Razer will not cancel 90%-off test coupons - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/minliangtan/posts/512572145467239

<comment><USER2> I remember when Apple mispriced their 1TB hard drives at $30 instead of $300 [1]. All orders were cancelled.

I'm a huge fan of Razer. I own many of their products and would recommend them all, especially the DeathAdder mouse. Seriously, it's quite possibly the best mouse you will ever use.

I didn't get anything ordered with a 90% reduction, but I think I'll be ordered an Orbweaver later today. They deserve it.

1: [http://www.digital- forums.com/showthread.php/307773-Misprice...](http://www.digital- forums.com/showthread.php/307773-Misprice-Time-Iomega-1TB-Hard- drive-%C2%A325-24-delivered)

edit: Spelling, and added the only source I could find.

<comment><USER3> I have a DeathAdder. The mouse itself (the hardware) is great. However, the software (the thing that really makes the mouse functional and configurable, which is what i thought i was paying for) is one of the most absurd and infuriating things i have ever had to deal with.

The configuration tool was designed in the vein of Steam — it requires an Internet connection to use it. At all. So before you can change the mouse settings, before the mouse will even LOAD its settings, you must create a Razer account and sign in to their online service through the tool. Only then will you be able to do anything with the mouse.

Also like Steam, there is an option to 'go offline', but it (perhaps unintentionally) doesn't seem to persist across sessions. So if you lose your connection and then you reboot the computer or the tool crashes (which is semi-frequent), you're back to where you started — a log-in prompt.

In addition to that, just from a usability perspective, the software is a disaster. It is a mass of grey-on-grey text, modal panes, near-full-screen sliders, and unexplained icons that i dread even thinking about using. In addition, the tool adds an ugly menu-bar icon that you can't get rid of, and once you install the software you can never close it — if you try to kill the tool or any of its background services, the entire thing will respawn. And just to give you that extra punch in the face, every time the tool starts (at boot or because one of its background services crashed) the giant black-and- green blob pops up on top of everything else. HEY, HEY, LOG IN TO YOUR MOUSE NOW

The scroll wheel is also apparently non-configurable on OS X, which is incredible because the default behaviour is some pre-Windows-95 we've-just- invented-scroll-wheels one-pixel-per-rotation insanity.

Lastly, every single update to the software requires that you reboot the entire machine.

I am not exaggerating when i say that i loathe using this god-damn mouse.

<comment><USER2> > HEY, HEY, LOG IN TO YOUR MOUSE NOW > Lastly, every single update to the > software requires that you reboot the entire machine.

I only used the software once, a few years ago. I never logged into anything, it never required internet access, it never frequently updated and it never required a reboot.

You realise you don't _need_ the software right? You can use the mouse perfectly without it. All the software lets you do is change the sensitivity (any good OS will let you do that), turn off the light, and program the "bottom" button. The light is under your hand 90% of the time and is off when your computer is off. It's a non-issue. The button the bottom is in an irritating position and I have _never_ needed to use it. Sure, you could configure it to change sensitivity during a game (consider running and gunning vs. accurate sniping, perhaps?) but in reality no one is going to lift their mouse during an computer game to adjust the sensitivity.

> the default behaviour is some pre-Windows-95 we've-just-invented-scroll- > wheels one-pixel-per-rotation insanity.

I have never experienced this problem. I don't know what you're talking about.

<comment><USER4> > All the software lets you do is change the sensitivity (any good OS will let > you do that), turn off the light, and program the "bottom" button.

Except if you have a mouse like the Naga with more programmable buttons, they're all useless unless you use the software.

<comment><USER5> Did you try something like X-Mouse Button Control?

It works great on my MX518 so I don't have to use the terrible Logitech software to configure the extra buttons. :)

<comment><USER4> Just looked that up. It's Windows-only and I use a Mac.

Regardless, I'm using the old, pre-Synapse drivers and they work ok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They basically just ran a (very extreme) Groupon. Most companies that do daily deals lose money on them in hopes of turning some of those initial customers into recurring or lifetime customers or to increase awareness for their products.

This 'mishap' may have similar yet increased effects because of the impressive way they handled the situation. For example, I doubt Razer would have ever imagined their story landing on the frontpage of a high-traffic site like HN, but now that it has, I (and probably hundreds or thousands of others) have gone to their site to get more info.

