Ask HN: Where did you meet your significant other? - <AUTHOR> My learning from past experiences is that the more women I meet and get to know, the less likely I am to stay single for long. I guess it's a basic case of supply and demand.
The problem is that ever since I graduated from college and started working at a big tech company, I've come to realize that the number of new people I'm meeting has dramatically reduced. But what concerns me is when it comes to women: I haven't even made any new girl friend (as a friend being a girl :) in the past year.
What is odd is that people around me (at work, and more generally in the Tech industry) don't seem to be more single than anywhere else.
It's getting me to my question: where did you meet your partner? Was it in college?? Do you have any advices as to where I could meet more people (I've attended a language Meetup group, but everybody was 30 years older than me)? <comment><USER3> I met my girlfriend at a coffee shop. Previous relationship was through OkCupid, and before that, I met at 6 AM in an airport.

Where do you live? Might be easier in an urban area. I used to live in Dallas, TX, and that sucked pretty hard - meeting _anyone_ was pretty difficult. As a fairly shy/lonely person in high school, I remember my dad suggesting that I go walk the dog around the block... I'd take the dog out for a couple hours and never see a single soul, aside from people pulling straight into their garages.

I now live in Washington, DC, and it's nearly impossible to _not_ meet someone. I'll start conversations running into people on nights out, chat people up at bars/coffee shops, elevators, the gym, whatever.

I'd suggest a few things:

1) Talk to everyone. I mean _EVERYONE_. If you're used to striking up conversations impulsively, it makes it that much easier to meet someone you find attractive/interesting. If you don't, you'll likely over think things when it matters. 2) Live somewhere social, somewhere urban. Suburbia and rural places attract a certain type of people, the kind that like to pull straight into their garage and chill in their backyard, preferably oblivious of their neighbors. That certainly doesn't help your odds.

Good luck!

<comment><USER4> > Talk to everyone. I mean _EVERYONE_.

This.

You must get good at "small talk." You must learn to actually enjoy small talk. There is no other way.

Almost everyone I know who has a hard time meeting people hates small talk. That's a problem.

If you're desperate, get a job running a cash register part time. It's the best place to practice small talk, and you'll learn to enjoy it because it makes the day go by faster.

<comment><USER5> And if you're a terribly shy person (and I know a number of geeks who are), start with something as simple as talking to the person at a checkout register or the waitperson. When they ask how you are, give a short summary, then _ask them how they are doing_. Try to see it as a real question rather than a greeting. Do this regularly and it will get easier and more natural.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I met my fiancee at an event in San Francisco called Nerd Nite (sf.nerdnite.com). I was waiting in line with a coworker (D) to get in, and my coworker's friend (P) showed up, and then this cute girl joins P, and we make our introductions. I thought she was dating P, but she was _really_ into me for the rest of the night, and so the next day I FB stalked her and asked her out. It took awhile to get a response, but she finally responded and we set up a date at East Bay Nerd Nite (eastbay.nerdnite.com), and the rest is history.

My advice is generally to just go do things you think are fun. Don't go with the mindset of "maybe I'll meet someone," but instead just go with the mindset of "I'm gonna go have a good time and talk to people and generally step out of my comfort zone." And the odds are great that if you make one new friend, you'll get to meet all their friends eventually, and if you become friends with any of those people, you'll meet all those friends, and so on. It's a viral effect, basically, and eventually you'll meet some women, and eventually, one of those women will be interested in you.

And my second piece of advice is that if you decide you like a woman romantically, ask her out as soon as you make that realization. If she's a relatively new acquaintance, then if she rejects you, it's no big loss, and there's a greater chance you'll both get over it and move on. If it's an older friend, then you're risking your entire friendship (and potentially the entire group). Anyway. I digress.

TL;DR: Go do fun things, talk to everyone, even if they aren't your age.

Good luck. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I quite literally met my wife on a street. I was a volunteer in a strange city and she was driving by and needed directions. I had absolutely no idea how to give her directions to our donation center so she said we could stop by her apartment to pick up her donation and give her directions for future reference.

She and I started talking. I ended up coming back again to take another donation (she sure did donate a lot of stuff...). A few weeks later she was needing some help moving out of her place and I said I wouldn't mind helping. That led to even more chatting, which led to late night chatting, which led to eating together, which led to dates.

Probably far more detail than you were wanting. We've been married for just about 13 years and have numerous kids together. It wasn't really a conscious decision at first to "be together", it was more like the most natural and wonderful friendship ever.

Yours will come my friend. Be patient :) there it time.

</comment><comment><USER8> My 10th was just over (1993) and my best friend (now deceased, 2002) took me to one of his school friend, who happened to have a huge family of sisters, cousins - who lived in a typical big large Indian Family setting.

I was introduced to quite a bunch of the siblings, cousins, etc. including my would-be partner, who was the younger sister of my friend's friend. She was studying Mathematics and was in some troubles understanding few concepts (or something like that). My friend jokingly told them that I was good with Math. Her bother and my new-found friend told me to impart some Math idea and help her out a bit. Nothing substantial happened, taught her few mathematical stuffs and how I usually approach problems.

Going forward, we all became close friends. Visits to her place became frequent - birthday parties, casual visits, et al happened. Well, that chapter closed when I moved out of my sleepy town and to one of the fastest metropolitan city in India - Bombay (1999). Everything was lost - <USER2> connections, no phones, no nothing, no news - everyone went their ways.

Forward to 2006, my small team servicing clients was approached and acqui- hired by a Valley Startup and I became one of the founding team of our first Startup. We move to a city next to Bombay. Due to some odd circumstances, that brother/friend called up and we got talking. Her sister had just graduated from engineering college and was looking for an internship. He asked me if she can intern with our company. So, she fly down to the city and worked with us.

We got married the next year - Jun 7, 2007. We, now, have a 6 year old daughter.

<comment><USER8> I think I forgot to mention that my would-be wife was once a cupid for my girlfriend who left me. I used to bribe her with ice-cream. We had no mobile phones (1997-1999).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For me, it was in college.

By the way you've been talking about your life progression, I assume you live in the Bay Area. I also assume, from the way you've been talking, that you're interested in cis women. If so, I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you: the ratios are not in your favor there. IIRC Sunnyvale was one of the worst disparities in the country.

If this is in fact the case, the easiest (though not best) way to change your situation is to move. Since that is probably impractical, my next piece of advice is to stop looking in places that are just duplicates of where you work. I can't imagine a worse place than a language meetup group. Get some interests outside of the tech industry. Like, ideally, get something completely unrelated. This actually helps you out in several ways: not only are you going to meet more women, but you're going to meet more _people_ in general that you wouldn't normally meet because you live in a tech bubble.

My wife is not a tech person; she worked as a supermarket clerk when I lived in the Bay Area. I don't say this because there's something special about supermarket clerks, but to point out that there are great people out there that have nothing to do with tech and if you live inside of a tech bubble the only person you're depriving is yourself.

<comment><USER10> >I can't imagine a worse place than a language meetup group.

I used to attend such meetups in the US, and now attend them abroad, and they're pretty good for meeting more people in general (in their 20s and 30s). Not sure the reason for the dislike (did you go to a Klingon meetup?).

edit: nothing against Klingon but might not be the most female-rich environment. The fact that you might have meant computer language slipped by me, for some reason. My bad.

<comment><USER11> I think he means programming languages.

