my feeling is that orthodontics needs to be reviewed. I'm 40 so caught the braces craze in the 80s, which means there hasn't been enough study to know the long term effects of restricting the growth of children's upper jaws with headgear. And the fact that orthodontists are recommending braces for younger and younger children is a huge red flag (just like medicating ADHD instead of fixing the lack of creative outlet in our "modern" education system).

It looks like orthotropics may provide some relief for adults but I'm having trouble finding a practitioner locally (Boise, ID).

</comment><comment><USER20> Braces is not the problem. Orthodontists are the problem. Most of them are just doing "cosmetic surgery" without thinking about its consequences on your teeth, jaw and more... You want to go visit a Functional Orthodontist instead.

[http://www.aafo.org/](http://www.aafo.org/)

<comment><USER15> This is so interesting! Since my braces I was always frustrated that my teeth were more aesthetically 'correct', but less functional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article advocates changes to how children are raised — encouraging more chewing of tougher food — as a way to improve the situation. But is there any suggested intervention for adults? Perhaps more adults should be encouraged to have jaw adjustment surgery, instead of regular orthodontic treatment? Right now it seems like braces are considered the first choice, and surgery the last one, but perhaps this should be reversed?

<comment><USER22> "Get a bigger jaw" doesn't seem feasible, and would probably not be very appealing (for aesthetic reasons) anyway. "Get a smaller tongue" isn't much better. It does seem like there might be some kind of retainer that could work. The fact that there isn't already someone making billions from that idea suggests that no alternative has been found that's both effective and convenient. Anything that could keep the tongue from sliding back is also likely to trigger a gag reflex. Or maybe there is a solution in that area, but nobody has quite hit it yet.

<comment><USER23> There is this guy John Mews, and his son, who advocate something called Orthotropics. It's basically forcing yourself to push your tongue onto the roof of your mouth. I recently got braces, like a few weeks ago, as a 26 year old male adult, and have been doing this. I've been pretty consistent daily, not all day, about keeping my tongue on the roof of my mouth. I really recommend just reading it. It probably is just a placebo, but the cool thing is that I can feel the difference in my breathing. It feels smoother and less forced coming out through the nose. Just the idea of keeping your lips together seemed to have helped. Hopefully over time it improves.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6eh59CVGAMTjxo6q9gCMZA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6eh59CVGAMTjxo6q9gCMZA)

<comment><USER24> Braces will train you to avoid pressing into the front teeth with your tongue because of the pain once the teeth are loose and migrating. I still keep my tongue on the roof 20+ years on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> When I was a kid (France, west of Paris, the 80'), there was that I'd kid who would wear braces.

Today there is this odd kid in my children class (same place, same age) who does not.

I honestly wonder whether dentistry standards changed /evolved that much or if it is just fashionable (and financially interesting, at 1000 EUR the brace). I just hope it is not actually harming the children.

</comment><comment><USER26> Surprised to see no mention whatsoever of sleeping position. My experience is that very few people snore when sleeping on their side, but that back-sleepers are highly overrepresented among snorers. My father suffered, unknowingly, from sleep apnea. I recommended that he teach himself to sleep on his side instead, by propping himself uo with pillows or sewing a ball into the back of his pajamas. He taught himself without tricks like that, and he no longer has sleep apnea. To end a bad habit of mouth breathing, another simple trick is to simply tape ones mouth shut with surgical tape in the evening. I've done this myself to get back to nose-breathing after bouts of rhinitis. Simple behavioral modifications often trump overpriced hitech solutions and invasive procedures

</comment><comment><USER27> So we're pugs...

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting, lots of children at school now seem to be using palat expanders.

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

</comment><comment><USER29> 2nd word in article = 'apotheosis' Great clear writing!

<comment><USER29> Actually the whole 1st sentence..

"The apotheosis of my five-year orthodontic torment was a sad admission from the orthodontist: After thousands of dollars invested in what felt like medieval technology, my braces had not only failed to ameliorate a complex situation but created a new problem for which, even today, there is no solution."

This is extremely flowery and pretentious writing (especially for an article about snoring and braces, and not, a literary review or something) + it doesnt even make sense!

'Apotheosis' = The glorification of a subject to divine level.

So.. the glorification of her orthodontic torment to divine level was a sad admission from her orthdontist ?!?!?!?!

<comment><USER30> Words have multiple definitions and "apotheosis" makes perfect sense there.

There's a good reason technobros (most, any, a few can turn a phrase) are not consulted as editors of writing meant to be enjoyed, not merely to inform. Complaining about "flowery and pretentious writing" is, itself, middlebrow crap (see? unpretentious and unflowery, no less) that leaches voice and delight out of a piece of writing--the act of writing is the performance of art as well as the performance of trade and letting words out to play is fun and good.

<comment><USER29> This is in an article about snoring and braces. The purpose of the article is to relay these new theories about such to the reader. The writer is definitely sacrificing clarity in favour of an ornate, pompous and pretentious writing style imo. There are genres (eg. literature) where word-play and creative use of language and so on are acceptable for the writer and the reader. But its entirely inappropriate for this sort of article.

Also, getting back to "apotheosis"...Almost _any_ other choice (climax,peak,culmination,zenith) would have been more apt _and_ clearer.

"apotheosis" is ambiguous. Its also a relatively obscure word most readers will not clearly know the various meanings of, and even the more appropriate meaning is not as apt as some of the words Ive listed. Its even hard to discern its meaning from context as the entire sentence is such an overwrought mess, full of necessarily big words.

Thus, the only reason I can fathom the author chose this particular word is to attempt to appear superior.

Also what is a 'technobro' ???

<comment><USER29> I thought of a nice analogy.

Do you also think this article should have been written in extremely ornate calligraphy? With the letters forming little animals and demons like in an illuminated manuscript?

Maybe you find that idea ridiculous, which is my intention.

You might think that the particular font used is irreverent compared to the words themselves. If someone used such an ornate font as to render the words unreadable that may seem self-defeating on the authors part.

That is analogous to using such ornate language as to render ones meaning unclear. It is the content, the information and ideas generated in the readers mind that are important, not the font used, or the words used.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Joe Stump: Your city sucks (And so does mine) - <AUTHOR> http://stu.mp/2010/11/your-city-sucks-and-so-does-mine.html <comment><USER3> Whenever someone talks about how dirty SF is, you know they confined themselves to SOMA, TL, the Mission and maybe North Beach. The rest of the city is about as clean as any big city in the US. There's nothing particularly dirty about the Sunset, Richmond, Pac Heights, Cole Valley, Parnassus, Diamond Heights, West Portal, Forrest Hill, Russian Hill, Glen Park, or the other neighborhoods that make up most of San Francisco.

In contrast, I now live in NYC and while there are no distinct "human poo" neighborhoods as there are in SF, the entire city is covered with a layer of grime and garbage from Manhattan all the way out to the furthest stops in Brooklyn and Queens. This was simply not the case where I lived in SF, on top of 17th street.

The same applies to the weather. Anyone who thinks SF has great weather has never spent much time west of Twin Peaks. It is foggy and cold most of the time.

<comment><USER4> People who think that San Francisco weather is terrible are typically from places like Los Angeles (where I'm from) or other places that equate excruciating heat with nice weather. I actually like the cold and rain, and it only lasts for a few months. Put on a dang sweater and man up.

It's worth noting here that it was 80 degrees in San Francisco today. In November.

<comment><USER3> I'm from Minnesota, and I didn't think the weather in SF was terrible, but I definitely thought it was weird that in SF it would be 80 degrees one day in November and 50 degrees and foggy all summer.

<comment><USER5> I've been in and out of north beach for 10 years. It's hardly ever 50 and foggy. It's sunny for a large part of every day and rarely below 65 midday.

<comment><USER6> It's 50 and foggy every day in the Sunset.

<comment><USER4> Not yesterday, it wasn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meanwhile, here in Minneapolis (really could apply to any upper Midwest city like Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, etc.):

Pros:

\- If you like seasons, you get them.

\- Excellent beer. Many bars. Great nitelife.

\- Clean. No poop on the streets, even in the worse parts of the city.

\- Great public transportation (except Milwaukee).

\- Cheap rent (2BR for $1500 along the river with a view of the skyline)

\- Many excellent CS departments in-state and in the states surrounding. (UW- Madison, UIUC, UMN)

Cons:

\- Tech scene is slowly simmering. Madison's is growing like a weed, but elsewhere it's quite slow.

\- Not as much outdoorsey stuff to do as in the Pacific Northwest, but there's still enough to do (skiing, fishing, hiking, biking, etc. -- just not on 14kfoot mountains)

<comment><USER8> +1 for Minneapolis i live here and love this city, lived in other cities with better tech scenes, but imo this town has alot to offer.

yellowblkpk i'm assuming you live in the twin cities too, do we have good meetups tailored to an HN like community here? i haven't found anything good yet.