Really shows that with smart and agile situation-response, you can turn an unpleasant circumstance into an opportunity.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, the vast majority of Groupon customers do not return for additional purchases and the people who capitalize on these types of deals are 100% price-conscious vultures[1] (also, I used to be one of these people). At the end of the day, this was a very poor business decision and just a PR gamble.

People are primarily driven by price when they buy goods, so after 6 months or so people will forget this extremely generous act. Razer fans will remain razer fans, but unless Razer has a product leaps and bounds ahead of the competition (some are, but most are only marginally superior) very few will become loyal customers due to this act of kindness.

[1] [http://businessmodelinstitute.com/is-customer-retention- the-...](http://businessmodelinstitute.com/is-customer-retention-the-achilles- heel-of-groupon%E2%80%99s-business-model/)

<comment><USER8> The thing that's a bit different about this is that most of these customers are NOT price-conscious vultures, they are enthusiasts. Otherwise, they would have said "Razer? Who the hell is that?" These products are not well known outside hardcore PC gamers. PC gamers are willing to drop a TON of cash on their hobby or else they wouldn't be hardcore PC gamers.

The longtime Razer fans to some degree seem to be canceling their orders. At least with the ones you'll be shipping still I'd think the majority of those are strong PC gaming enthusiasts who have friends who are as well. Their stuff is quite shiny and attractive in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the grand scheme of things, however, this will be a lot cheaper than conventional advertising.

This is not a bad thing for anyone, as they are currently sponsoring e-sports in a "big" way, and have done so for well over a decade now. I may no longer use or appreciate their gear the way I used to, but they definitely stand by their demographic. Definitely an ace move in by Razer here, in every regard.

<comment><USER10> +1 agree completely, honestly its rare that a company honours glitchy orders, at least in my experience, so I'm quite shocked actually. I've been a Razer person for a while, and I haven't found anything else quite like it. What do you use, and why is it better?

<comment><USER9> The only Razer product I've been truly happy with was the Diamondback, which was nearly identical to the MX518 in terms of hardware. With a bit of driver hacking (really just substituting the vendor and hardware ID) you could run the MX518 with Razer drivers, which I did for a long time.

I used Razer products since the Boomslang (with its floppy button problem, which was a material flaw, not component related). Among others, I had a Nostromo and Lachesis.

The Nostromo was nice enough, but had some pretty strange glitches (it would at times switch profiles and just act really strangely). The hand-rest was coated in some rubbery thing which absolutely loved to attract any dirt and dust in the room, and ended up requiring very frequent cleaning.

As for the Lachesis, there was a HUGE component flaw in the sensor, which was partially remedied by a ton of driver updates, but never fully fixed in my case. The cursor would drift, be subject to negative acceleration or simply not respond at all. Definitely not the kind of thing you'd want for any kind of input, really.

What Logitech offers for me in this case is seemingly iterative hardware development, and great support. It's not flawless, it's not flashy, but it's safe and they have excellent customer service to make up for it. I'm no longer young enough to care for flashy gear. ;)

<comment><USER11> Lachesis uses Philips Twin Eye PLN 2031. This sensor have some z-axis issues. Anyway its minor problem in comparision with mx518, which have some serious angle snapping/prediction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't really agree that this is a good way. 90% discount is obviously a mistake and it is more than their right to cancel those orders. I would fully understand that.

Processing those orders doesn't seems that fair to me. Same rare people get 90% (!) off, all others don't. And FCFS isn't a cool, really fair principle. It is often used, because it is easy to implement and doesn't require more information than just time.

Also I expect the rate of people who ordered just because it is cheap and have no real appropriation is pretty high on that discount. Not talking about people who just wanna resell it on eBay.

What else could they have done?

      * Make a general discount (e.g. 10-30%) for all potential
        shoppers for the next weeks.
      * Spend the lost money for development
      * Hire more people
      * Donate it to charity
      * Make a challenge in any fair way. Again, time and
        reaction is a pretty unfair criterion.
      * Sponsorship
      * ...

Again, FCFS is some type of fairness, but I think a pretty bad one.

Also not sure if this is real marketing. Are their clients really that community based and speaking about such thing? Aren't more just angry because they hadn't the chance to use the opportunity?