<comment><USER10> Thx. I've been to so many foreign language meetups that that's all that entered my mind upon writing my comment. Also, I met my girlfriend because I was curious about her language.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did mean "foreign language".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I met my now fiancè in an adult social sports league which I highly recommend for social activity in general, not just romantic purposes. The league was/is adult kickball, but there are several out there that encourage solo signups and will place you on a team.

I'm inherently more inclined to not be social and prefer it that way, however, I do enjoy sports a lot which was the catalyst for joining some leagues. It doesn't have to be just for the sport and you don't have to be good at it, but it definitely encourages social interaction, plus some exercise. I won't name any leagues, but google around and you can easily find local leagues for kickball/dodgeball/volleyball/football (I recommend kickball as it really doesn't matter what your skill level is).

Feel free to drop me a line if you want more info

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm 27, so I don't really have any life advice, but I don't appear to be far off in age than you so I think I can at least provide some anecdotal evidence.

Where you can go to meet more people?

My suggestion is to just attend events with as many of your close friends as possible. Although it won't be "dating" it will get your name/personality/face out there.

I met my soon-to-be fiancé at a happy hour from the university that we both attended in Texas. I only went to the happy hour bc my good buddies were going and I didn't have anything else planned.

We actually didn't date right from then and only kept up via random FB comments. Then one day she posted about how the only Valentine's Day card she got was from another girl and so I asked her for her address and she actually sent it to me. This led to me sending her a platonic Valentine's Day card (which is INSANELY hard to find) and she liked it so much that she reached out to me again. We have been together ever since!

</comment><comment><USER14> One of my main tenants for living is to a.) always keep an active social circle of b.) people that I do non-tech things with. For my life, such goals provide a very positive counterbalance to the intense focus I give to my career and tech, during all of my other waking hours.

So, with this group of friends, we went on an outing to a weekend music festival. My friend got word of a shared AirBnb for the weekend, through another of his friend circles. We both joined in on the AirBnb, and it's there that I met my SO. They ended up being my friends's friend's roommate's girlfriend's friend.

Meeting people is tough and, in a way, its own full-time job. It's another job to actively date. My top suggestions are: * look to see if your college has an active alumni group, locally. if so, attend events with them (sports tailgates, cookouts, etc). * go to Meetups that interest you. go to many, and go often. * join a kickball, dodgeball, rock climbing, soccer, or any other group sport.

Continue to put forth a significant effort towards these things for 1-2 years and I promise you'll develop a solid friend circle. It's a hard process and you'll have to learn to constantly meet and interact with scores of people you simply don't mesh with, until you find the rare few people that you click really well with. Stay optimistic. As a general rule, don't say 'no' to any invitation you're given.

If you're single, I'd encourage you to meet other single friends that you can go 'be single' with (i.e. go to bars, clubs, dating and other social events to, with the intent of meeting people who may turn into an SO).

After that, it's usually a matter of time and lots of fun with your friends, until you meet an SO. For me, this whole process took about 4-5 years.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not totally an answer to your question, but a nice section from Isaacson's biography about Jobs about how he met Paulene:

In October 1989, Jobs had agreed to give one of the "View from the Top" lectures at Stanford Business School one Thursday evening. Lauren Powell was a new graduate at business school. She arrived late and all the seats were taken, so they sat in the aisle. When an usher told them they had to move, Powell took her friend down to the front row and commandered two of the reserved seats there. Jobs was led to to the one next to her when he arrived. "I looked to my right, and there, so we started chatting while I was waiting to be introduced", Jobs recalled. They bantered a bit, and Lauren joked that she was sitting there because she had won a raffle, and the prize was that she he got to take her to dinner. "He was so adorable", she later said.

After the speech Jobs hung around on the edge of the stage chatting with students. He watched Powell leave, then come back and stand at the edge of crowd, then leave again. He bolted out after her, brushing past the Dean, who was trying to grab him for a conversation. After catching up with her in the parking lot, he said, "Excuse me, wasn't there something about a raffle you won, that I'm supposed to take you to dinner?" She laughed. "How about Saturday?" he asked. She agreed and wrote down her number. Jobs headed to his car to drive up to the Thomas Fogarty winery in the Santa Cruz mountains above Woodside, where the NeXT education sales group was holding a dinner. But he suddenly stopped and and turned around. "I thought wow, I'd rather have dinner with her than the education group, so I ran back to her car and said 'How about dinner tonight?" She said yes. It was a beautiful fall evening, and they walked into Palo Alto to a funky vegetarian restaurant, St. Micheal' s alley, and ended up staying there for 4 hours. "We've been together ever since," he said.

</comment><comment><USER16> Met my wife in college. I was the college radio GM and she was a promoter at a local music venue. She contacted me about doing promotions and that's how it got started.

Quite frankly I would be terrified to be dating in 2015. With all of the social apps and things out there now the field is just so wide for platforms to connect.

I think the key to finding a date as a man is to just be open to it 100% of your life. There are millions of beautiful, smart capable women everywhere - all you need to do is approach them and say hello and that's it. The more things you do (sports, events, meetups etc...) the better because your exposure frequency will be higher.

In the end, if you see someone you think would be worth talking to, just go say hi, no harm there. If they don't respond then move on.

</comment><comment><USER17> My parents and her parents set up a meeting in a temple and we said yes after 15 minutes. We are now happily married since five years. (I'm serious, arranged marriage is still popular in India).

<comment><USER18> ..let me just get back on my chair. Just unbelievable. Happy that it worked out for you two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I met my wife at church.

I wouldn't recommend going to church _solely_ to meet someone (although some do), but if you want to meet more people going places is the first step. Church, park, gym, library, farmers market, meetups, coffee shops, sporting events, etc.

The second step, as others have said, is you have to put yourself out there and talk to people. Not in the sense of hitting on someone or asking for a date. Just talk to people and create some new relationships. It can be hard for some people (it was for me), but you'll find it really enriches your life.

Keep it simple to start. Choose a treadmill next to someone at the gym and say "hello". Ask the person buying the fava beans at the farmers market stand how they cook them. You get the idea ...

<comment><USER20> I also met my wife at church.

But, you know, don't go there just to pick up women. For that matter, don't go to the gym just to pick up women. Don't go to the farmer's market just to pick up women. That's creepy, and women don't like creeps. (At least, most women with decent judgment don't, and you don't really want to wind up with the ones who have bad judgment.)

Instead, just go do stuff. You're going to the gym? Great. Talk to the person on the next treadmill (if they're willing, not buried in their earbuds). If that person is the wrong gender, talk to them anyway - at least say hello. Learn to talk to _people_ , not just to _potential partners_. Ironically, this is a useful step in finding partners...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I met my husband at a coffee shop in 1999. He is a software architect. I was reading a book at the time called "Introduction to Theoretical Quantum Computing Concepts" for fun. He saw the title of my book when I walked away from the table and wanted to meet me. He approached me and after a few hours of talking asked for my email. He ended up inviting me to take a Calculus 3 class with him at the local community college for fun. We got together a week later, were engaged within a few weeks, and married a few months after that. Moral of the story: read real books in public so people can see the cover! No kindle :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Coffee shops.

Nearly every single one of my girlfriends over the last 20 years I met at a coffee shop. In general, almost all of my friends I met at coffee shops.

Coffee shops are like, the perfect mix of: bar, bookstore, school lunchroom. The best place to meet people, imo.

<comment><USER10> How do you meet people in cafes?

When I go, regardless of where, almost everyone is there to be non-social while in public (ie, they get the social aspect w/o having to be social), and most are buried in their phones/laptops/textbooks, unless they're there to meet a specific person (friend or business partner).