<comment><USER9> Check out MinneBar (<http://minnebar.org/>) and the other stuff organized on that website. Plus there are a ton of user groups, Ruby (RUM), Groovy (GUM), Python (PyMNtos) _, Wordpress, PHP, ObjC, Flash, .NET, JS, Startup ones, and more, lots more. If you are so inclined, RUM & MinneBar/Demo are great places to start networking. In fact, FanChatter, a 2009 YCombinator startup if from Minneapolis and Luke Francl helps organize the MinneBar/Demo stuff.

We are here, come find us:)

_I organize PyMNtos

<comment><USER8> varikin thanks alot i did not know about minnebar, checking it out.

<comment><USER9> You are welcome. There is plenty going on in the area, you just have to find it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This list was very startup-bro oriented, as are most lists like this. Startups, Computer Science departments, hiking, beer are the axes of importance. What's interesting is what's left out: can I meet good friends? get laid? find a wife? etc.

<comment><USER10> Can't remember where the article is now, but apparently SF has the highest ratio of single straight women to single straight men in the entire US. However, it also ranks as one of the most difficult to date in, because no one steps up to the plate.

And please, don't discount the beer. I'd cry if I lived in a city where I couldn't get a good beer.

<comment><USER11> Just the opposite. SF (and Silicon Valley) has the highest ratio of single straight men to single straight women in the country. It's a very, very difficult place to date as a straight man.

And the abundance of male techy immigrants means that women who are attracted to geeky men are the most in demand and most likely to be already taken.

If you're single (and male) and you'd like to be paired up, make it happen before or after your time in SF.

<comment><USER10> Interesting - I must have gotten it backwards in my head. Maybe it was New York?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I agree and disagree with him on Boulder (where I live now). I've visited SF and the valley many times, and moved to Boulder from the midwest 4 years ago.

A couple of his cons are way out of left field though:

The weather: Its never been 10 below in the 4 years I've been here, and only been below zero or single digits at night. Only about one or two days in each of the winter months is it cold, and there's as many winter days with highs in the 60s as there are days below freezing. It's very rarely cold more than a couple days in a row, unlike the midwest winters I'm used to where it won't get above 40 for a month. It'll snow 20" here, and be completely melted 3 days later. But I guess compared to SF and Seattle, he hasn't experienced enough really cold weather to know that what Boulder has isn't cold.

Real estate prices/rent is about the same as downtown of any major city not in California. Denver is about 30 minutes up the road, and condos are about the same price. As for getting to Denver, its easy enough, there's an express bus.

<comment><USER13> I'll second this. I moved to Denver (which is certainly a "real" city) almost 4 years ago. We get a few snow storms a year, and otherwise it's pretty damn nice. January and February can be tough... but that's just cause we're spoiled. Hell it was 65 degrees today and is supposed to be up into the mid 70's this weekend. That's not normal, but it's not exactly abnormal either.

I actually agree with a lot that he has to say about Boulder, it's why I live in Denver. It's really a great secret. I can live in a house that's 1000 ft2 (with a yard and everything) within 2 miles of Downtown (11 minute bus ride) for sub-$300k. Try doing that in Seattle or SF:)

<comment><USER14> Denver rent is insanely cheap! I pay something like 30% of what I'd pay in SF to live downtown, within walking distance of Coors Field + tons of great bars and restaurants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For another city to compare, I've spent the last two summers in Cambridge/Boston:

Pros

\- Decent public transportation

\- Huge college talent pool to draw from

\- Startups in the area tend to come out of area colleges

\- Recruiting from those colleges is probably the primary draw for the big tech company offices in the area

\- Slightly cheaper rent than SF, with much cheaper options accessible by public transportation

\- Home prices are way cheaper than the SF Bay Area

\- Great nightlife, successful sports teams if you're into that

\- There's a 200 year old frigate in the harbor that used to do battle with pirates and there are lots of cool old buildings all around

\- The area is becoming more startup friendly. There are resources like TechStars and the Cambridge Innovation Center that weren't around a decade ago.

Cons

\- Annoying Puritan laws that aren't enforced evenly

\- Cold, long winters

\- Hot summers, though this past summer wasn't especially hot

\- Not much of a startup culture compared to other cities. Other than the students, people are pretty complacent in general in Boston/New England

\- Most people in the area are from there originally or went to school there, more-so than other cities

\- Small bubble of startups working on tools for academics

\- Parking and driving are kind of a nightmare. Lanes disappear, Massachusetts drivers are super-aggressive, lanes are really skinny, etc..

Neutral

\- Not as diverse as other cities, especially outside of the colleges

\- Startups in the area are more focused on making money right away

<comment><USER16> Stay here long enough and you begin to enjoy the cold winters and hot summers... At that point you'll become a super-aggressive driver, focused on making money right away and someone who likes Puritan laws that aren't enforced evenly.

<comment><USER17> You never "become a super aggressive driver"... Everyone else starts driving slower!

I was recently in Atlanta, and got the distinct impression that my diving was no longer "normal".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Something that hits you as you get older is "how about having kids and a family?", which he doesn't consider at all. Fair enough, but sooner or later it does become important for many people.

I've only lived in SF and Portland, not Seattle or Boulder. I think it'd be fine to have a family in Portland - like he said, the prices aren't so high, and it's got some nice neighborhoods where kids would be ok. My guess is that Boulder is small enough that that holds true as well. SF on the other hand requires some _serious_ cash if you want to have a larger home, and I'm a bit less sure about schools there.

Also, when I was in SF, it seemed very much a place for 20-somethings. "Normal people" who don't pull in major cash tend to drift elsewhere if they want to be able to afford a more or less normal house, which skews the demographics further. In the end, I didn't like that very much... here in Padova, one rubs shoulders with both wealthy, middle class and the less well off, young and old, which feels about right to me. Same in Portland, depending on where you go. SF was very much a bubble in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER19> For folks that are outside of SF or didn't vote, we had a measure up for vote to prevent sitting or lying on public sidewalks. This is principally targeting the homeless problem.

Luckily, it passed!

Go to this link and go all the way to the bottom. Its item L. [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/03/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/03/MNNS1G69CV.DTL&type=politics)

 _Edit_ Additionally, it looks like Ron Conway was a big contributor to this. [http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/San_Francisco_Sit- Lie_...](http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/San_Francisco_Sit- Lie_Ordinance,_Proposition_L_\(November_2010\))

<comment><USER20> > This is principally targeting the homeless problem.

Did you miss the word "hiding"? It doesn't seem to be much of a way to "solve it".

<comment><USER21> Seattle has the same problem. We tried to pass a measure to ban "aggressive" panhandling (criteria include talking to people or anything but sitting quietly by the side), which has done nothing to curb the homelessness problem downtown.

The city government has also aggressively harassed the homeless in parts of downtown where they congregate, displacing them further. They then had the gall to proclaim proudly that homelessness had gone down, since their yearly headcount (of the popular spots, of course) decreased.

All of this has served to cut the homeless off from the services that help them, and displaced them further afield.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> SF streets are pretty disgusting. It's true that there's fecal matter everywhere you find homeless people, which is nearly everywhere in SF. It is not at all uncommon to find a big brownie right in the middle of the sidewalk. The streets and sidewalks in my tiny, obscure East coast village, OTOH, are as clean as they are in Singapore. I don't quite understand why SF doesn't do something about this, as it's a health hazard. Why don't the yuppies, hipsters, scenesters and other trendy rich people care? Do they not walk or bike in SF?

<comment><USER23> They don't want their taxes raised to pay for the clean up :)

<comment><USER24> To be fair, Singapore doesn't really have high taxes to deal with the cleanups. Our main strategy is to import a lot of low cost labor to do these sort of work.

<comment><USER25> And caning!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seattle reminds me of London. Sure the weather sucks and it is raining all the time, but the people make up for it by being awesome to each other. People in sunny cities tend to be dicks[1]

Some of my fav cities in the world are those I least expected to be awesome.

[1] not a scientific study but exhibit A: Los Angeles

<comment><USER21> Have you heard of the Seattle Freeze?

Basically it goes like this: the locals here (people who grew up/went to school here) are incredibly resentful of "transplants" who came from elsewhere, mostly to work in the tech industries here. We're blamed for anything from turning Seattle from a sleepy laid-back town into a monstrosity of big-city lights (it... isn't), to raising housing prices, to making everything suck more, to driving out the local music scene, etc etc (some of which have merit). In any case, Seattle's social scene is almost comically obviously divided into locals vs. transplants. I've been here for over a year, have made many friends, and only one of which is a local Seattleite.

Transplants are forced to keep to themselves, and I'll just add a slight note that the vast majority of the transplant population is male (software, surprise!)

People who _visit_ Seattle often mistake our distant politeness and geniality as friendliness. It isn't. People will give you directions to the bus stop, we'll tell you the best places to get coffee, and we probably won't yell at you for cutting us off on the highway (much), but this is really just politeness, not friendliness. Culturally speaking people form social circles early on in life (high school or latest, college) and do not appear at all interested in expanding them. This is in contrast to some other cities I've lived in where everyone seems constantly eager to meet new people.