Facebook comment (from source): "Well that's absurdly consumer friendly"

TL;DR: If you give some customers 90% discount for no reason, it means unfair prices for all others. Is that really consumer friendly?

<comment><USER13> Who said anything about fair? This is a business, not a charity.

<comment><USER14> Fairness is what perceived by consumers or customers. Remember the episode of Apple decreasing the price of iPhone by $200.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They basically just turned this into a huge experiment in price discrimination for those customers who genuinely feel bad for what happened.

Those customers who feel bad and were originally willing to pay the full price savings will likely cancel and reorder. Those customers who feel bad and genuinely _could not_ pay the full price, will keep their discounted orders, and the company will get to keep those people as customers well into the future.

I'm curious how transparent they'll be with how many canceled their orders when the dust settles - would be a good case study for other companies in this boat who want to trust their customers to do the right thing for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER16> That's customer friendly. Requiring users to register on their website in order to be able to log in to the mouse driver settings is not.

<comment><USER17> I've never had to log in to any Razer software, stop spreading FUD.

<comment><USER16> Now you made me look it up. It's called Synapse 2 and when I bought (and subsequently returned) a Razer Naga Hex in September last year it was the only way to configure the mouse. Specifically, you needed it to configure the keyboard emulation keys for the thumb buttons. It did require a registration and login. The excuse for this was some "store your settings in The Cloud" bollocks which I had absolutely no use for - I just wanted to configure my fancy mouse.

You can find it at <http://www.razerzone.com/synapse2> and the tech specs there state that "Valid e-mail, software download, license acceptance, and internet connection needed to activate full features and for software updates." For a bloody mouse driver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 90% is definitely a huge loss. But like other users said this bug only applied to the UK store that does not sell Razer blade.

That said most of razer's customers are repeated purchasers and that honoring the orders is going to generate a lot of good will among its core customers. A very bold move though.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady This is the first I've heard about this but a good response from the business. I noticed he said they can legally cancel all the orders - is that true? As far as I was aware the law (at least in the UK) is that if a product is advertised at a certain price, even if it's a mistake, the business has to provide it at that price to any customer who gets in before they fix the mistake with the only catch being that the business is only obliged to sell one unit of the item at the incorrect price if they realise there has been a mistake (just from what I've heard from people working in retail).

Edit: thanks for making it clearer below

<comment><USER19> That's a commonly held misbelief.

If it's an honest mistake, there's no requirement to sell it, and beyond that most email confirmations say something like this from Amazon:

This e-mail is only an acknowledgement of receipt of your order and your contract to purchase these items is not complete until we send you an e-mail notifying you that the items have been dispatched to you.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. And I think that's pretty fair, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good for them on following through, I'm sure it will bring repeat business. Maybe 6-7+ years ago I attempted to make multiple purchases through dell.com over several months. All 3 were killed because the website listed the wrong price. I remember once I bought something like a USB drive for $47.99 and the real price was suppose to be $49.99. None of the purchases were near 20% off much less 90% in this case. I've still never ordered from Dell and never will.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is so great I went to their site to buy a mouse at full price right now.

Then they asked for my credit card info. Without https.

<comment><USER22> Just tried and I got https. I believe you were mistaken.

<comment><USER21> The page which hosts the form was definitely not. Perhaps it got confused on an iPhone 5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Probably this is how much it costs to manufacture these overpriced products.

<comment><USER24> I don't think you can seriously believe that the Razer Blade being sold for $250 is "cost price."

But I'm sure they did a full calculation of the costs that they'd have to eat if they honor this mistake and thought it was worth it for the good PR it would create.

<comment><USER25> 90% pretty certainly means they were selling them at a loss, but I would agree that it's probably not as huge a loss as a 90% discount would suggest. In the "enthusiast" branch of the market, I would guess that a margin of at least 50% should be pretty standard. A $250 mouse very certainly costs far less than $250 to produce, although you always have to factor in their other business cost - advertisement and design to establish an "enthusiast" branch might even exceed what they pay on manufacturing. (This is also why you see them do so many sponsorships - it's simply a very, very cheap way to get exposure.)

I would think that it's not impossible that this was planned.

