
Ask HN: Is there anything worth purchasing on Black Friday/Cyber Monday? - coreyp_1
I just haven&#x27;t seen anything that catches my eye (and many sites make it surprisingly difficult to browse their Black Friday deals).  I refuse to go out and shop (it&#x27;s too cold, &amp; I don&#x27;t really want to mess with the crowds), but I would buy something online if it was a good price &amp; I had a use for it.<p>Any suggestions or discoveries?
======
ncr100
[https://supporters.eff.org/donate/button](https://supporters.eff.org/donate/button)

------
GuiA
The nature of your question in itself indicates that there is nothing you
should buy. Buy things if you need them, otherwise leave your wallet in your
pocket.

~~~
sorahn
I took it to mean "I have some extra money, and I want something to fiddle
with, is there anything that the hackernews readers know of that might be on
sale?"

But maybe that's just my question...

~~~
ralmeida
I took that point too, and there's also another point... there's software
that's on my list for a while (JetBrains and Hazel come to mind, in
particular), but since the exchange rate for me is bad, a sale might tip me
over the edge.

~~~
tedmiston
JetBrains does nice discounts around conferences. PyCharm was 30% off for
PyCon for example. I think anyone can use the code whether you attend or not.

------
svacko
If you are into a software architecture, @simonbrown is offering both of his
software architecture books for FREE on Leanpub
[https://twitter.com/simonbrown/status/800340593507438593](https://twitter.com/simonbrown/status/800340593507438593)
[https://leanpub.com/b/software-architecture](https://leanpub.com/b/software-
architecture)

~~~
hga
Thanks. Having started this game in 1997, in some respects fortunately with
punched card FORTRAN and hands on use of an IBM 1130, since that sent me
straight to the library because I knew there _had_ to be better ways, and
being cash strapped right now I'm not in the market for architecture books.
But for free? I'll try them for sure, and who knows, may pay him some real
money in the future, nothing ventured, nothing gained. At least for me, one
good free book has more than a few time resulted in that.

------
mmerlin
Udemy has a few interesting courses reduced to $0 courtesy of OzBargain
[https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/276987](https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/276987)

------
jakebasile
If you're a gamer, there's tons of stuff on sale. On Steam you can get Doom
for $20, and it is well worth it. I'm also binging on The Division which is
$25 with an optional $20 season pass for some extra stuff. If you want
something more low key Stardew Valley might be the ticket.

~~~
kek918
Yeah it's pretty dangerous to browse Steam now... I already purchased 4 games
today (even two AAA titles), and I still have 5-6 untouched games from the
last christmas sale.

~~~
majewsky
> I _only_ have 5-6 untouched games

FTFY :)

~~~
jakebasile
If you're interested in the actual stats for your Steam library, check out the
SteamDB calculator[1].

[1]: [https://steamdb.info/calculator/](https://steamdb.info/calculator/)

~~~
kek918
Interesting! 40 of my 102 games haven't been played yet. Jesus christ, I'm
gonna have to call in sick next week to catch up here.

------
wesbos
I've put two of my JavaScript courses on sale for 50% off:

ES6 For Everyone

[https://ES6.io](https://ES6.io)

React For Beginners

[https://ReactForBeginners.com](https://ReactForBeginners.com)

~~~
ralphael
thanks Wes, purchasing now!

~~~
wesbos
Awesome! Seeing a few sales come through from this.

Enjoy it!

------
slededit
I purchased a 1TB EVO 850 from newegg/amazon (both have the same price). But I
had a specific need for large fast storage.

~~~
ctchocula
Thanks for the heads up! Been meaning to buy one for gf's 2012 MBP, and now
seems like the best time.

------
weavie
Apress [1] are doing ebooks for £9.99 and print books for £12.50.

Picked up a copy of Practical Common Lisp for £12.50. Even second hand these
are going on Amazon for £25, and lord knows I've been through that book online
enough times to know it's about time I got myself a hard copy!

[1]
[http://www.apress.com/gp/shop/cybermonday?&token=cyber16&wt_...](http://www.apress.com/gp/shop/cybermonday?&token=cyber16&wt_mc=Internal.Banner.3.EPR868.APRShopLP_EN_CYBER16_Banner)

~~~
hga
Thanks! I've already bought PCL, but noticed a couple of newer RDBMS books by
C J Date, and add these observations:

I suppose this changes if you create an account and log into it, but the
prices are initially quoted in Euros (close the US$ right now), and shifted to
dollars after I entered my address in the registration process.