It's also one of the more racially homogenous places I've seen (granted, my history is in Vancouver and Toronto, where at last count half the population was immigrant). Good Japanese food? Few and far between, pricey to boot. Good Chinese food? Does not exist. Good Indian food? Maybe one place waaaaay over on the east side, and this is despite having MS and Amazon's Indian engineer population feeding the demand. Good food is basically limited to "pretentious fusion attempt" and "Northwest seafood". Ethnic foods? Fuggetaboutit. You have greasy stuff only a notch or two above Panda Express, and that's about it. The food scene in this city _sucks_.

Transportation? It's one of the few cities I've lived in (and I've lived in some shitty towns in the middle of nowhere, Ontario) where living in one of the central neighborhoods (Capitol Hill, for reference) makes me feel legless. The bus system sucks, the light rail is pathetic for any use except getting to the airport, and the "streetcar" can be beaten by a granny on a bicycle. Couple this with the fact that Seattle has no centralized city planning (it's a very loose collection of neighborhoods) and getting around without a car is a gigantic pain. Hell, it took me 45 minutes this afternoon to travel 1.0 miles on the bus (one of the most frequent routes, in fact). Mass transit effectively _does not exist_ , and even when the government occasionally has a bright idea about effective, fast mass transit to finally connect all of the neighborhoods, the class-warfare-happy upper-middles on the east side are quick to attempt to torpedo anything. Our current initiative to make light rail finally useful, and for the first time get an effective mass commute option in the city is currently being fought tooth and nail by rich homeowners and builders fearing the "undesirables" will be able to move about too easily into their gated meccas.

Yeah, the summers are gorgeous, the beer scene is delicious, the availability of the great outdoors is incredible... but overall I find this city to be incredibly insular, completely antisocial, stuffed to the brim with pretention (yuppie urban high-rise style _and_ pretentious suburban rich style all rolled up into one, oh boy!). The only good thing about this damned place is the employment.

So, if you want to make a fair bit of money, enjoy the weather, and hermit up writing code all day (or having beers with other coders... or having coffee with other coders... or going to dinner with other coders... or hitting the club with other coders, full of coders dropping mad dollaz trying to get laid...), come right on in. I'll even buy you a beer and start a pool on how long it takes for you to run screaming out of this town. The current average is 2 years.

Note: This is a very harsh post. But, if you are married (or seriously involved), ready to settle down in a nice, peaceful suburb with good schools, Seattle's not such a bad place. There is so much nature around for you and the kiddos - I wouldn't mind growing up here at all. If you are however young, possibly single, and looking to meet interesting folk from diverse backgrounds and enjoy the urban lifestyle... consider carefully.

<comment><USER27> I don't think you're being totally fair to Seattle (but maybe it's because I came from SV).

Some ethnic food is well-enough represented. The Vietnamese food around 12th and Jackson is as good as anywhere (came here from SV and it matches up fine), there are significant Korean communities in the Lynwood and Federal Way burbs where that food is good, Ethiopian food is pretty good in the Central District, Indian food on the eastside isn't as bad as you imply, there are some great taco buses, etc. And on Chinese food, the restauraunt I would most miss if I moved away is Sichuanese Cuisine; it's dirty, spicy, greasy, and fantastic. There's a big step down from there though.

The homgeneity is split usually on neighborhood and economic lines; the rich neighborhoods are all WASPy but get down to the southside and it's generally all minority. That's what happens when housing prices are so disparate.

The styles you talk about are present in seemingly every major city that hasn't experienced complete suburban flight. It's the other ones that annoy me; Capitol Hill is like a lookatthisfuckinghipster theme park and everywhere else there's an obsession with appearing outdoorsy. For a fun time, count the number of North Face logos you see in a crowd at any time of year.

I like this city for staying down to earth. It's not perfect, it clearly isn't for everybody, but it ain't that bad. It's desperately alternative; so showing up as another one of an already huge crowd you shouldn't expect diversity.

<comment><USER21> Maaaaybe on the Vietnamese food, disagreed about all of the other ethnic foods. The problem with Seattle (as it is for many other cities) is that minorities are not economically well-represented.

For example, there are _many_ well to do Chinese folk in this town working in white-collar tech jobs, yet the sort of Chinese food you'd see in this city wouldn't even be fit for a road-side stall in Shanghai. It's strictly greasy spoon, over-Westernized stuff with zero authenticity - head up to Vancouver sometime if you want to see "real" middle class (or upper-middle) Chinese food (and it's about the same price as the greasy spoon swill here). This entire category does not exist in Seattle. Hell, I've lived in cities of a mere 100,000 folk that have had better Chinese food.

My Indian colleagues complain of the same effect for them - a lot of marginally competent stuff that isn't downright nasty, but neither is it high- quality, nor authentic.

The same applies for every other ethnicity under the sun except the Japanese - Japanese food in this city is fairly decent and well represented, though much, much pricier than any other city I've lived in. It's the only cuisine that the population around seems sophisticated enough to discern good from bad.

Capitol Hill honestly doesn't bother me so much (probably why I live there). The hipsters may be desperately preening, but it beats the arrogant yuppies in Belltown aping Lil' Jon all day and night and getting krunk with their brahs, all the while spitting on the homeless drug-addled folk that fill the streets down there. Ugh, never living there again.

[edit] Honestly speaking, the food scene's quality is a relatively minor concern compared to just the sleepiness and insular antisocial-ness of the town. It's no food mecca, but it's good enough to get by if you had some interesting people to share it with - but as it is you'll be having greasy Chinese food with a lot of other hackers, and basically no one else.

<comment><USER27> I don't think it's the economic representation at all that causes mediocre food; I could also give two shits about the economic class targeted by some dish. The problem comes when they don't have significant heavily concentrated ethnic neighborhoods to sell to; when 70% of your potential customer base is people who have a problem ordering spice levels over 2/5 in one of the billion mediocre Thai restaurants around, you have to tone everything down. They don't have to worry as much about selling to these people in the CD or in the Rainier Valley since frankly a lot of people are scared shitless driving down E. Cherry St or past Franklin High on Rainier Ave S. I'm aware of the Richmond scene; that's the benefit of a city that's 45% Chinese people. The general Asian concentration isn't even remotely that high anywhere in the Puget Sound (it's less than 20% in every city I checked).

Sushi (I assume you mean sushi, since most Japanese restaurants I've been to here treat everything that isn't sushi as a distraction) is absurdly simple food (it was created to be fast food), governed mostly by fish quality. And guess what the fish is pretty good up here, big surprise.

I'm not convinced Belltown partiers actually live there. I'm about 80% sure it and Pioneer Square fill up with the Seattle version of the Bridge & Tunnel crowd; I guess they'd just be the bridge and bridge crowd but I've also heard them referred to as BARKers once or twice (Burien Auburn Renton Kent). But yeah it's a place to stay away from on party nights; the concentration of drunk morons makes it crime central. They've got some nice (not-ethnic) restaurants down there as its only saving grace.

I also disagree on the antisocialness of the town; if the only people you know are hackers that's your problem. For people who come here as a hacker and expect to be embraced for it, they should know that the locals have seen a hundred thousand programmers pass through on the MS/Amazon/Expedia/etc gravy train and it's kinda old hat. They don't think we're very interesting either; a hacker has to do something else to stand out from the 40,000 other people who are just like him/her.

<comment><USER21> > _"I'm not convinced Belltown partiers actually live there"_

They don't. The sadder part about Belltown is that without the annoying fratbros it's completely lifeless. Walk down 1st or 2nd on a weeknight to see what I mean. Compare this with, say, Granville/Robson in Vancouver, St. Catherine in Montreal, or Yonge/Queen in Toronto and the patheticness is magnified more.

It's part of why I moved up to Capitol Hill - despite the hipsters, at least people are out and about throughout the week. There's _life_ on the streets, as opposed to Belltown and downtown where shops close at 5-6pm, and there's nary a soul to be found walking on the sidewalks (well, unless you count the coked out hobos and their dealers).

There is _no_ energy in this city. It's as if everyone is constantly in an opium-induced haze, lazing about in the coffee shops, or at home. When I lived in Belltown I felt like a reverse Omega Man - in the daytime the streets would be full of people coming and going, but at night they'd slink back indoors as if the night is out to get them. This is part of the "antisocial" thing I complained about in an earlier post - but what can you expect when you stuff a neighborhood full of antisocial, overworked, overstressed hackers? Of course they just shut down on weeknights after work. Foot traffic in even the hottest neighborhoods is essentially zero except on Fridays and Saturday nights. The entire city is utterly lifeless throughout the week, and explodes into a flurry of sudden activity for a few hours (hilariously enough, mainly driven by people traveling in from the burbs... since when are the suburbs known for more activity than the city?), only to continue being lifeless as soon as Saturday rolls past.

Heck, the restaurant scene is the same. Take the hottest restaurants in the city in Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal, and they'll be packed no matter which day you go. Here? On a Tuesday or Wednesday night you can waltz into almost any restaurant, no matter how well-regarded or hip (the ones you can't hope to get into without a reservation on the weekend), and just plop your ass down because it's practically empty. It's as if life _stops_ on weekdays. Goes extra for Belltown - I am unsure what Belltown residents do all day, because the only people seemingly taking advantage of their copious restaurants and entertainment are people from elsewhere.