<comment><USER4> Yeah, wifi has definitely put a damper on the traditional coffee shop vibe. Some shops are worse than others, though.

My advice is: find a busy shop with regular customers. Make friends with the baristas, and hang out near the bar when it's busy. Talk to the baristas - most will welcome this (I'm a former barista. Conversation with customers makes the day go by faster. If the baristas don't want to talk, find another shop.) You will inevitably be pulled into conversations with other customers by hanging out at the bar. It's like a conveyor belt of ever changing personalities. Eventually, people will ask you to socialize outside of the coffee shop. Success.

This always works. I've done it a number of times. When I go to a new place and don't know anyone, I find a coffee shop.

also: make sure you go on weekends - people are more willing to relax and talk when it's not during the workweek.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I met my now-wife at a privacy conference in Washington, D.C. I was at the conference for work, and she was working for the summer at a non-profit group, which had sent her to the event. Both of us ended up talking at the dinner and sitting next to each other.

As for advice, other posts in this thread have offered good suggestions. In general I would look for ways to expand your potential list of acquaintances who could potentially become romantic partners: you may have been used to coming into constant contact with new people your age in college, but in the real world, that's not the norm. So learn to salsa dance. Learn to sail. Go on group bike rides.

Our ability to help you beyond generic advice is limited because you didn't include key details, like where you live, how old you are, what nationality you are (you don't sound like a native English speaker), what you do for a living, or even what sex you are. If you want better advice, be more forthcoming.

</comment><comment><USER23> I met my ex-girlfriend (now wife) at a female friends barbecue party while living in a new city and following the rule of "I have to say yes to any invitation by anyone to anything".

My previous girlfriend and I met at a local disco, where a common friend introduced us.

In my personal experience: extended networks of friends is where it's at. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER24> ICQ, of all places. But it wasn't like I was not having luck with other methods. This sort of happened. Anyhow, you just have to do three simple things:

\- dress nicely and appropriately for wherever you go/decide to go to socialize.

\- smile and say hi, even from a distance.

\- ask questions , shut up and listen.

That will get you in the door. The rest is up to the other person.

</comment><comment><USER25> Okcupid. Worked pretty well for me as a 25~ y/o. Definitely made me more comfortable with dating and learning how to quickly recognize if there was mutual interest.

</comment><comment><USER26> OkCupid. We got married in February.

I'm not getting paid by Match.com to say this... Besides OkCupid was still an independent company back when we met :)

</comment><comment><USER27> At university, but we didn't start dating until 15 years after graduating. It's worthwhile keeping in touch with people. :)

As for meeting new people, the only option is to say yes to opportunities to socialise outside of your job and it's related topics. You'll only meet the same people over and over again if you don't expand your social group. Find hobbies and interests that aren't tech. To be honest, you should do that regardless. It just makes you a more interesting person.

</comment><comment><USER28> I met mine on Tinder, 7 months ago. We moved in together last month. Before that I'd done the "normal" chatting up someone in a bar (that's how I met my ex-wife), or meeting through acquaintances.

Online dating can work really well, if you approach it the right way. I still have loads of friends among girls I met through one dating site or another as well, so it can help you find girl friends as well as a girlfriend.

</comment><comment><USER29> i'm waiting for someone to say they met on HN...

</comment><comment><USER30> I met my soon-to-be-wife (I say soon because we are getting married later this year) 9 years ago on Myspace believe it or not. She was friends with someone I went to school with, we had never met prior. She added me, we started speaking. We then progressed onto talking regularly over MSN Messenger, we decided to meet after talking for about 1 month and the rest is history.

</comment><comment><USER31> Broaden your horizons.

If you just go after women in the tech industry circle, you've lowered your chances drastically.

Get a few new hobbies and interest, not just for the sole purpose of meeting new women, but really just to enjoy yourself.

By doing this, you open yourself up to a whole lot more women and they will start approaching you.

</comment><comment><USER32> I met my girlfriend via OKCupid. We started talking, spent a few weeks messaging back and forth about interests, goals, and just generally getting to know each other than met up for the first time to go to a beer festival, had an awesome time and kept seeing each other.

</comment><comment><USER33> I met my wife playing Dark Age of Camelot, in Muspelheim. That was about 13 years ago. Back then, it was horrifying to people to hear that we met online! Today that's somewhat normal, but back then it was very unusual.

</comment><comment><USER34> Through mutual friends in Beijing of all places. Considering I am Australian and she from Panama it seems a very odd place. At the time I was working she she was studying.

Honestly just try online dating. You know what you are getting to a degree and anyone legitimately on there is looking for a partner so it saves embarrassing conversations. Failing that I suggest joining your local dance club. Salsa tends to attract a large amount of youngish unattached girls who will be sharing with you an interest. If nothing else you gain confidence and a useful skill while chatting away.

</comment><comment><USER35> I met my wife at a college dance. You probably don't have much opportunity to attend many of those. More important than _where_ we met, though, is _how_.

I am not so good nor interested in most "traditional" forms of dancing, but I love poi and staff spinning. I was spinning poi, she saw me, thought it was cool and wanted to learn, and we set up weekly lessons. She happened to see me at a dance, but it could just as well have happened at a park or any other random place with high ceilings. Weekly poi lessons led to dating, etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm not married, but I take dance lessons at a local community college. There are literally tons of young girls there (especially if you can man-up and do ballet). And, because it's a community college, they're generally in their 20s so there is very little threat of breaking the law on a high schooler. If you can, try to put aside your engineer's "intellectual superiority" for a moment and talk to them as simply another person, the experience can be very fruitful.

<comment><USER31> How many girls from the ballet class have you been involved with?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> OkCupid - anecdotal, but it seemed like an overall more interesting/intellectually stimulating pool on OkC vs. some of the others.

</comment><comment><USER38> Instead of trivia I would recommend you this link and specially the author's uncommon formula for dating success:

[http://oliveremberton.com/2014/weve-all-been-raised-by- evil-...](http://oliveremberton.com/2014/weve-all-been-raised-by-evil-love- stories/)

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm getting married in one week to a girl I met at a Startup Weekend! Totally worth the ticket price.

</comment><comment><USER40> I met my wife in a nightclub in Argentina. I just cold approached her, introduced myself and started talking about very nerdy intellectual stuff. She was very intelligent and liked the same stuff. We kept in touch after that and it worked out great.

</comment><comment><USER41> Met the ex on a MUD while in college. Met the wife at a dog show of all places.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think a book store like Barnes & Noble might be a good idea. Another good idea is a sports event, be it a Crossfit training or a bootcamp where you can go for drinks afterwards. Good luck! :)

</comment><comment><USER43> At Comdex--back when there was a Comdex--at a press conference, shortly after her boss-Scott McNealy--told me I'd just asked him the dumbest question he'd ever heard.

</comment><comment><USER44> Long-defunct dating site emode. Two prior relationships were from college and from the Usenet newsgroup soc.singles.moderated, both back in the '90s.

</comment><comment><USER45> I met both my wife and my girlfriend on OkCupid.

</comment><comment><USER46> finger and talk (as in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_(software)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_\(software\)))

There were 500 miles between us. She approached me. It would be a whole summer before we met f2f because she went to nanny in Europe. (Not my current SO.)

</comment><comment><USER47> Grad school. A graduate program in the humanities is literally the best place in the world to meet interesting women.

</comment><comment><USER48> Met my fiancee in Hunter's safety class in middle school. We've been together 11.5 years now.