1234 as a coupon code is even something that people might find by mistake, meaning you wouldn't even have to try hard to seed the rumor. Just put it into the system and know that somewhere in the future, you will get a huge PR without much effort (other than stopping it after a certain period of time and accepting some losses).

<comment><USER26> Jamornh wasn't referring to a $250 mouse. He's referring to this $2,500 gaming laptop at 90% off: <http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade>

Selling those for $250 is obviously a massive loss on just the hardware alone.

<comment><USER25> Wow, I really didn't know that they also made laptops! Thanks!

<comment><USER26> Don't feel too bad. I had no idea either until I did a search for "razer blade" after reading his comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Cool marketing stunt.

</comment><comment><USER28> Has nothing to do with customer friendliness. As a customer I would feel like a fool buying something at full price now.

</comment><comment><USER29> losethos seems to have gotten carried away. Enjoyed the holiday too much maybe?

<comment><USER30> Losethos appears to be struggling with a tragic and long-term mental illness. I don't think it's good form to make fun of him.

<comment><USER29> You're absolutely right, that was inappropriate.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SiteExplainer, Drag-n-Drop editor to create Documentation for your site - <AUTHOR> https://www.siteexplainer.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. This was a weekend project that turned to be a lot longer :) This is my first version. Happy to answer any questions.

P.S. I see a lot of new sign-ups but no comments so far. I am eagerly awaiting your feedback. Is the site working for you? What are your first impressions?</comment>


Why you only need to test with 5 users - <AUTHOR> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-with-5-users/ <comment><USER2> Found that at Microsoft, too (disclaimer: that was 2 decades ago). Finding good testers at all, no matter how popular your product, is just plain hard. Standard usability testing is somewhat easier. You just put them in a box, ask them to follow some instructions and to explain their thought processes as they fumble through your brilliantly designed product, and sweat blood as they invariably do things you wouldn't dream they'd do in a billion years. Then you pay them. A lot--I find it hard to spend less than $100/tester here in the Seattle area.</comment>


If buggy smartphones are the "new reality", here's some free advice for handset makers - <AUTHOR> http://www.last100.com/2009/01/26/if-buggy-smartphones-are-the-new-reality-heres-some-free-advice-for-handset-makers/

<comment><USER2> Mobile phones used to have 4-year development cycles, but due to consumer pressure and CEOs making ridiculous promises, the development cycle has been compacted into as little as 6 months. This is not enough time for accurate testing on all fronts (variables double out in the field).

Furthermore, over-the-air updates are not used due to hacking. Though there could be copious amounts of security, one fail would mean complete loss of mobile communication in large areas, if not nationwide.

Features cannot be cut since the products will not sell. Apple could afford it only because it was riding the success of the iPod - other, unpopular companies cannot do the same. While I agree that there needs to be a better balance of features and quality, there isn't too much leeway especially because handset manufacturers are doing especially bad in this economic downturn.

I agree transparency is a great thing - but it may also cause a PR nightmare. There needs to be great discretion in revealing problems especially in a field where consumers understand little. Discussing problems may only make consumers more disgruntle or panicked.

Operators (Networks) control everything. EVERYTHING. They choose which phones are allowed and which ones are not. Again, Apple had a lot of leverage due to their popularity, but ultimately lost out to AT&T control. It isn't as simple as "keeping operators out" - laws would need to be instated and Networks would have to yield control (they definitely won't go easily).</comment>


Hydroxychloroquine helped save coronavirus patients, study shows - <AUTHOR> https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hydroxychloroquine-helped-save-coronavirus-study <comment><USER2> It's been seen to have a positive effect, yes, but the Side-effects are said to be much worse than the symptoms themselves. My advice would be to stay home, stay safe and find something for one to do; like reading articles that give us more knowledge about the world we live in. An example would be [https://environmentbuddy.com/environment/10-examples-of- keys...](https://environmentbuddy.com/environment/10-examples-of-keystone- species/)</comment>