In fact, take a look at your local restaurants - and see how many specials exist on Sundays. Sundays! In any (other) major city Sundays are still prime for going out, and business is still booming as everyone gets their last bit of fun in before returning to the grind. In Seattle the city's shut down even worse than weekdays on Sundays.

> _"I also disagree on the antisocialness of the town; if the only people you > know are hackers that's your problem."_

Are you sure you're not a local? ;) I've seen this argument a million times over, but the result is the same: the vast majority of people I've met here (and not all hackers, but most) have a huge amount of trouble meeting varied people. If this sort of effect is isolated, I'd be more willing to blame the victim - but it's so pronounced that it's made our city infamous to the rest of the US, and there's not a single transplant I've met who doesn't acknowledge the problem is real.

Hell, the only people I've seen deny it are the locals - which is understandable, because they don't feel its effects daily.

Which isn't to say meeting people - non-hackers even - is impossible in this town, there are some interesting hacks around Seattleites' antisocial behavior. The problem is that it takes a _huge_ amount of effort - never in my life has socialization required so much conscious and continued work. In other cities it just _flows_ \- people are always up for meeting new folk, and going someplace after work to maybe make a new friend or two is second nature.

This is exacerbated by the fact that Seattleites are notorious social flakes. I host a party in Vancouver, or Toronto, and almost all of the RSVPs will show. The ones that don't will probably text me at some point. Here in Seattle, your show-rate is well below 50%, and not a word to be heard from the flakes. I've seen this in multiple contexts: I'm involved in a volunteer group that constantly struggles with getting people who sign up (and get reminder emails the week before AND the day of) to show (<50% show rate). I've also been involved in local modeling/photography groups where the show rate is well below 25% for any of our events. My own get-togethers have a show rate of maybe 60%. People here _don't_ take socialization seriously - possibly because most people aren't terribly arsed to expand their circles. It's the infamous Seattle noncommittal waffle.

Hell, we had a photographers' social a few weeks back. 15+ RSVPs and 4 showed. This is depressingly typical for Seattle.

> _"a hacker has to do something else to stand out from the 40,000 other > people who are just like him/her."_

Agreed. It's what you get with a monocultural town with insane domination of one industry and no representation from any other. Seattle _is_ software, and if living with an army of other nerdy hackers is your thing, it's great. If however you desire your social circles to be filled with diverse people doing different things, this city is a poor choice overall. Better off in a city with significant representation from multiple industries.

Not only are they less interested in interacting with us because of the city's already-insular culture, but we're also pretty old-hat, _and_ there's really not that many people from other fields to begin with - there are no other industries with a huge presence in Seattle (a case _may be_ made with biotech).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Pittsburgh is beautiful. It has a decent startup scene and lots of tech talent (pitt, cmu). Rent is extremely cheap here, so you can't get more ramen profetable than here. We also have our own startup incubator, alphalab. Seriously. Pgh has all the qualities needed to become the next major startup community.

<comment><USER29> My friends that have gone to CMU all say the same.

What are the ideal neighborhoods for someone coming from SF or NYC? I'm thinking with bars and restaurants and a general nightlife-ish, walkable vibe.

<comment><USER30> The biggest ones:

* Oakland is where Pitt is at. It's got tons of college kids running around everywhere, with tons of bars and places to eat.

* Shadyside is where all of those kids go after they graduate. It's where I'm sitting right now. More families, but still a bunch of stuff to do. Can be expensive (oh wait, you're coming from NYC/SF, it's dirt cheap, nevermind) if you don't look around.

* CMU is located on the border between Shadyside, Oakland, and Squirrel Hill.

* Squirrel Hill is where most CMU students live. It's a very family oriented neighborhood, lots of quiet streets, but still has a quite bustling 'main street.'

* The South Side is a bit far from those three neighborhoods, but it's got a _crazy_ nightlife. The number of bars would be illegal if they weren't grandfathered in, no joke. This is where AlphaLab is, along with a bunch of other tech companies, and lots of families, punks, etc. Reminds me of the Mission a bit, though I was only there for a day or two, so that could be a slightly poor characterization.

What you have to remember about Pittsburgh is that each neighborhood is a totally viable mini-city. They all have a 'main street' where most of the commerce is, and then housing around it. So there's at least something to do everywhere, though some places are obviously more bustling than others.

I've lived here all my life, so if you have any more specific questions, ask away.

<comment><USER31> Sup shadyside. Preface: I've lived 6 months in SF, 6 months in NYC, and visited many other places. I've been living in Pittsburgh fulltime for about 8 months now, 5 months outside the city, 3 months in Squirrel Hill/Bloomfield.

The distinct neighborhoods and main areas are very true. I think my largest complaint about Pittsburgh has been learning where stuff is going and what's going on. Knowledge about the city seems so hidden and not well organized online. Yelp usage is lukewarm.

The other problem with all the distinct areas is how spread out they are, having a car is critical IMO to get around. Public transit (only busses basically) seem terrible.

In terms of food, there definitely is a good variety of cultures and has kept me busy sampling things. Huge amount of German culture foodwise and beerwise, having the Hoffbrau Haus around is excellent.

Girls seem pretty normal, plenty of em around, I found a girlfriend without much trouble.

Overall, the city has grown on me through the pains I've taken to learn what is fun to do.

<comment><USER30> The biggest thing about city knowledge is knowing which fucking streets are one way and in which direction.

> The other problem with all the distinct areas is how spread out they are, > having a car is critical IMO to get around.

Busses are horrible, but bikes are still better than cars. I can actually beat a car from Downtown to Shadyside around rush hour...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The comments about Portland OR really remind me of my own experience with spending time there. It really was the first time I was visiting a place and think "I'd really like to live here!". What really sold me was the quality of the food available for a city of that size. How walkable the place is. How friendly the people I met in the street were. How going out in Portland was fun. And the scenery around the city is just amazing. Plus it really seemed like a good place to raise a family (The latest criteria I have) because it was generally inexpensive and has all the community advantages of a smaller town.

</comment><comment><USER33> My city doesn't suck (Houghton, Michigan). Granted it isn't startup world... But we do have a good University that brings in the nerds.

And it's awesome because it isn't too big (only around 7,000), and it's been listed as one of the 100 best small towns in America. It's for hackers like me that don't like lots of people and like to be outdoors a lot (and don't mind 250 inches of snow a year!).

The city has many beautiful remnants of the copper boom and it is well kept up. Homeless aren't a problem because you just can't survive the winter without a home.

<comment><USER34> And no place I've seen matches Houghton on cost of living. The linked article says $1700 for a 2-bedroom apartment. My friends and I rent a 5-bedroom house for less than that.

<comment><USER35> Yes, but the cost heating that house makes is considerably less affordable.

<comment><USER34> Our monthly gas bill has never exceeded $140. Split across the 5 of us, that's pretty affordable.

Edit: Perhaps I should also add that it stays below $40 for at least half the year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have a love/hate relationship with SF after living here for many many years since 2000.

I'm from NYC originally (and finally back) and here are my thoughts after shuttling back and forth for many years.

PROS

1\. It's probably the safest, relatively big (~ 1M) city that I've ever been to. And I've traveled _a lot_ throughout US and the world. If something bad happens to you in SF, you've really, really should hone your street smarts. And no, Tenderloin is not dangerous at all as I've lived a couple of blocks from there for few years.

2\. Probably the only other city (NYC is the other) where you truly have a diverse selection of food. That's pretty impressive for such a small city.

3\. It's probably one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to. I love the rolling hills and some great views especially of GG bridge and Bay Bridge. I wanted to move to SF for a long time, and it took a while for me to sink in that I was actually _living_ in SF.

CONS

1\. It's a city of wannabes. Basically everyone lives in the future (they "wanna/hoping to" have a startup, or "do art" etc). Ambitious people are good, but I feel SF definitely goes a bit far in this regard. For startups, it's due to the availability of venture capital in the city, where you don't need to be profitable from day one. In comparison, New York is about hustling and making money FROM DAY 1, not tomorrow, not in few years.

2\. The bohemian/alternative/smug feel of the city. South Park had a funny episode about this. For example, people drive Prius in order to "show off" how green and environmentally friendly they are. Some of my good friends (non hipsters or art people, etc) only eat organic and only shop at Trader's Joe or Whole Foods. Apparently Safeway is not good enough. Organic is good, but try going to a restaurant with someone who is stubbornly organic about food content there, and will refuse to go. I mean come on, you're not gonna die if you eat non-organic once in a while!!

3\. It's too laid back. If you love New York or East Coast in general, I think you'll find the slowed pace of the city irritating. In some ways this is a consequence of (1).

4\. Nobody grows up in the city. This is a big one. I've seen some girls who are 35 and still wear clothing that a early 20s girl would wear. Same for guys. You can be 40+ or 50 and still live with roommates, etc. I've always felt that a cutoff for living with roommates is like 30 or maybe even early 30s, but 40+ is a bit too much.