</comment><comment><USER49> I met my wife at work - we were both product managers at an advertising startup.

</comment><comment><USER50> Current GF: Tinder Previous GF: OkCupid ... First Girlfriend: IRC

You can see the pattern.

</comment><comment><USER51> I met her on reddit. We've been living together for a year now.

</comment><comment><USER52> i met him on twitter :) he was running a local, craft beer twitter account that i was following and i attended one of the "meetups" he hosted. that was 5 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER53> Met my wife on OkCupid, about 5 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER54> At the park when I was 16.

</comment><comment><USER55> Freshman year at a party.

</comment><comment><USER56> Online

</comment><comment><USER57> IRC

</comment><comment><USER58> I met my - now ex- - wife when she sent me an email to commend me for publishing my first web page about being manic-depressive.

It wasn't that she fell in love with me over that page, but because we began to correspond regularly, then I worked up the nerve to ask her phone number, then to tell her I was attracted to her then - before we'd even met in person - to tell her that I loved her.

I've met three girlfriends when they were fellow patients in psychiatric hospitals. One of them we started dating after we were discharged, two of them we carried on right there in the ward.

The last girlfriend I had, I asked her for a lift home after we met at a gas station at three in the morning. I really wasn't looking for romance that night, I really was tired and didn't want to walk home.

</comment><comment><USER31> I meet girls everywhere, grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, school, the list goes on.

If one catches my eye and shows me interest, I approach her. I might just make a joke or give her a slight compliment, however the situation presents itself.

Then I ask her name and go from there...

I'll have to charge you for the rest of the game. ;-)</comment>


SHOW HN: JOBQUACKS aggregates tech jobs off Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.jobquacks.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

This is my first real project. I'd really appreciate getting anyone's feedback on it. Is this useful??</comment>


Show HN: ciTools – Quickly calculate uncertainty intervals in R - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jthaman/ciTools <comment><USER2> This is promising, I very frequently end up writing one off functions to munge data on CIs between lme4 and ggplot2.

However, what a prediction interval _actually means_ is a slightly conentuous issue in the context of mixed models, and Douglas Bates had plenty of caution about constructing/interpreting them on the R mailing lists a few years back.

This said, I've always found the tip-toeing around constructing them annoying; it just means that there's little standard practice.

Do you have any documentation on how you're doing prediction intervals for mixed models, and what interpretations do and don't make sense for your method?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question! There is a vignette in the GitHub version that specifically addresses mixed models and lists exactly which variances and standard errors are incorporated in interval estimation. We show in the vignette that our intervals reach the nominal coverage level asymptotically.

<comment><USER2> Fantastic!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm confused by the use of ggplot2 as shown in the example: ggplot2 and geom_smooth() already calculates and plots confidence intervals by default. What does this package add to a ggplot?

<comment><AUTHOR> ciTools doesn't add anything to ggplot, it creates tidy dataframes that are easy to plot with ggplot. In the example, we show CIs and PIs on a linear mixed model, which ggplot can't handle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm, nothing to do with continuous integration?</comment>


Ask HN: How to do this? Substituting a general word with a random particular? - <AUTHOR> For a pet project I need general words substituted with a random particular.
Example, if I write [country] [color], it could give out: Argentina Green or India Blue. Or anything random from the set of all terms having a country name followed by a color name.
I have looked into wikidata, but results haven't been satisfactory. <comment><USER2> It's not really clear what you want to do, but here's some code I hacked out to see if it's the sort of thing you want:

        #!/usr/bin/python

        import random

        choices = {
            '[colour]' : [ 'red', 'green', 'blue', ],
            '[element]': [ 'antimony', 'arsenic', 'aluminum', 'selenium', ],
            }

        to_substitute = choices.keys()

        text_to_munge = 'Randomly, the colour of [element] is [colour].'

        for key in to_substitute:

            while key in text_to_munge:

                index_of_key = text_to_munge.index(key)
                head = text_to_munge[:index_of_key]
                tail = text_to_munge[index_of_key+len(key):]
                text_to_munge = head + random.choice(choices[key]) + tail

        print text_to_munge

It's really, _really_ not good code, and the purpose of writing this is simply to ask in what ways it fails to meet your requirement. Do not use this code, it is not fit for deployment. If you are using a halfway decent language it will probably have facilities for the sort of thing you need, and using such facilities will be more efficient and effective than a hack like this.

So to repeat - don't use this code, but by all means, let us know the ways in which it fails to meet your requirement.

</comment><comment><USER3> In which programing language???

The example is not clear enough. Can you give _one_ example as

Input: xxx

Output: yyy

[I'm not sure if this is the best kind of submission for HN. We will probably not give a complete solution, but at least someone may point to the correct function in the docs of your language.]</comment>


Show HN: ALTAR, an Azure AD-based OpenSSH CA inspired by BLESS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/outlook/ALTAR <comment><USER2> If we were using Azure at this point in time, I'd definitely consider using this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Leave it to Microsoft to develop tools designed to accept blood sacrifices.</comment>


IOS 6 vs. Jelly Bean: Which New Mobile OS Reigns Supreme? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/game-phones-ios-6-vs-jelly-bean/

<comment><USER2> One of the most horrible comparisons ever, in my opinion. Looks like it was written by someone who knows little about the subject. Check out the comments on the site.

</comment><comment><USER3> Jelly Bean....duh. I see zero features in iOS6 that aren't in Android, but I see tons in Android that aren't in iOS</comment>


Neil Postman, Technopoly, and Technological Theology - <AUTHOR> https://thefrailestthing.com/2011/07/25/neil-postman-technopoly-and-technological-theology/ <comment><USER2> Postman was ahead of his time. Also worth checking out is his 1985 book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business." Can't say we weren't warned...

<comment><USER3> Agree, Amusing Ourselves to Death is really good. I like the idea about how reading books impacts how deep we think. Also His comparison of the Lincoln Douglas debates to modern presidential debates. Not a long read either, about 200 pages I think. I bought a copy from a bookstore closing, which fits the theme of the book sadly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're interested in this, you might also like Neil Postman's "5 Things We Need to Know About Technological Change": [http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/pos...](http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/postman.pdf)

<comment><USER5> This seems to be largely the same presentation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBlfPhsrvtw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBlfPhsrvtw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems like an important book. And good points. But practically speaking, dismissing the entire culture as being technologically obsessed doesn't solve the real problems that we have related to technology and its interaction with society today.

I feel that a more useful definition for the word "technopoly" is to just to refer to the (real and specific) monopolistic technology companies that we interact with on a daily basis. Such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, etc. Maybe on a deeper level part of the reason they have become so large is the "technopoly" that Postman is talking about. But in my opinion the more practical use of the word is to point out these specific companies.

And I guess my surface reading of the premise is that technology is not the only or the best framework for viewing the world. I will admit that I have a technology-centric worldview. Well, technology just means applying our knowledge to solving problems. In my opinion this is mostly sensible and rejecting it does not create progress. My view is that what needs to improve is our integration of technology into our social systems.

</comment><comment><USER7> The progression from technocracy to technopoly (and beyond?) reminds me of Forster's famous short story _The Machine Stops_.

</comment><comment><USER8> Way back in the '90s, Postman was speaking at college. I was late getting there, and ran into a close friend coming out as I was going in. I asked my friend how it was so far, and he scowled and said "He's a cretin".

Now that I'm olde, I find myself occasionally agreeing with Postman. but reading past the first paragraph here, I'm right back to "He's a cretin". Sigh.