Ask HN: Net or Java for cross-platform desktop application - <AUTHOR> I'm starting a project to scratch an itch of mine and I'd like for it to be available for all 3 major desktop platforms.  This is the point in projects where I seem to have grown a big case of Analysis Paralysis.
I have decided to use a web UI for a desktop app.  My current research leads me to .Net/Nancy/Kestrel, or Java.  The UI will be a self-hosted SPA talking to localhost.  I am concerned about users on non-Windows platforms reluctance to use dotnet core and also to less technical users on Windows needing a current Java JRE installed, since I fear it may have fallen somewhat out of favor.  I think a large portion of users would be part of an enterprise.
My preference, at least for development, would be Java but that's because I have much more experience in Java than C#/.Net.
I supposed I could do it in Python, but I'm not nuts about the deployment story for folks listed above.   I'm not interested in Electron.
I thought I'd see what HN had to say about the choice. <comment><USER2> I would suggest perhaps a language/framework that compiles to a single binary. I'm assuming that the back-end doesn't need to do any heavy lifting. You could use Go, Crystal/Kemal, Nim/Jester or other combination.

Do you actually need the same deployed code to run on each platform (Net/Java) or is it sufficient to have common source that produces a binary for each?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a great point. I don't think I actually need the same deployed code to run everywhere. Common source would work. I do, however, feel like I need a language that is capable of producing an app that can be managed by a user, such as a UI for starting the backend process (UI or Windows service).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would prefer .NET Core for all future work. With their nice stack like CoreRT and X-Plat features it's very smooth to work.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can't go wrong with Java or Kotlin.

Use whatever you're more familiar with.

</comment><comment><USER5> Syncthing does this with Go and a web page using localhost.</comment>


Twittorati will tell you what the top 100 bloggers are up to | VentureBeat - <AUTHOR> http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/07/07/twittorati-will-tell-you-what-the-top-100-bloggers-are-up-to/ <comment><USER2> We don't need a twittorial.</comment>


Ask HN: What libraries should I learn to build something like this? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/05/upshot/how-the-recession-reshaped-the-economy-in-255-charts.html?action=click&contentCollection=The%20Upshot&region=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&moduleDetail=undefined&pgtype=Multimedia <comment><USER2> As far as technology goes, the NYT site is built on the Foundation framework. The interactive graphics are based on D3.js. There'll be a bunch of data analysis, database skills, design, HTML, CSS, JS, etc in there as well.

But... if you want to build something similar, learn team skills. A site like that isn't built by an individual.

<comment><AUTHOR> fair enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ignorance 1.0 for work-groups.

Yes, I am being cynical - but I cannot extract any information from the "article" because on my FF on OSX any attempt at scrolling leads to seemingly random stuff changing without any option left for me to read it sequentially.

A great example of "less would have been more".

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you completely, with a finance background I still stared at it for a while and extracted very little. Its all there, but I had to do my own 'analytics'.</comment></comment>


Bluetooth will support hearing aids, sharing, and a better audio codec - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/6/21050631/bluetooth-hearing-aids-sharing-audio-le-lc3-codec-ces-2020 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21980558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21980558)

</comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic. Now all those incomplete, incompatible, barely coherent and absolutely bug-ridden implementations will get better because Bluetooth will now be an even larger specification! And the specification continues to have flaws in itself!

I apologise for the sarcasm. The Bluetooth situation hasn't improved over the years because the spec has. In part, yes. The spec is better. However the real difference has been large players open-sourcing parts of their bluetooth stack. However, even now, without a lot trying, you will find bugridden implementations in both hardware and software.

That bluetooth works at all is a miracle.

<comment><USER4> This is not bluetooth classic, BT as you know and hate it. It's BLE Audio. BLE is MUCH better.

<comment><USER3> I haven't had the displeasure of working much with "bluetooth classic", it's BLE that I've spent most of my time with, and I absolutely hate it every time I have to come back to it.

BLE is better. But it isn't hard to be better.

<comment><USER4> Weird, I have had zero real issues with BLE. However, I'm on the device side, GATT Server, not the phone (client) side. So I have much lower access than if I was writing a Core Bluetooth app or something.

<comment><USER3> I'm in embedded world. Writing realtime drivers has been... Painful. Fixing existing realtime drivers has been worse. Almost every piece of hardware I've touched hasn't complied with the spec in some way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad to see the SIG improving the baseline audio codec. SBC is/was a weird little codec.

It's like a dumbed-down MPEG-1 Layer-1 audio, but with only 8 sub-bands. Like layer-1, the filterbank isn't perfect reconstruction, so the encode/decode cycle causes aliasing noise even before any quantization takes place.