5\. The weather plain sucks. You have windy/sunny-turning-to-foggy weather (65-55F) pretty much all year except about 2-3 times a year when a heatwave (75F+) lasting about 3-4 days comes in and you can finally walk around with a t-shirt at night. There's really two seasons: dry and wet. I respect East Coast's weather much more because I know that in June I will be rocking a t-shirt all day and night and don't need to carry a jacket "just in case". Mark Twain said the coldest winter he'd ever been to was a summer in SF. SF's summer months are typically the coldest in the whole country.

6\. Don't get me started on dating. As a guy, I still stick to my theory that it's probably one of the WORST cities to hook up I've ever been to. Most of the places are just full of guys which makes sense since West Coast has statistically more single guys than single girls. East Coast is a bit better in this regard. I always told myself if ever I move back, and that's a big if, I'll have to be married or have a serious girlfriend. And if you're a girl, don't get too excited; I've been told from female friends of mine that the guys are no prize either.

7\. Pretentious Hipsters. Need I say more?

<comment><USER37> What do you mean "grows up?" If you're a 35 year-old single woman looking to not be single any more then you'll probably wear some sexy clothing once in awhile, especially when you're out in public.

Also, if you're 35 and single of either gender, there are plenty of reasons to want to live with roommates rather than by yourself. It's much cheaper and more efficient, plus you have friendship, company, sharing of responsibility, and someone to call the ambulance if you ever have an emergency.

One of the worst reason of all to live by yourself is out of some vague idea that you're supposed to because that's what adults do. If you are single, living alone gets lonely really fast. At least, it sure as hell did when I lived on my own in my 20s. And is NYC really any different in this regard? Boston certainly isn't.

<comment><USER38> One of the most surprising things I've learned in the last few years is that american cultural norms of how one should live one's life really do have at least some upsides, and "growing up" can be a lot of fun.

And these things are big - changing how you dress, and who you live with, and where, will change your life. But looking at these things logically, and predicting outcomes can be hard.

I don't make analytical choices about these questions any more, I've found my gut better than my brain here. And if you want "grow up" not doing so because you might be lonely, or have a hard time making ends meet seems like a poor decision to me. On the other hand if your gut says live with roomies when you're 50, I'd advocate that as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Related discussion: _Ask HN: Best Startup City - Outside the USA?_

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1565375>

</comment><comment><USER40> I live in Boulder. These two things really hit me:

> I really yearned for hardcore technology while I was in Boulder. A lot of > the technology scene was very much focused on creating consumer > applications. I'm a big infrastructure, big data, big scale kind of guy and > often felt out of place in that scene.

I concur, except for the part about feeling out of place. I'd rather feel out of place more often so I can get more exposure to "big data, big scale".

> I didn't like Boulder at all due to the cold climate and small size of the > city.

I've heard this before, but hearing it from Joe Stump (the sentiment, not the reasons given which I'm well aware of) feels different. Not sure how I'll feel when it sinks in.

</comment><comment><USER16> No talk of Boston and just a mention of New York?

It does not make much sense to compair technology/startup cities and totally leave out the East Coast.

<comment><USER41> Cambridge, Mass is definitely a nerd mecca. There's a lot of technology and startup action over here. And it's a _wonderful_ city to live in (very walkable, nice architecture, low crime, clean, diverse).

<comment><USER16> I totally agree... Especially impressive when you consider the size of Cambridge (~7 sq mi) VS the size of an area like Silicon Valley (~450 sq mi).

That's a pretty amazing amount of nerd density.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'll throw in my $.02 about San Diego. I've lived here for about 6 years.

I'll try by topic since most of these can be good or bad depending on your point of view.

Tech Community: I think the tech community here has potential and could become more significant in the future. There is a regular Hacker News meetup, Function Programming meetup, and SHDH. I'll let other speak about the startup scene...

Universities: SDSU and UCSD are the two major Universities down here for tech. UCSD has a lot of good programs in many engineering disciplines and produces a lot of talent. SDSU also has a respectable program in CS.

Weather: There is a single season here and it is summer. Though it comes in different shades, it is always summer to some degree. The nicest time of year is typically Fall and Winter. Summer is cool with an onshore breeze but the city is busy with tourists.

Jobs: There are a lot of jobs here in government, education, biotech, and telecom. Goverment jobs can be either as a government employee or contractor. Mostly DoD related. e.g. Navy, Army, Homeland Security, Coast Guard, etc. I see so much bad software in DoD that it seems ripe for disruption. A talented startup that has the right connections and can leverage lean technologies could put some large high dollar organizations to shame I think. Problem is all the bureaucracy it takes to develop software for the DoD.

Food and Beverage Scene: The food scene here is good I'd say. It's not SF good, but there are lot of options at a reasonable price. Beer scene here is also good. We have a lot of local breweries that have a presence at any respectable bar or restaurant down here.

Activities: SD is one of the most active cities I have seen. With the nice weather all the time there is no shortage of things to do outside. Just pick your poison here. Bike, golf, motocross, run, skateparks, stick and ball sports, surf, swim, etc.

Cost of Living: Cost of living here is relatively high. It's cheaper than SF and NY though but probably more expensive than other places mentioned. There is a good variety of housing in different neighborhoods at various price points though.

Military town: There is a notable military presence here. Between the Navy at Coronado and the Marines at Camp Pendleton your gonna cross path with marines and sailors regularly.

</comment><comment><USER43> What are your guys' opinions about LA? Coming from Singapore it's a huge step up, but I'm sure SF is far crazier.

<comment><USER44> LA is okay. Probably is between 3rd-10th position of tech hubs. If you really like the culture, weather, nightlife, or have ties to the city, then you'll do fine staying. You could probably start a decent company. USC, UCLA, and CalTech have fine CS depts. The entertainment and aerospace industries are strong here. That's why MySpace (originally social for musicians) and SpaceX (a new space-vehicle startup) work well here.

I have worked at two companies here (one big, one startup) for four years. Job scene isn't as dense as SF/SV. See for yourself on careers.stackoverflow.com. Do a 40-mile radius search on San Francisco. Then do one for LA. You'll notice that SF has 84 jobs and LA only 9. (For completeness, NYC has 98 jobs, Boston 40, Seattle 20, Chicago 11, Boulder 10, Portland 9, Minneapolis 1, San Diego 1).

But I'm having an itch to go hit a home run in SF/SV. Maybe you do, too. If you want to maximize your chance of success, then move to SF/Silicon Valley when you graduate. And do summer internships (or work on your own projects and network) there in the meantime.

<comment><USER45> _USC and UCLA have fine CS depts._

What about Caltech?

<comment><USER44> Added CalTech now. It's much smaller than USC or UCLA. And I know several programmers from USC and UCLA but not CalTech. So that's why I didn't think of it at first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'll throw in my comments about Washington D.C./Northern Virginia.

I've lived here about ten years (first five in Northern Virginia, the past five in downtown DC)

Pros:

1.) The tech community here is actually quite good. It definitely feels like it's gotten better since I've lived here. There's no shortage of smart folks working on cool things, even if they are a little more spread out geographically.

2.) While I wouldn't say it's "recession-proof", the area is certainly way less effected by the economy. You can attribute that to the preponderance of government and government-related industries here.

3.) Public transportation is mediocre. Some people think it's great, some people think it's awful. I would say it's somewhere in between. If you live downtown you can get around most places on the Metro. Northern Virginia is accessible out a little ways to Arlington, then it gets sparse.

4.) There's a lot to see downtown if friends or family come to visit. The museums are nice (and free), but I think after a couple months here you'll have had your fill.

5.) You're fairly close to a lot of other places. NYC is a four hour train ride (or a $20 bus ride), Philly is even closer. You have three airports in the immediate area, so you can get to most other places directly.

Cons:

1.) It's really expensive. I moved here from Northern California and was dumbfounded that rent was as expensive here (without the benefit of living near the beach). Like most places, you can find things for cheap if you're willing to commute (or if you live in DC, you can find things for cheap if your willing to live in one of the not-good parts of the city, of which there are many).

2.) Food isn't particularly good. Which isn't to say that there aren't good restaurants, but there's a huge drop-off after you get down from uber- expensive. Oh, and there isn't a single good pizza place in a 30-mile radius of the city.

3.) There is a giant preponderance of government-related folks. This isn't a con for everyone, but anywhere downtown is filled with lobbyists. On a related note, it's also a little weird to live somewhere that is so caught up with politics where your vote doesn't matter (we have no representation in Congress). Local politics is a cesspool, made worse by the fact that DC is cuckolded by Congress.

4.) Some may disagree, but I think the weather here is terrible. It's oppressively hot and humid in the summer (actually four or five months) and then cold and gross in the winter.

5.) If you live in DC, you are relegated to a few neighborhoods that aren't awful. It's changing over time (even just in the time I've lived here), but as to whether that's an improvement is open to debate. If you're talking Northern Virginia, you're pretty much limited to Arlington if you want a semblance of other people. As soon as you start to go west, it's all strip-malls and suburbs.