On the plus side, he makes an excellent bonfire out of the strawman he built.

<comment><USER9> It may be that I'm tired and haven't really spent enough time processing this article, but what about it gets you to "He's a cretin"? Any particular points of Postman's that you'd call out?

<comment><USER8> Adding to this, the original quote of "the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology" is what makes me say "cretin". Because it's BS. The degree to which technology is interfering with culture is a real concern, yes. But "all forms of cultural life"? Nonsense. If he could resist absurdist generalizations like that, he'd be a much more valuable thinker. Instead, he's just telling people what they want to hear.

I just suffered through a brutal, dehumanizing call where I spent ten minutes trying to convince a voice recognition bot to connect me to a human being. That's part of Postman's negative world, for sure. But tonight? I'm going to play music with a friend. We're recording some of his bass parts for an album. That's cultural life, too.

And tomorrow? I'm going to an amazing concert, African singer Angelique Kidjo's reworking of the Talking Heads' "Remain in Light" album. That album exists because of technology. I found out about the concert because of technology. I get to hear her because of technology. Technology (and by "technology", I mean "stuff that wasn't invented yet when Postman was a kid"), in this case _enriches the cultural experience_.

I remember seeing Postman bragging about how he uses a pencil rather than a computer to write, because Technology Is Bad. That's not sophisticated. That's a cretin. Pencils are technology, too. Paper is technology. The books he got printed are technology. But he doesn't get it, because he's a cretin. For Postman and his ilk, "technology" is "stuff that wasn't around when I was a kid". And it's bad why? Because it's unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

Postman is just saying "Get off my lawn" in fancy academic language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The first idea is that all technological change is a trade-off. I like to call it a Faustian bargain. Technology giveth and technology taketh away. This means that for every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. The disadvantage may exceed in importance the advantage, or the advantage may well be worth the cost."

This is a very popular belief which I reject wholeheartedly. Certainly there are often trade-offs in some way related to use of a technology, but it is not a rule, and there is no correspondence. Despite the last sentence, framing things dualistically like this provides quite a false sense of equivalence and ambiguity. In the end its an over-simplification and on some level a rejection of technology.

Rejecting technology means rejecting the application of knowledge. I have no problem with criticizing the selection of technology or how it interfaces with society, but rejecting technology outright leaves you with the same old problems. And then you must rationalize about how your old problems were better than your new ones. I would like those people to go back and live in that state -- without ubiquitous running water, without flush toilets and good sewage systems, with horse shit in the street, or live as a _biological_ computer where you spend 10 hours a day doing arithmetic.

<comment><USER10> Where did you get the idea that anyone was suggesting rejection of technology?

The idea that all technology is 100% beneficial for all people with zero downsides is just as ridiculous.

There is a third path, which has some nuance; if you're wearing tunnel-vision blinders you might not see it.</comment></comment>


Moore's Law Is Dead; Watch Out Intel, Samsung - <AUTHOR> http://online.barrons.com/articles/moores-law-is-dead-watch-out-intel-samsung-1431137848 <comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to become confident and take risks? - <AUTHOR> I am extremely risk averse. I haven't invested in stocks (except 401k) and lost all gains over the years. In general, I am highly skeptical of everything and don't take risks. How do I increase my risk apatite?<p>How do I become more confident? I lost almost all hair and I am only 5'5". It's not a good combo tbh. I feel people judge me more often than not. As soon as I realize, I am being judged or denied opportunity due to my looks,  I lose confidence. How do I overcome this feeling? <comment><USER2> Consider that risk aversion is not a bad trait — google "three fund portfolio" and the theory behind it. Stock speculation is time consuming and akin to betting. Know when to appreciate your aversion to risk.

Another way of phrasing self-confidence is "self-validating." Social confidence is essentially not looking to others for validation. It starts with rewiring how you perceive the world (see: CBT). Isn't it odd that you construct stories of your failure that link back to your physical attributes? What if you told different stories? This one is hard to grok until you start to realize how much your brain filters out information to fit your core beliefs about yourself. I didn't believe this until I realized that my negative self stories kept popping up while talking to people with strabismus (eye misalignment). I was literally looking them in the damn wrong eye, and telling myself how disengaged they were and how uninteresting I was because they "weren't looking at me." Most of what we perceive is what we already believe. It is unnerving, but valuable to know.

You mention the word "feeling" a few times. Is this in reference to anxiety? We're all templated to feel social anxiety, but some more than others — especially those running negative self-talk reels in their head. Try to first start seeing that anxiety when it happens, even if you can't halt it. Foster the skill of emotional self-observation.

Just trying to offer some new starting points. No easy answers here. Try loving-kindness meditation for a start — you're going to have to come to love and respect your 5'5 balding self in the end.

</comment><comment><USER3> > I lost almost all hair and I am only 5'5".

I won't speak to your primary issue...but maybe the first "risk" you should take is getting hair plugs. Seriously. A friend of mine did that and the transformation in his appearance was _night and day_. If I ever start to lose my hair, i'm 100% doing that. It's not crazy expensive, and the results are incredible. I think a lot of men are for one reason or another shamed into not doing things like this, but I think that's silly. It's completely worth it. Let this be your first venture into unknown territory, and then maybe you'll gain some confidence to start taking risks in other areas.

<comment><USER4> Or... take the bolder move and conquer your emotions (shave it off) or be subservient to them. A weak man with hair is still a weak man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A big part of becoming less risk adverse, and getting more confident, is having success to build upon as a reminder that while you won't always win, you won't always lose, and that's ok.

Specific to your problems, consider this:

1\. Would you pay money to fix your problem? If so, consider taking that money, automating its investment into a 3 fund portfolio (do some Googling on Bogleheads and read 'A Random Walk Down Wallstreet' if you're skeptical), and forgetting about it for a few years. Check back in on it annually and see what you've learned. More importantly, even if you've lost money in an economy that looks like it may start cooling off, be ok with it. You're investing in the experience to prove to yourself the world won't end, not in an expected return. If you get a return, you'll have some success to get excited about and grow your investment.

2\. I'm not super tall and started losing my hair in college. If you can get yourself to take the plunge and shave it all off, it can be one of the most empowering things you've ever done. There's a period where people you know get used to it, but then you'll find a lot of people have only ever known you with a shaved head. You'll inevitably get some positive interactions out of it and will stop worrying that people are looking at your hair loss.

And if you REALLY want to go all in, take the savings you get from investing in a good pair of electric clippers and never going to a barber again, and use that as your investment capital.

</comment><comment><USER6> Find somebody confident you can relate to. Neil Patel on why he shaved his head: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoqhUhDyE9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoqhUhDyE9w)

The dude is more confident than Elon Musk. Unless you are a Thor you will always have some prejudice working against you. That some people had a better starting position than you means you will have to work harder and smarter than them. Every beginning feels crappy for everyone. Having a realistic goal and being gritty sure helps.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was in the same situation some time back.

"Decided" it was time I must change myself.

Picked up "The Magic of Thinking Big". I get the general hate towards self-hep books, but in many cases they do create a positive future image and that is essential to take the next step.

Get an accountability buddy. Search reddit or discord for that. And go. Use the 5-second rule.

Go out in the morning sun. Take the unknown routes. Spark your creativity. Go out of your comfort zone once in a while.

It will take time but you'll eventually get better.

Spend $100 on a random stock. Learn, improve, adapt.

Make notes.