(At a previous job I had to make a proprietary extension that improved the stop-band attenuation of the prototype filter, otherwise the speaker companies didn't even want to talk to us, the THD+N looked so bad.)

The only psychoacoustic model is an optional static biasing of which sub-bands gets bits allocated.

On the other hand, you can encode/decode entirely in software on a 24 MHZ arm7tdmi. (arm7 is ARMv3, not ARMv7, confusingly).

</comment><comment><USER6> Giant middle finger to Linux users by using a new proprietary Fraunhofer codec. We have finally gotten support for some of the other proprietary codecs in Linux Bluetooth land, then Bluetooth SIG goes & picks a new proprietary codec owned by the very very old guard. Another decade of mp3 licensing fees & stacks of legal paperwork, just to encode or decode audio.

There's so many better ways this could have gone.

<comment><USER7> Why didn't they choose Opus?

<comment><USER8> Because there's no juicy licensing money to be made from getting Opus into the Bluetooth standard? Seriously, there's no real technical advantage to this weird proprietary codec as far as I can tell - the performance and computational complexity seem to be pretty much on a par with Opus, even based on benchmarks and hardware that the new codec was designed to do well on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd settle for lower latency.

Using bluetooth MIDI on my iPhone 11 Pro / Roland F-140R combo produces an occasional 1/3 second latency for some key-presses. Adding bluetooth audio on top produces 2 second latency in the music itself.

So close, yet so far.

</comment><comment><USER10> hearing aids already support BT. I know people that are nearly deaf and have invisible hearing aids. They can answer the phone with BT connectivity. This is fairly recent.

<comment><USER4> They support BT Classic, not BLE Audio which is what this is. The issue with BT Classic in hearing aids is as far as I know the same issue with most BT devices, the pairing and constant connectivity.

I've found BLE to be much more forgiving. BUT, the BT SIG is a special group, we'll see how they mess this up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To all the sarcasic and nonsense posts here...

This is not Bluetooth Classic. Your impressions (and mine) of shitty speakers that lose connection until 2am and randomly start playing something don't apply.

This is BLE now with an Audio stream. It's not the same. BT and BLE share radio, and GAP profile, maybe L2CAP, everything else is entirely different.

I'm not saying BT SIG didn't mess this up in special ways, but no, you don't know anything about this yet.

</comment><comment><USER11> Bluetooth using Airpods pros seems to be about 140ms latency vs speakers at about 60 ms. So a difference of 80ms. Others have differences 184ms - so more than double the latency. Could bluetooth adopt whatever apple is doing?

</comment><comment><USER12> Bluetooth already supports hearing aids

<comment><USER13> I was confused by this too. I've been wearing hearing aids all my life, and my latest pair (bought in 2014) was always able to connect to my iPhone via bluetooth. How is this new "Bluetooth LE Audio" different from what we have today?

It would be nice if I could connect my hearing aids to my computer and listen to skype calls, music, youtube, etc. But so far I've only been able to connect to iOS and Android devices. Maybe this change will fix that?

<comment><USER3> > How is this new "Bluetooth LE Audio" different from what we have today?

The new audio codec should be of a much higher quality, though it does match what some proprietary systems have already been doing. Not just "quality" improvements, but the tinny aftertones and so on should just about vanish in all circumstances. Normalisation will work better. It'll be easier to pick out voices in a crowd, etc.

BLE should be much lower latency. Potentially anywhere between half and a third. Which should be a huge quality-of-life improvement for those using bluetooth hearing aids.

BLE is _somewhat_ simpler, and has decent adoption throughout the software industry. So connecting to Windows, macOS, Linux should be possible. (The Linux story is complicated by the new audio codec - its nonfree and patent encumbered). If they've done their job right, you'll be able to connect your hearing aids like any other output device, with a quick and simple pair from whatever Bluetooth menu.

However, BLE is also known for more frequent dropouts related to battery usage spikes. Not directly because of the spec. Because the people implementing it have done a worse job thus far. If that remains the case, then it is fairly useless as a hearing aid tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Bluetooth may really get better next year

If you believe this, I've got a bridge to sell you.