I've been trying to leave for about nine of the ten years I've lived here, but I know plenty of people who like it here. If you wind up in one of the up-and- coming neighborhoods and meet some good folks, you can enjoy yourself here. Just don't try and look for good pizza.

<comment><USER47> I used to live in Washington and I thought it was a great place for a semi- foodie like myself. There are certainly some great "uber-expensive" restaurants there, but there are a lot that don't break the bank. Matchbox, Heritage India, Jaleo, Luigi's, Old Glory...

I loved the pizza at Armand's (Chicago-style) and 2 Amys (Neapolitan).

Northern Virginia dining could be hit-or-miss, but the Great American Restaurants chain was my absolute favorite. The food and the service at all of their restaurants is top-notch. Have you been to Coastal Flats/Sweetwater Tavern/etc.?

<comment><USER46> I disagree on both your pizza choices, but I may just be a pizza snob ;)

Sweetwater is actually my favorite restaurant in the area. Everything there is awesome, and it's priced very reasonably.

There's good eating in Northern Virginia, it's just very spread out. Ironically, I had much better experiences with restaurants when I lived in Northern Virginia than when I moved to DC (I just had to drive more).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I live in SF currently, and used to live in Portland. It's a lot easier to find work in the bay area, but I think if you can find a good job in Portland or make your own, it's the nicer place. If I had to put down roots somewhere it'd be there.

</comment><comment><USER49> Nickpick: Seattle IMO actually has a pretty disappointing music scene, especially with respect to indie music. Presumably all of the artists moved out as the cost of living increased. But the awesome beer makes up for it.

<comment><USER14> Nitpick^2: I don't think the Seattle beer scene is actually that good (granted, I live in Denver).

Red Hook, Mac & Jacks and Pyramid are all decent. Ranier Beer is some of the most foul stuff I've ever tasted. Am I missing places? I think most of the good beer in Seattle comes from Portland or elsewhere.

<comment><USER27> Hale's Ales up in Ballard is pretty good, the Elysian breweries brew their own, Scuttlebutt out of Everett is pretty good, the Georgetown brewery makes some good stuff, Lazy Boy brewing also out of Everett ain't bad.

There are also small breweries that don't bottle (like Mac and Jacks) and you have to get them on tap at the famous beer bars like Uber, Brouwers, or Beveridge Place. There are plenty of places to look up more interesting beers in Seattle, the beers you named are just the tip of the iceberg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Can someone please write the pros and cons for NY and LA?

</comment><comment><USER51> Great point about SF being an echo-chamber. I live in Singapore and the burgeoning startup scene here has started to feel like an echo-chamber too.

<comment><USER52> San Francisco is an echo chamber in many ways. There are days when it feels less like a city where shit gets done and more like Disneyland for rich white people. That said, it's a pretty great place to live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Having been to all these towns, I have to agree with him that Seattle has the best beer scene in the US.

<comment><USER13> THIS is where I draw the line.

Best beer scene? Really?

That's insane. If Boulder does anything right, it's the fact that it's in the center of the beer capital of North America. Avery, Great Divide, New Belgium, O'Dell, Left Hand, and a ton of smaller breweries are within 30 minutes of Boulder.

They hold the Great American Beer Festival (see #1 [http://allaboutbeer.com/live-beer/culture/2008/05/the- growle...](http://allaboutbeer.com/live-beer/culture/2008/05/the-growler- list-125-places-to-have-a-beer-before-you-die/)) in Denver for a reason.

It's bizarre that Joe didn't mention it. Colorado absolutely kicks ass at beer:)

*EDIT: I should also mention that we just elected a fricking brewer as as our new governor. :)

<comment><USER22> Colorado does have some great beers. I'm a big fan of Fat Tire and the other New Belgium beers.

<comment><USER53> If you like fat tire you should try 90 shilling from from Odell Brewing Company (if you can find it). I find fat tire really depends on what batch you get and how lucky you are for how good it is but 90 shilling is consistently good.

As are most of the other beers from Odell, I personally like their Cutthroat Porter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> How does Austin, TX compare?

<comment><USER55> I'll throw in my 2 cents about Austin.

I've lived in SF and now I live in Austin.

Austin

Pros:

-Great Food, you can't find the type of food you get in austin anywhere else. Great BBQ, the best tacos, tons of food trailers and Tex-Mex

-Great Beer.

-beautiful down to earth women (I feel like this is SF's big problem it was extremely hard to meet women I was interested in)

-night life is amazing (most people in Austin don't work they just party)

-very bike friendly...you can bike the whole city in 30 mins (15 late at night). Austin is pretty flat (unlike SF) so biking is just so enjoyable.

-There's rivers and lakes and hiking right in the city

-The cost a living really can't be beat (cheap rent, cheap food, cheap beer). I can go to a bar and get a beer for $2.

-UT is right here (I don't know anything about there CS dept, but I think they have some pretty good grad school depts)

-THE WEATHER its almost always sunny. It gets hot in the summer but everywhere has great AC so you don't feel it. It's actually great to feel the heat and then be able to relax with AC. I prefer the weather here to SF where at least in the city its almost always a little rainy and cold.

-Great Airport (flys jetblue and southwest) and great public transit (even though you don't need because biking is so great)

-If you like music theres no place better

-SXSW is awesome every year

-no state income tax!

Cons:

-Tech Scene is super small (trying to change that)

-lots of hipsters (which is good and bad)

-I wish it were a little bigger

-no big mountains or ocean

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> what about vancouver (canada)?

<comment><USER57> Size: Vancouver is a "big" city (or at least tries to be), but it's still pretty small. Small in a good way though, the population is ~2m in the metro area but the city itself is ~600k. The downtown core is completely walkable. It's always more of a hassle to hop on the train for 2 stops than to just walk. Clean, can't recall ever seeing poop (human or animal) on the sidewalk.

Rent: for downtown living in the more expensive parts, you're probably looking at $1600-2500 cdn for a 2bdrm. Don't mind commuting 10-15 minutes on the train/by bus: $1000-1600 for a decent place. You can get a studio or 1 bdrm in the west end (downtown) for $800-1200, add a few hundred more if you're looking at coal harbour/yaletown.

Outdoors: Parks, everywhere - a couple large ones and tons of small ones (a couple soccer fields, running track, etc). You've got more ocean than you could ever ask for and a couple local mountains (~20-25 mins from downtown by driving, or take transit + gondola up grouse which will probably be an hour or so). And you're 1 hour from Whistler. Lakes and camping within an hour of the city. There's also Stanley Park right downtown. One of the biggest advantages seems to be that you can get outdoors and feel 'out of the city' within the city limits.

Entertainment: Hockey (NHL/WHL) and Canadian football. Same amount of large bands coming through here as any major US city, good small venues as well for some local bands and smaller acts.

Transit: The city has pretty decent transit and it's cheap. $2.50 for a transfer (last 1.5hrs) or ~$80 for a 1 month, unlimited 1 zone pass. There are 3 SkyTrain lines which will get you downtown pretty quickly from anywhere within Vancouver (15-18 mins max). Transit is pretty bus-oriented, but it's never really been a problem for me. Getting out of downtown might be a problem if you like to hang out past 2am and/or live in the sticks. Not much open 24 hours or really late other than a couple coffee shops and a handful of restaurants.

Biking: I don't bike but the city seems fairly bike friendly (and getting better), I believe we have 3 routes now with separated bike lanes downtown. You can bike safely from anywhere within Vancouver. My neighbour bikes to work every day from East Van which probably takes him 25-30 mins each way.

Tech Scene: It's alright, but we're working on it. I put together a startup hackathon last month and met a bunch of fellow Vancouver HN users. There are a couple startup incubators here and more coming (I believe), Bootup Labs seems to be the most well known. There are angels, VCs and the like here - <USER2> nowhere near the level of SF, NYC, Seattle.

Talent: 2 main schools with CS programs nearby (SFU and UBC), but talent seems hard to find - it's here, you just need to look. If you do find it, it can be fairly cheap though. Much much lower than the valley (from what friends have told me), there are no Facebook-like companies driving up salaries here. I'm probably going to get shanked at the next hacker meet up, but you can probably get decent people for $35k/yr (junior) to $70k/yr (senior/leads).

A big problem seems to be that you can count 'notable' startups on one hand. There are gaming companies here, both mobile/console and gambling. It's much more relaxed here and people just want to live life well. There are hardcore entrepreneurs and hackers here, but also a lot of wantrepreneurs and people who want to come in at 10, take an hour lunch and leave by 5. Very little of that 'startup culture' you hear so much about in San Francisco.

My opinion, but other Vancouverites feel free to criticize or add to this.

<comment><USER58> Very nicely summarized. I would like to add one minor note regarding entertainment, just in case anyone considering Vancouver is a concert addict:

I find myself driving to Seattle for concerts more often than I would like. Lots of acts come to Vancouver but lots of acts skip Vancouver, usually (from what my music biz contacts tell me) because of two main reasons.