You do not need to prove anyone else. Make a commitment to yourself and stick to it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I see two separate things here. One is aversion to risk and another is the perception that someone is denying something for a reason you don't control.

They have to be handled and treated separately.

When talking about risk, we are usually afraid of the unknown. Let's say you want to take a riskier approach with your investments. Start by understanding what could happen in a given scenario and where the risk could come from. In other words, risk aversion is usually remembering remedied by knowledge.

As for the other topic, it probably requires more work on your part to overcome it.

Even though there are all sorts of prejudice and judgement from other people there is nothing you can do since it might come from someone else.

The best path here, in my opinion, is to see what YOU can do and where YOU might be lacking.

Take responsibility for what happens to you and figure out how YOU can change the situation. A simple example would be of a person that "is denied" a job because lack of qualifications and blames the other because the person thinks it is some sort of prejudice.

It might be. But if you always assume that is the case there is nothing you can do other than complain and victimize yourself.

As soon as you start taking responsibility for everything that happens to your life, even things out of your control, you start to improve and things get better fast.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER9> If it is risks with money that you want to take you have to accept losing money. Our attitudes to money run deep and I lost out on making a lot of money in crypto due to 'fear of loss'. On the other hand risk aversion is what keeps the person with $1m from unnecessarily losing it all so there is a balance. You could use a context like "I'll live in a shared house and save $1000 a month in rent and put that on the share market" to help justify risk, at worse you are swapping one dead money for another.

I also recommend letting go of regret in not investing if you have any. It's not worth it; move on.

Also being risk averse is not a bad thing in itself by the way.

If you want to stay risk averse and have a chance of getting rich then skilling up and trying small "mvp" style projects is the way to go IMO.

I recommend the free stuff Amu Hoy puts out for a general idea but she leaves a lot of gaps so you'll need the course. I'd of happily paid for that course but I don't like waiting lists for stuff I want now so I just started taking action on a side project and learned from experience.

</comment><comment><USER10> Become aware of your spotlight bias:

>The spotlight effect is the phenomenon in which people tend to believe they are being noticed more than they really are. Being that one is constantly in the center of one's own world, an accurate evaluation of how much one is noticed by others is uncommon. The reason behind the spotlight effect comes from the innate tendency to forget that although one is the center of one's own world, one is not the center of everyone else's. This tendency is especially prominent when one does something atypical.[1]

In other words, no one (save for your closest friends/family) cares more about you than you do. This is both terrifying but also extremely liberating.

Do you remember your friend's cringy rejection from 2 years ago? You probably can, but your friend might've mulled over it every day for the last 2 years.

Hope this helped.

</comment><comment><USER11> You have to be in control. Have you ever played something like poker or blackjack, confident of your next move?

That's how proper risk taking should feel like. It should not feel like a gamble. It can fail but you should be confident that things will turn out well in the long run.

The key to this is to learn more. Learn about the environment. If you're investing in a business, learn the market, learn what they're doing, learn who the best player in that market is and what their unfair advantage is.

In fact, if you're investing, find the unfair advantage. Unfortunately, investing does involve a lot of research. The best stock investors I know will learn every company in the stock market by heart, pick out the best, and wait for the right moment.

Also don't be too worried about your looks. Josef Stalin was about your height, not very good looking, and he was able to intimidate soldiers bigger than him.

</comment><comment><USER12> Cocaine would solve your current problem, but with the high probability of giving you an even worse problem.

Beyond drastically changing your brain chemistry, the way to solve your problems is the way all large problems are solved - break it up into small chunks. Start taking a little risk each day and slowly move on to bigger and bigger risks.

</comment><comment><USER13> _Action_ that goes against your current beliefs will help to instill new beliefs and overcome challenges.

So to answer "How to become confident and take risks?" \- is to take risk without waiting to become confident first.

"True Power = Ability to Take Action" (Tony Robbins)

</comment><comment><USER14> Start small, and do the opposite in small things, like food and clothes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SclV- UWM4Gw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SclV-UWM4Gw)

</comment><comment><USER15> I think the best approach is to make small reach goals. Try things just beyond your comfort zone.

When you do this, you train your mind that it was not so hard and you build confidence on each step.

</comment><comment><USER16> Read the book Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. It goes through how to intelligently take risks and why you would even want to.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hit the gym. Increase Testosterone/DHT.

</comment><comment><USER18> Don't fear failure, welcome it. You don't learn without failing. Exercise.

</comment><comment><USER19> In essence do not avoid any risk (except accident), no matter what you will know the coming risk.

People know a kettle is hot when they touch the hot kettle with their hand and then they will not touch it again because they realized the hot kettle was hot.

How do you know risk will be right or wrong before you take it. you are doing just a guess

</comment><comment><USER20> Skimming over these comments, I didn't see any answer that seemed like it would be helpful.

As someone who dropped out of college (gave up a full-ride) to startup a business (without a plan, customers, or much code) and 4 months runway in my bank account this is what I did:

-anchor myself to something much more extreme than my daily fears. My daily fears were running out of money and building a product that everyone would laugh at. So I would write down in my journal each day something even more extreme: "I am willing to die broke, alone, and hated in pursuit of {{YOUR_GOAL}}".

-Reframe the concept of risk via death, via sort of nihilistic perspective (e.g. in the grand scheme of the universe what you are doing whether you succeed or fail really won't matter). I would tell myself "There is no risk. One day I'll be dead". I think about death a lot and every time I see someone famous in the news I write their name down in a list as a reminder that we are all ticking time bombs.

-anchor myself to fearless people and ideas. Books I read: 50th Law by Robert Green, Moral Courage by Rushworth Kidder. People I like thinking about: MLK JR, Ghandi

-Be skeptical of your skepticism. doubt is in proportion to # of and magnitude of questions you ask about something. Become brutally skeptical of the safe thing you know deep down you should avoid. Will doing X really make me happy? Is X really the right thing to do? Perhaps everyone doing X is crazy. Would {{INSERT ROLE MODEL}} do X? Why does everyone actually do X? For more on this see Awaken The Giant Within by Anthony Robbins

-Brainwash yourself via repetition. Cf. the familiarity bias. Your brain mistakes familiarity and ease of retrieval for truth. This is how cults make people feel that something is true by simply saying it 1000 times. Develop extreme faith and confidence in yourself by pure repetition. One tip is writing down a goal or affirmation 15 times a day. "I am a very attractive person" or "I am the most attractive person in my city. Everyone". Remember your brain perceives ease of retrieval as truth, and repetition improves ease of retrieval. Maybe combine this with some extreme-anchoring: "I could be the ugliest person in the world, and I could still win this opportunity through charm and persuasion". Or turn it into a positive: "This person WANTS to interact with me because they'll feel so attractive being around me".

\- Anchor to other people who had the same issue that you think you do. Abe Lincoln considered himself to be ugly (and so did many other people in his time) (and he had a high pitched voice too) and he still went on to be president, and not only president, but one of the best presidents ever.

-Burn any bridges. When your back is against a corner, evolutionary instinct will kick in and give you a natural fire. For me this was dropping out of college.

-Ensure that the 5 people closest to you are risk takers and confident.

-Have a super intense goal that pretty much everyone in the world would think is impossible. "I will be the richest person in the world". "I will fix {{INDUSTRY_NAME}} by 2030". etc.

> "I feel people judge me more often than not"

IMO when you think about death alot and have a burning passion for your goal thoughts like these never even cross your mind.