It basically doesn't matter what "bluetooth" the absurd, bloated standard says. What matters is what implementers do, and what they'll do is hack together the cheapest, fastest version that kinda-barely works on cheapo Chinese hardware and test it only with a couple popular Apple devices.

<comment><USER15> Products with Bluetooth 5.0 are a lot easier to use than Bluetooth 2.0 from 10+ years back, in my opinion.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Full Hacker News dataset now available on BigQuery - <AUTHOR> https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments
The dataset is up-to-date for October 2015 and uses the official HN API as a data source. (Unfortuntely, this includes the HTML formatting in the comments) Dataset is about 4GB total; since BigQuery allows for 1000GB processing for free each month, it is effectively no cost to analyze.
Felipe Hoffa (who uploaded the dataset) has links to the dataset along with some sample Python code for analysis: https://github.com/fhoffa/notebooks/blob/master/analyzing%20hacker%20news.ipynb
I have a few scripts for downloading all the data manually (https://github.com/minimaxir/get-all-hacker-news-submissions-comments ), but the BigQuery table may be more pragmatic. I can do some more sample queries if requested. (See my BigQuery tutorial for Reddit data: http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-bigquery/ ) <comment><USER2> Hi! I'm the one that loaded this dataset into BigQuery. Feel free to ask any questions :).

The notebook with sample queries and visualizations:

[https://github.com/fhoffa/notebooks/blob/master/analyzing%20...](https://github.com/fhoffa/notebooks/blob/master/analyzing%20hacker%20news.ipynb)

<comment><USER3> There are items in there that are deleted/[dead] on HN (and not very recent). How come?

<comment><USER4> You can see dead things on HN if you turn on "showdead" in your account settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickables:

[https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh- bigquery:hackerne...](https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/fh- bigquery:hackernews.comments)

[https://github.com/fhoffa/notebooks/blob/master/analyzing%20...](https://github.com/fhoffa/notebooks/blob/master/analyzing%20hacker%20news.ipynb)

[https://github.com/minimaxir/get-all-hacker-news- submissions...](https://github.com/minimaxir/get-all-hacker-news-submissions- comments)

[http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit- bigquery/](http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-bigquery/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This makes a really nice introduction to BigQuery (which is to say: BigQuery is nicely discoverable, given an easy-to-understand dataset).

Is there a good way to find the story to which a comment belongs? This dataset raises the issue of recursive query (e.g. "with recursive" in SQLite or PostgreSQL, or "connect by" in Oracle). The only approach I see in BigQuery is specifying a fixed level with something scary like:

      SELECT p0.text, s.id, s.title
      FROM
        [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p0
      JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p1 ON p1.id=p0.parent
      JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p2 ON p2.id=p1.parent
      JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p3 ON p3.id=p2.parent
      JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p4 ON p4.id=p3.parent
      JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.stories] s ON s.id=p4.parent
      WHERE
        REGEXP_MATCH(p0.text, '(?i)bigquery')
      ORDER BY
        p0.time DESC

For this particular data set: linking each comment to its story might be a good denormalization.

<comment><USER2> You are right - I'll prepare a new release with that data.

My oversight, sorry! :)

<comment><USER5> Not an oversight — just a different use case for the data! And I wasn't sure if BigQuery had a generic approach here, but it looks like not.

<comment><USER2> Btw, I really like your query.

I modified it to get the story for up to 7 levels of recursion:

      SELECT p0.id, s.id, s.title, level
      FROM (
        SELECT p0.id, p0.parent, p2.id, p3.id, p4.id, COALESCE(p7.parent, p6.parent, p5.parent, p4.parent, p3.parent, p2.parent, p1.parent, p0.parent) story_id,
               GREATEST(IF(p7.parent IS null, -1, 7), IF(p6.parent IS null, -1, 6), IF(p5.parent IS null, -1, 5), IF(p4.parent IS null, -1, 4), IF(p3.parent IS null, -1, 3),
                        IF(p2.parent IS null, -1, 2), IF(p1.parent IS null, -1, 1), 0) level
        FROM    [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p0
        LEFT JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p1 ON p1.id=p0.parent
        LEFT JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p2 ON p2.id=p1.parent
        LEFT JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p3 ON p3.id=p2.parent
        LEFT JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p4 ON p4.id=p3.parent
        LEFT JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p5 ON p5.id=p4.parent
        LEFT JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p6 ON p6.id=p5.parent
        LEFT JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.comments] p7 ON p7.id=p6.parent
        HAVING level=0
        LIMIT 100
      ) a
      LEFT JOIN EACH [fh-bigquery:hackernews.stories] s
      ON s.id=a.story_id

(having so many left joins consumes a lot of resources, so to run it massively I would look for a different strategy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool, thanks! Looking forward to playing around with this.