1\. It doesn't make sense to add a border crossing to their schedule if it would mean doing just one show in Vancouver before returning back to the states or elsewhere.

2\. Some acts have also quit coming to Vancouver because the audience attitude has made shows less enjoyable to perform here. It is sad but doesn't surprise me. I have watched audience enthusiasm progressively fade here, during the last decade especially.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for a simple solution for building an online course - <AUTHOR> I want to build an online course on graph algorithms for my university. I've tried to find a solution which would let submit, execute and test student's code (implement an online judge), but have had no success. There are a lot of complex LMS and none of them seem to have this feature as a basic functionality.
Are there any good out-of-box solutions? I'm sure I can build a course using Moodle or another popular LMS with some plugin, but I don't want to spend my time customizing things.
I'm interested both in platforms and self-hosted solutions. Thanks! <comment> d-- I'm using the Autolab project from CMU, and I'm quite satisfied. You'll need a couple machines to self host, and run the student's code.

[http://www.autolabproject.com](http://www.autolabproject.com)

Features:

 _Autograding_ Grade any assignment in any language using any software package. Instantly.

 _Scoreboards_ Encourage healthy competition with a real-time rank ordered scoreboard.

 _Code Annotation_ Augment the autograde with additional feedback directly on the student's code.

 _Cheat Detection_ Maintain academic integrity by comparing assessments with each other and with past submissions. Uses Stanford's Moss Cheat Detector.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Judging by the description it's what I'm looking for. I couldn't find a demo, so I'm not sure whether it satisfies the requirements or not, but I will definitely try it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now I understand why they don't have a demo.

<comment><USER2> why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I could write a novel about this because I've been creating courses since 2015 but I'm going to keep it short.

I've tried a lot of platforms and teachable.com is by far the best solution as of today if you don't have a requirement where you expect people to upload code and then run automated tests against it.

I currently use thinkific.com for my courses because over a year ago I made that decision and switching between platforms is too painful for your users (they would need to make a new account, lose their progress and potentially lose invoice data, etc.). I will move off Thinkific in the future, but that's not going to happen until I finish building my own platform (which I'm currently doing at the moment as a side project mainly because as a developer, I'm still at my happiest when I'm writing code).

With that said, I also use Teachable for another project and the UI is a million times ahead of where Thinkific is for both instructors and students. Every time I use Teachable I'm upset that I chose to use Thinkific initially.

At the bare minimum you'll have to assemble your course, pick a theme for the front end, and build up your course's description page.

Expect to pay $100 / month for most platforms.

<comment><USER4> Why are you writing your own solution? Is it just for fun?

I was under impression that there are tons of opensource available platforms to host courses.

<comment><USER3> Before I made a decision to go with Thinkific I asked some of my students to try out Moodle's demo site and the feedback I got from them was very negative. The general census was it was too complicated and confusing to navigate their UI and their video player is really really bad. For a video course, a good video player is very important.

edX is a little better, but it's still not what I want from a course platform and the amount of effort it would take to trim it down would be more effort than writing my own platform.

I also looked at a bunch of WP plugins that are advertised as "course platform in a box" and none of them looked appealing. The UI for all of them were very poor and these plugins are massive beasts. I don't want to spend my time hacking through someone elses WP plugin to customize it.

After looking at so many platforms and solutions I eventually came to the conclusion that no matter what platform I choose i'm never going to be truly happy.

If I went with Teachable from day 1, I think I would have been 80% happy and may not have even decided to build my own platform, but at the end of the day, the heart wants what the heart wants. I want to build my own platform and I can do it. Being at ease mentally (even if it means working harder) is more important to me than anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> DataCamp has DataCamp Teach ([https://www.datacamp.com/teach](https://www.datacamp.com/teach)), which allows you to create your own interactive content.

Disclaimer: I work for DataCamp

 __Edit __: there 's also a 'light' version available: [https://github.com/datacamp/datacamp- light](https://github.com/datacamp/datacamp-light)

<comment><USER6> What's the pricing for the course builder? I only see pricing info for your courses.

<comment><USER5> It's free, you just need to create an account and you can use the course authoring tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe look at Jupyter Notebook? It does much of this out of the box, but may not be exactly what you are looking for.

[http://jupyter.org/about](http://jupyter.org/about)

<comment><USER8> nbgrader is a "A system for assigning and grading Jupyter notebooks." [https://github.com/jupyter/nbgrader](https://github.com/jupyter/nbgrader)

jupyter-edx-grader-xblock [https://github.com/ibleducation/jupyter-edx-grader- xblock](https://github.com/ibleducation/jupyter-edx-grader-xblock)

> _Auto-grade a student assignment created as a Jupyter notebook, using the > nbgrader Jupyter extension, and write the score in the Open edX gradebook_

... networkx is a graph library written in Python which has pretty good docs: [https://networkx.github.io/documentation/stable/reference/](https://networkx.github.io/documentation/stable/reference/)

There are a few books which feature networkx.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've worked on this problem a bit for python, and these were some of the interesting tools that came to mind.

* nbgrader: tool for managing and grading submissions using Jupiter notebooks.

* codeocean.com: lets you put up a self contained notebook that people can run and clone online.

* ipython_nose: allows you to put unit tests inside a jupyter notebook.

I've also been toying a lot with building DataCamp projects, which are basically jupyter notebooks with unit tests (note, I work on other things at DataCamp). If the "online judge" is just deciding whether a submission meets a set of criteria, they might work well. If the judge is comparing student submissions to each other (eg ranking by speed), then they probably wouldn't be a great fit.

[http://authoring.datacamp.com/projects/](http://authoring.datacamp.com/projects/)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you create your course assignments in a Jupyter notebook then you can use OK to grade them. [http://jupyter.org](http://jupyter.org) [http://okpy.org](http://okpy.org)

</comment><comment><USER11> I know about a platform calld Ans[1] that supports code submission for assignments. It was built by a startup from TU Delft.

[1] [https://www.ans-delft.nl/](https://www.ans-delft.nl/)

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a Brazilian solution called Nutror that accompanies the ecosystem of Eduzz, I have already tested and believe to be the best in the world today (in terms of simplicity of use).

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think I've ever heard of the ability to have students upload code and then run that code securely described as "basic functionality" before.

</comment><comment><USER14> It depends a bit on what you want them to write code in. R Shiny has some built in e-learning functionality with interactive documents. At least two packages will let you-develop e-learning materials. If you use Python Jupyter notebooks have a an ability to be graded which would allow grading of code. I would then recommend Piazza for cimmunication with students as it supports code formatting and math in the form of LaTeX support.

</comment><comment><USER15> My university uses Mooshak for that: [https://mooshak2.dcc.fc.up.pt/](https://mooshak2.dcc.fc.up.pt/) (this is the new version, when I attended they were using the previous: [https://mooshak.dcc.fc.up.pt/](https://mooshak.dcc.fc.up.pt/))

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there any way to contact you personally? I'm a member of a group developing educational games for software engineers and we're looking for project ideas. Perhaps we could collaborate on a graph exercise application that would run students' code, grade their submissions and, for instance, visualise graphs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'd like to share the details of a course with you and to hear about your approach for designing such an app. Feel free to contact me: vds003 at gmail.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Try stepik: [https://support.stepik.org/hc/en- us/articles/360000159673-Ty...](https://support.stepik.org/hc/en- us/articles/360000159673-Types-of-assignments)

</comment><comment><USER18> An univerisity course I am following uses this CMS[1] to have that "basic functionality" you are talking about.

[1] [https://github.com/cms-dev/cms](https://github.com/cms-dev/cms)

</comment><comment><USER19> SaaS platforms for it are [https://teachable.com](https://teachable.com) and [https://www.thinkific.com](https://www.thinkific.com)

</comment><comment><USER20> At KIT they use Praktomat: [https://github.com/KITPraktomatTeam/Praktomat/](https://github.com/KITPraktomatTeam/Praktomat/)

GitHub plus Travis CI is not enough?

</comment><comment><USER21> A company I've worked for in the past is an Australian company called CourseGenius. Fairly affordable and has a free trial.

Avoid SCORM at all costs lol.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think replit ( [http://repl.it](http://repl.it) ) is what you looking for

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd start with markdown (with hugo or jekyll) with


A visualization of the prime factors of the first million integers - <AUTHOR> https://johnhw.github.io/umap_primes/index.md.html <comment><USER2> > A very pretty structure emerges; this might be spurious in that it captures > more about the layout algorithm than any _" true"_ structure of numbers.

What would it look like if we used PCA rather than UMAP? PCA is simpler than UMAP, so it's in some sense "less arbitrary". If the image is similar then we know we're seeing something about numbers rather than about our methods.

<comment><USER3> PCA is dimensionally invalid, it destroys, not preserves structure and consists of arbitrary linear algebra operations. It is "less arbitrary" the way x86 assembly is "less arbitrary" wrt. C (actually it ties you to a certain mode of thinking).