For what it's worth I used to be very risk averse too. Would jump through any and all hoops society/school would set. Only invested in Total Market ETFs. Didn't want to start a company until I had 1.3m in the bank and was age 31 etc. Becoming courage was a very deliberate and continuous process I had to (and still) go through.

</comment><comment><USER21> Go somewhere where you are a big fish.</comment>


Ask HN: Legality/Ethics of using a website's private API? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a project that I need sports data (specifically NHL stats) for, and I found via Firebug that there is a private API used internally on NHL.com.
I was wondering 1) if it's legal to use (I will be publishing summaries derived from the data; something like http://twitter.com/nflscorebot) and 2) if it's generally considered polite to use an API that wasn't built for public use (eg should I ask first?).
Thanks in advance for any help! <comment> mkr-hn <http://www.nhl.com/ice/page.htm?id=26389>

CTRL+F for: Linking to the websites and embedding content

Quote: "Certain Services may provide you with the ability to embed Content into other web pages, such as features of the NHL Network Online and the Team video players at nhl.tv that enable you to embed NHL video into your blog, fan site or other web page. All use of embedded Content must be for non-commercial purposes only, and may be disabled by the NHL Parties at any time. Prohibited commercial uses include any of the following actions taken without the express approval of the NHL Parties: "

That sounds like it would cover the API even if it's not mentioned explicitly.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's non-commercial, but, looking at that, I'm thinking that mentioning team names would be the problem ("commercial text" would seem to apply)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Can you use an approach like the NFLScorebot is using?

[https://github.com/nflscorebot/learn/blob/master/learn.js#L1...](https://github.com/nflscorebot/learn/blob/master/learn.js#L108)

Scraping the data from a public page is probably better than using a private API.

<comment><AUTHOR> NFLScoreBot is actually my project. I was hoping a private API might be a bit less of a gray area legally, but at this point I'm almost wondering if scraping is the way to go again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd probably ask, not least because if they say no you'll have to figure out a different approach now, which, ultimately is going to be a lot easier than restructuring your whole product if they find out a cut you off in like a month.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll shoot them an email (if I can find an email address) and see what they say. Thanks for the help.</comment></comment>


I'm going to slowly move on from Mercurial - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/mpm/transition <comment><USER2> 10+ years is a long time to steward a project. Most projects don't even live that long!

Transitioning away after 10+ years is a sign of several positive things:

* Creating a successful project that lasts 10+ years

* Having the perseverance, patience, and willpower to guide that project for its lifetime

* Creating a healthy community whom you are able to transition day-to-day responsibility of that project to

Matt has accomplished something that most of us never will. I'm envious of what he has accomplished and that he is able to walk away from a healthy and successful project. Truly a remarkable accomplishment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Matt has done a great job and I wish hg had taken off more than it did, though it would be disingenuous to suggest it hasn't been successful.

I used hg before moving to git and always preferred the clean, single language implementation vs the scripts and general hackish nature that git offered as an alternative. As a result, it was a nice perk for a long time that hg worked much better than git on Windows.

<comment><USER4> Also the revsets, while they're relatively recent in the grand scheme of things (hg 1.6 circa 2010) I so miss these when I have to use (or even read the man page of) the garbage fire that is `git log` (templates also help)

<comment><USER5> What is it about these revsets that can't be achieved with a "git log --graph --decorate --all"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Those would be accomplished with hg templates, not revsets. Revsets are kind of like gitrevisions(7), but much more powerful.

Docs:

[https://selenic.com/hg/help/revsets](https://selenic.com/hg/help/revsets)

A complete example, which appears to have some popularity in Mozilla:

[http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/customising- mercurial-l...](http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/customising-mercurial- like-a-pro/)

edit: Sorry, the --decorate part would be with template, the --all is kind of like a revset, and the --graph part is well, --graph.

<comment><USER4> > Those would be accomplished with hg templates

Except for the --graph part which would be accomplished with --graph of course

> Revsets are kind of like gitrevisions(7), but much more powerful.

And easier to read and write too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a gutsy thing to do with a piece of software that has been part of your life for over a decade. Mad props to mpm.

Up until Blekko I had pretty much been a perforce user (both at NetApp and at Google) and git was "that weird system you had to use to check in kernel changes". Blekko used Mercurial and I had no opinion as I had no experience. But over the years using hg at work and then starting up a github account to learn git, I saw the writing on the wall. Hg was the betamax of source code management systems. Clean, elegant, reliable, and not mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER7> For context here, and for people like me who don't follow the development of Mercurial closely enough to realize, mpm is not just some random contributor to Mercurial, but is in fact Matt Mackall, the original author of Mercurial.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lest we forget, Mercurial was offered as the other solution to the Bitkeeper problem, as mpm was a kernel hacker at the time. It got a usable UI at version 0.1, two weeks after the git announcement. Some git users relied on cogito for another year or so, as simple things like `git-commit` still had to be manually handcrafted out of `git-commit-tree`.

I wasn't there to witness this, but I repeat it because it's actually kind of hard to dig up this history. I don't know of a single place that neatly chronicles the whole transition from bitkeeper -> git/mercurial.

<comment><USER8> > Lest we forget, Mercurial was offered as the other solution to the Bitkeeper > problem, as mpm was a kernel hacker at the time. It got a usable UI at > version 0.1, two weeks after the git announcement.

I remember using Mercurial very early on in its lifetime, during my first internship at IBM, because Xen used it.

Mercurial also ran on Windows far, far earlier than Git did. A few projects (notably Mozilla) selected Mercurial for that reason, because they had developers on Windows.

Unfortunately, Mercurial took longer to develop some of its infrastructure, such as a repository structure optimized for performance, fast branches without making a separate working directory for each, and history editing capabilities. Today, as far as I know, Mercurial does have all of those things (some through plugins).

> Some git users relied on cogito for another year or so, as simple things > like `git-commit` still had to be manually handcrafted out of `git-commit- > tree`.

Many people (myself included) also used cogito as a crutch for a while longer, until really internalizing the value of the git index, because cogito defaulted to bypassing the index. I originally saw the index as an obstacle to the commit model I'd gotten used to from subversion. Today, I find it a critical part of git's culture of making small commits with one logical change each.

<comment><USER9> > Mercurial also ran on Windows far, far earlier than Git did. A few projects > (notably Mozilla) selected Mercurial for that reason, because they had > developers on Windows.

Ouch, yet another way in which running on Windows can lead to poor technical decisions.

In my own case, I really preferred hg's command congruence to SVN; git's deceptive similarity took a long time to get over.

> I originally saw the index as an obstacle to the commit model I'd gotten > used to from subversion. Today, I find it a critical part of git's culture > of making small commits with one logical change each.

Same here, on both counts. I'd never go back, now, but it did take time to understand the benefits.

<comment><USER10> It's worth pointing out that part of the reason that Mozilla selected Mercurial over Git was that the Mercurial developers were more willing to help fix issues that Mozilla had identified than Git was, with Windows support being the most important point.

In a way, actually, that still seems to be the case. The Mercurial community seems to be working hard on making enormous monolithic repositories much more performant and realiable, whereas a lot of Git community seems to prefer to merely respond "YOU'RE USING IT WRONG" to these issues (although I suspect the developers themselves are also working on some of the issues; it's just that I see the community at large as much more visible).

So there's definitely a sense to me that Mercurial is the better VCS because it will quietly support whatever development model you want to use, whereas Git tries to force you to use the One True Model™--and I'm firmly in the camp that development tools should support developers' habits, not force them.