FYI, you named a column a reserved sql keyword ('by'). For future reference, and for others reading this: this is bad database design and makes it harder to use the table. You can get around this by wrapping the column name in brackets, like:

>select ... where [by] = ...

<comment><USER2> I didn't name the column "by", I just gave the field the name that the API uses for it.

And to make everyone's lives easier (including mine), I copied the [by] column to an [author] column, so you can do a

>select ... where author = ...

instead :)

<comment><USER7> Oh, first I thought there is some difference and did this:

      SELECT * FROM [fh-bigquery:hackernews.stories] WHERE [by] != author

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice trove to pore through when I find the time.

I like to use Twitter to analyze HN datasets. It's mostly limited to links, because that's what I'm after mostly.

[https://twitter.com/newsycombinator](https://twitter.com/newsycombinator) [https://twitter.com/HackerNews](https://twitter.com/HackerNews) .. And a few other accounts. Try to avoid Bitly wrapped links.

Use something like Greptweet to harvest the tweets and parse out any noise.

<comment><AUTHOR> That will not get you accurate results for HN data analysis since a) those accounts only tweet important links so analysis will be biased b) you can only get 3200 tweets at a time. (This is a Twitter API limitation)

You have to look at both the good and the bad.

<comment><USER8> I hear you. Raw unfiltered links always have hidden gems.

One thing though: Greptweet has an archive somewhere with a huge trove of tweets that users of the service have searched for, and were thus logged and kept. (Some even go over the 3200 limit). It's a massive Tarball, so set aside time to download it and parse out boring/noisy links.

A lot of HN links are tech-press posts which consist of hearsay and merely proxy the thoughts of others. The recent changes in HN with regards to more academia-style posts is refreshing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is really cool; thanks! Not exactly sure what I'll do with it (honestly probably nothing) but it's sure cool especially since I didn't know about BigQuery prior.

</comment><comment><USER10> Huge fan of BQ, its the best product Google Cloud has that AWS doesn't. Excited for its future.

</comment><comment><USER11> Many thanks! Could you put up a magnet link so we can download the data ourselves? It would also be useful to have the submission id as a field in the comment table.

</comment><comment><USER12> If anyone wants to play with this dataset, and easily share his queries or visualize the data, you're welcome to use re:dash's demo instance [1]. I've also created an example query [2].

[1] [http://demo.redash.io](http://demo.redash.io) [2] [http://demo.redash.io/queries/667/source#table](http://demo.redash.io/queries/667/source#table)

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this OK from a privacy perspective?

<comment><USER14> Why wouldn't it be? All the data provided by the HN API is public.

<comment><USER15> Yes, when you submit a comment to HN you intend for it to be published on the HN site. However, using comments for text mining purposes is a different thing and in principle consent is required to do that. The default case is that user submitted content remains copyrighted by the author, with an implied consent for the site to publish the material on the site. There can be an explicit license such as with Wikipedia or StackOverflow; in that case text mining may be explicitly allowed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> All of the github event data is also on bigquery as well. [https://www.githubarchive.org/#bigquery](https://www.githubarchive.org/#bigquery)

Now for someone to analyze github <-> HN correlations.

<comment><USER2> I joined GitHub and Hacker News here - how many stars after a front page post?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/comments/3qpyor/joining_ha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/comments/3qpyor/joining_hacker_news_and_github_how_much_attention/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool.

I'd be interested to see a list of people who submit a lot. I submit too much - about one submission per day - and I'm curious what percentile that puts me in.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hey guys check it out [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10445270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10445270)

</comment><comment><USER19> Thank you for this, I think it's great!</comment>


Twitter discontinuing Vine - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vine/important-news-about-vine-909c5f4ae7a7#.iy1gzh4fn <comment><USER2> Established discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806324)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone explain what is the strategy of buying-closing services?</comment>