<comment><USER4> I don't think "arbitrary linear algebra operations" is a valid critique. If you understand PCA as "take the SVD of the data", then the operations seem arbitrary. But if you understand it as, "construct a low-rank approximation in the L2 sense to the data, or its covariance", then it's not.

Also, I don't think that the (very legitimate) "dimensional" critique of PCA applies here. The units on the coordinates of the representation are the same: the presence or absence of that prime factor.

To the original question: my suspicion is that PCA might pull out the even numbers (first PC) and the divisible by 3 numbers (second PC), because these two factors may explain the most variability in the underlying vector representation. If it did, that would be pretty intuitive, although not as interesting.

\---

Edited to add: Suspicion turned out to be true. For the first 2000 integers, the top 6 PCs turned out to correspond to the first 6 primes (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13).

Plot at: [https://imgur.com/a/qi2Sx5u](https://imgur.com/a/qi2Sx5u)?

      function [nums,pcs]=pca_prime(nMax,nPC)

      nums = zeros(nMax, nMax);
      for k = 2:nMax,
        nums(k,factor(k)) = 1; % vector representation of "k"
      end;
      % 2:end because don't care about 1 as a "prime"
      pcs = pca(nums(2:end,:), 'NumComponents', nPC);

\--

      [nums,pcs]=pca_prime(2000,10); % "svd" would work too
      plot(pcs(:,1:6)); % first 6 PCs

<comment><USER5> If you think of the covariance matrix, entry i,j for i ≠ j will be

       floor(n / (p[i]*p[j])) / n - floor(n / p[i]) * floor(n/p[j]) / n^2

and the ith diagonal entry will be

       floor(n / p[i]) / n - ( floor(n / p[i]) / n )^2

for n large, you approximately get a diagonal matrix with diagonal entries / eigenvalues 1/p[i] - 1/p[i]^2.

<comment><USER4> Smart observation. Another way to say it is that, for distinct primes p1 and p2, the events "p1 divides n", and "p2 divides n", are approximately statistically independent. So you get a near-diagonal covariance with entries as you wrote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reposting my comment from here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17816981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17816981)

\----

Prime factors of a number is the ultimate high-dimensional space.

Damn. The more I see UMAP, the more I think it is going to be a central and generic tool for high-dimensional analysis. I haven't taken the time to go in depth into it yet, though :/

So far, my understanding of it is: t-SNE on steroids

* t-SNE is great for local proximity, but it 'rips' high dimensional global structures too early. UMAP solves both scales by using transformations to map overlapping points of the different lower dimensional spaces that are locally relevant.

* It is faster than t-SNE, and has a better scale factor.

* t-SNE is about moving the points when UMAP is about finding the transformations that move the points.. which means:

a) it yields a model that you can use to create embeddings for unseen data. This means sharing your work by contributing to the public model zoos.

b) And you can also do supervised dimension reduction as you create your embedding. Ie You can judge if the shape looks good for unseen data (aka it generalizes well), and then correct the embedding by choosing which unseen instances to add to the training set. This means you control the cost of labeling data. You can see where your errors are, and back-propagate them to the collection process in a cost effective manner. For high dimensional data.

* You can choose your metric! Specific a distance function and you're good to go. Haversine for a great orange peeling, Levenshtein for visualizing word spelling (and maybe provide an embedding for ML-based spell checking?)

* You can choose the output space to be greater than 2 or 3, in order to stop the compression at a specified level.

I believe it will replace t-SNE in the long term.

Here is a great video of the author presenting his work:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq6iPZVUxZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq6iPZVUxZU)

<comment><USER7> > * You can choose your metric! Specific a distance function and you're good > to go. Haversine for a great orange peeling, Levenshtein for visualizing > word spelling (and maybe provide an embedding for ML-based spell checking?)

t-SNE, at least the implementation I usually work with (from the R Rtsne package) happily accepts any distance matrix as input. I successfully used all kinds of distance measures with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice. Reminds me of Buddhabrot images [http://erleuchtet.org/2010/07/ridiculously-large- buddhabrot....](http://erleuchtet.org/2010/07/ridiculously-large- buddhabrot.html)

<comment><USER9> That's why I love HN, you start reading a post along with the comments and you see nice links like this one that take you down another (similar) road ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to see this for various pseudo-random number generators, both ordinary and cryptographically secure.

</comment><comment><USER11> I didn't really understand how they reduce to 2 dimensions. Can somebody explain?

<comment><USER12> If what you're asking about is the math, the steps are (essentially) as follows:

1\. A Riemannian manifold is constructed from the dataset.

2\. The manifold is approximately mapped to an _n_ -dimensional topological structure.

3\. The reduced embedding is an ( _n_ \- _k_ )-dimensional projection equivalent to the initial topological structure, where _k_ is the number of dimensions you'd like to reduce by.

I don't know how well that answers your question because it's difficult to simplify the math beyond that. But you can also check out the paper on arXiv. [1]

The underlying idea is to transform the data into a topological representation, analyze its structure, then find a much smaller (dimensionally speaking) topological structure which is either the same thing ("equivalent") or very close to it. You get most of the way there by thinking about how two things which look very different can be topologically the same based on their properties. A pretty accessible demonstration of that idea is the classical donut <-> coffee mug example on the Wikipedia page for homeomorphisms. [2]

__________________

1\. [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.03426.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.03426.pdf)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeomorphism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeomorphism)

<comment><USER13> Is this actually capturing any properties of the original set, or is this a set of operations that will make any input look similar? (i.e. is this just a pretty picture with no real connection to the math.)

<comment><USER3> It captures more of the spatial (metric topological) arrangement in the set. Example they give in the paper is the MINST dataset where distinctly looking digits like 1 and 0 get separated farther apart and similar ones clump together, whereas t-SNE while correctly delimiting individual clusters clumps them all in a blob.

<comment><USER13> Cool. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder what it would look like for completely random numbers?

<comment><USER15> Yeah it's hard to tell if this visualization is picking up anything interesting about prime numbers or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand. Why are the points of light moving?

<comment> Mary-Jane The color scale is min to max at the time the frame was rendered. Each frame adds 1000 to the previous set, halving their brightness from the previous frame. This creates the illusion of movement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks a bit like our universe...

</comment><comment><USER18> It's curious to see UMAP compared primarily to t-SNE and not to MDS, Isomap, LLE, LTSA, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Was I the only one who saw a pattern resembling the flying spaghetti monster?

</comment><comment><USER20> Looking at such visualizations of mathematical axioms, like these and the Ulam Spiral [0], gives me a kind of vague .. intuition? apprehension? feeling/fun- idea-to-muse-about, that maybe Reality began from these.

As in the root of the "What caused the Big Bang" or "but who created God?" questions. Stuff like 1+1=2 shouldn't need a root cause, and would give rise to patterns like these.

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

</comment><comment><USER21> What are the loopy things? What do the starbursts correspond to??

<comment><USER4> My conjecture is that the loops (especially the loops outside the main clump at the center) might correspond to newly-introduced prime factors.

As a new batch of integers is introduced in going from frame N to frame N+1, the prime numbers within that batch would become new points in the 2d projection, because they have not been seen before.

Then, as you go from frame N+1 to frame N+2, etc., the new prime factors from frame N start to re-occur in those successive frames, and new points are added to the loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a lot of interesting structure. Does this suggest some kind of structure to the space of prime factors or is it just trying to attach meaning where none exists?

<comment><USER23> Given that there is definitive visual structure to primes themselves[1], it would be rather surprising if prime factorization had none.

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

<comment><USER24> Ulam sprials are super interesting. I developed a visualization (and some explanation) once just to understand the problem a little better. Maybe this sparks some interest in someone :)

[https://tessi.github.io/walking-the-ulam- spiral/](https://tessi.github.io/walking-the-ulam-spiral/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Seems the markdown wasn't rendered to html, here's a link to the generated image [https://johnhw.github.io/umap_primes/primes_umap_1e6_4k.png](https://johnhw.github.io/umap_primes/primes_umap_1e6_4k.png)

<comment><USER26> The site uses JavaScript to render the Markdown to HTML client-side. Reminds me of when I thought XML with client-side XSLT for rendering was a good idea, lol.

I enjoyed the plain markdown page though, very readable.

<comment><USER25> I see, I've set my browser to block third party javascript, on inspection, it seems the author has decided to download the markdown render script from what looks to be an analytics firm. ([https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/latest/markdeep.min.js](https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/latest/markdeep.min.js))

Interesting choice

<comment><USER27> markdeep is an extension of markdown, see [https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/](https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/) for details

<comment><USER25> Aha! I mistyped the domain when exploring and got to this site [https://www.causal-effects.com/](https://www.causal-effects.com/)

The site you linked does look much friendlier (still.. self host your js when you can!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is so refreshing! Awesome to see and feel such a different perspective over numbers.

</comment><comment><USER29> Cute and colorful collection of squiggly lines but I don't think this visualization is useful for capturing any insights into prime factorization...

</comment><comment><USER30> Really cool! I'd love to see this go even further and see what other patterns appear.

</comment><comment><USER31> BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!</comment>