<comment><USER11> _> So there's definitely a sense to me that Mercurial is the better VCS because it will quietly support whatever development model you want to use, whereas Git tries to force you to use the One True Model™_

Considering the number of tools based on the Git data model to do completely unrelated things (I'm thinking about e.g. bup or git-annex). I wouldn't say that's Git imposes you a One True Model. Also, Git doesn't restrict you to an arbitrary number of parents on a commit ;).

BTW,

 _> The Mercurial community seems to be working hard on making enormous monolithic repositories much more performant and realiable_

The irony is that to do so, Mercurial had to bend its data model, adding (backwards incompatible) support for per-directory manifests (which sound a lot like trees in Git, except the part where manifests have history attached to them, where Git only has history attached to commits).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm really surprised by the "git won" mentality that manifests in any discussion of mercurial as of late. It makes no sense. We don't decare "winners" with other tools we use. Do we?

Why are we all playing with new programming languages when C won? Or maybe C++ won? Or Java? Did emacs or vim win? Speaking of text, did ASCII win? Which code review tool won? How about continuous integration tools? or build tools? I mean, make won, right?

None of us just pick the most widely used tool or programming language and say, "there can only be one" and then stop trying new things. Why are we doing this with version control?

<comment><USER13> Code collaboration tools have a strong network effect due to them being ultimately social tools, and we expect categories affected by the network effect to have winner/losers mechanics. Of course, they don't actually have to, but it's a common expectation and a common outcome.

For equivalents to "code collaboration tools", instead of "programming languages", "text editors" and "build tools", try "social networks" (Facebook won, MySpace lost), "network protocols" (HTTP won, FTP and Gopher lost) or "spoken languages" (English won)

<comment><USER14> > English won

English did not won.

It might be widely spoken in the 21st century, but so were Greek, Egyptian, Latin, French, Portuguese and Spanish once upon a time.

I might be writing this in English now, but saying it won implies no change in common language will ever happen again.

Given the history of mankind and some of the countries I had the pleasure to visit on my life so far, I doubt it.

Specially since most of the people I know, do happen to speak three foreign languages on average.

<comment><USER15> > English did not won.

Apparently not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was a Mercurial crew member for a few years (2008 to I don't know) and was very happy to be able to learn from Matt in his role as BDFL. His principled stance against layering violations and his policy to require really small commits still influence my coding every day. I hope he finds something new to give him satisfaction/joy!

<comment><USER17> +1, working with Matt was also extremely formative, I learned a lot of best practices during those years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I loved Mercurial, but just like with Wirth languages, I seem be on the wrong side of the mainstream flow.

Thanks for Mercurial!

</comment><comment><USER18> I did a project on integrating Mercurial with Mongo before, and I have to say being a Python developer I didn't have too much difficulty in figuring the right API, although the documentation is not so great. The code itself uses a lot of abbreviations which you have to really be patient to get familiar. The Mercurial model [1] is a pleasant read for a couple train ride (read it a few times I encourage). Others have done amazing things with hg too, like making hg available in Javascript (now an abandon project).

Mercurial is actually very easy to use. However, it didn't have the exact lightweight concept of git branch until they implemented bookmark a few years ago. I don't remember the limitation of bookmarks now it has been a few years since I used Mercurial...

I too thank Matt and core developers working on Mercurial. One thing I feel Matt and developers need to address is hosting hg on PyPI infrastructure instead of redirecting to their own server. From time to time the server wouldn't deliver anything and it was frustrating to see our builds fail (of course some say you should have cached the build and not hitting Mercurial server every day).

[1]: [https://www.mercurial- scm.org/wiki/Presentations?action=Atta...](https://www.mercurial- scm.org/wiki/Presentations?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=ols-mercurial- paper.pdf)

<comment><USER19> We've been uploading to PyPI as part of our release process for quite some time, and our own server is hosted on public infra now instead of on a privately managed machine. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thanks for all your contributions over these years.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for starting Mercurial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> hg could be 20% better than git. For the sake of the arugment, let's say it is.

git's network effects mean hg needs to be 1000% better than git to replace it (much like git replaced svn, svn replaced cvs, and cvs replaced rcs).

<comment><USER23> There are tons of companies using mercurial including some of the biggest ones. It's not really accurate to imply that Git won and Mercurial is dead.

<comment><USER24> I consider the CPython switch from Mercurial to git the final declaration of victory.

I still have to understand how CPython could miss the symbolic meaning of this decision.

<comment><USER25> More Guido and a couple of vocal people than CPython. I truly hope the switch wasn't the reason for Mackall to quit.

<comment><USER19> Nope. mpm has been wanting to move on for a while, it's only recently that he's published plans more publicly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I talked with an engineer from a fortune 500 tech company and they chose git over other vcs because they could have permission control; they have sensitive sub project who needs only a small set of engineers with permission to access it, but that subproject/module is part of a bigger project that everyone has access to.

I personally prefer HG over git and use it for my own personal projects, hosted on my own redmine server. I tried bitbucket, and github; the latter have s superior interface to bitbucket. which I believe why people picked github over bitbucket

</comment><comment><USER27> You find yourself in a realm where hackers don't branch and use svn with no experience of distributed source control.

hg is so much your friend here. They will actually probably get over the switch hump and use it. git that hump is much bigger and more arduous. Git is great, I like it. When you want to drag the team with you who aren't already sold, just go straight to hg every time. You're hacker, you can use either effectively and both are excellent tools.

</comment><comment><USER28> I believe that Mercurial's greatest flaw is that it is too damn easy to use. Since you don't have to wrap your head around it so damn much to use it, it seems weak, like if it was only slightly better than subversion.

The truth is different and Mercurial is roughly as capable as git but it's easy to miss Mercurial's power where as Git rubs your face in it (less so these days but early on, it was a brain f __* to my CVS trained brain.)

</comment><comment><USER29> If you ever see this, Thank you Matt. It helped me a lot to get away from subversion by working with hg at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've only contributed a few patches to Mercurial but meeting Matt and learning from him (mostly on the HG mailing lists) has taught me a lot. He's influenced how I think about and work with code at a really basic level. I wish him the best in whatever he decides to do.

</comment><comment><USER31> Thank you, Matt. hg is still my choice in source control. It's the only one I really use.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've used Mercurial on Bitbucket in the past and loved it. Very thank you for your hard workd, Matt. Too bad that git is on everywhere now.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think hg was/is important, to provide competition to git.

But I don't really understand all the people arguing that hg is so much easier to use, and so much cleaner. Sure, in the first few years that was true, and there's architecturally better choices (not a mess of scripts, embeddable as library). But from a day to day usage, hg seems worse to me. And that includes the documentation, something that really surprised me after I had to restart using hg a year or so back.

The whole thing how hard it is to actually get rid of branches (no, I do not want to merge that branch. Yes, I don't want any central record anymore. No, I don't want to ssh into the remote box. Uh....), really bugged me. So does the need, slowly abating, to activate a lot of random plugins to get functionality that git had for years (pagers, incremental add, staging area, ...).

But I very well, and I actually mean that, might just be mind warped by having used git so long and so continually that I just don't see the problems anymore and it just seems easier. I do remember some initial difficulties understanding it, but that was in the quite early days...

</comment><comment><USER34> Mercurial has to be one of the best examples of incredibly high quality Software Engineering out there. It is very well-designed, reliable, fast, easy to use, well-documented and has a great community behind it. Matt deserves huge kudos for his enormous effort and commitment over the years. And like a true gentleman, he is leaving in style to ensure the transition is smooth.</comment>