They say free shipping to individuals world wide, and the physical book I
bought is going to be printed on demand by Springer Customer Service Center
LLC, with the usual delays. And of course the ebook I bought was immediately
available; all very slick so far.

------
olalonde
PacktPub[0] and PragProg[1] both have discounts on eBooks (50% and 40%).

[0]
[https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/thanksgiving-2016](https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/thanksgiving-2016)

[1] [https://pragprog.com/](https://pragprog.com/)

~~~
veli_joza
Humble has a nice UNIX book bundle:

[https://www.humblebundle.com/books/unix-book-
bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/unix-book-bundle)

------
govind201
Top discounts by product category:
[http://blackfriday.semantics3.com/dashboards/RJ7EP446XUIOLEU...](http://blackfriday.semantics3.com/dashboards/RJ7EP446XUIOLEU7)
Might aid the discount hunting process, if not the decision making process.

~~~
Two9A
It's worth noting that there are lots of stores not indexed by Semantics3, and
Amazon is one of the big ones they miss out.

~~~
govind201
Amazon is part of the list of sites being tracked. Any reason you felt
otherwise?

------
enibundo
The urge to buy is real. Just be frugal and enjoy your day :)

------
vldmr
I'll just leave it there. Real discount for domaine names, shared hosting and
ssl. [https://www.namecheap.com/domain-hosting-ssl-deals/black-
fri...](https://www.namecheap.com/domain-hosting-ssl-deals/black-friday.aspx)

~~~
_puk
Thanks for the link, but current deals all gone (other than Comodo Instant
SSL, lots of those left)

New ones at 6am EST

~~~
azazqadir
There are other hosting deals out there as well. Check out Cloudways that is
offering 25% off for 3 months.

------
fauria
Machine Learning Mastery has a 40% discount on all their products using the
code "blackfriday":
[http://machinelearningmastery.com/](http://machinelearningmastery.com/)

------
cookingrobot
HTC Vive is $100 off this weekend on Amazon.

~~~
lwhalen
Does the Vive support Macs or Linux yet?

~~~
icecreammatt
Valve has indicated that support for it is coming soon. Their recent developer
conference they demoed it running on Linux. I'm not sure how well it's going
to work on Mac with the lack of decent graphics cards unless maybe using a
Hackintosh.

~~~
geocar
Then I'll consider it "soon".

------
rebirth2
am waiting for the safari books online subscription deal. Last yr they had a
50% price drop.

~~~
psyklic
On Twitter: "sorry, no big sale this year. Contact us via
[http://bit.ly/1aK0wMg](http://bit.ly/1aK0wMg) and we are happy to talk about
available discounts."

\-
[https://twitter.com/safari/status/798558536905224192](https://twitter.com/safari/status/798558536905224192)

~~~
rebirth2
sadboy :(

------
jedisct1
OVH Black Friday deals:

[https://www.ovh.com/us/black-friday/](https://www.ovh.com/us/black-friday/)

------
ryuker16
Slickdeals.net is your friend. Some TV deals and SSD deals. Amazon discounted
all its hardware stuff around 15% it seems. Picked up the fire 4k box for $65.

------
rwd
[https://paw.cloud/](https://paw.cloud/) is half price all weekend.
[http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2016/11/24/Black-
Friday-...](http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2016/11/24/Black-
Friday-2016-Deals-For-Game-Developers.aspx) has deals for game creators.

------
SanderMak
O'Reilly is running a 50% discount on all ebooks:
[http://shop.oreilly.com/category/deals/cyber-
monday.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/category/deals/cyber-monday.do)

(full disclosure: I'm writing 'Java 9 Modularity' with them, available in
early access)

~~~
pyb
Is it just me, or are some of their prices double the price at Amazon ?

------
grecy
Put some gas in your tank and head out camping for a weekend.

Or take some unpaid leave and spend the time with you family.

~~~
jakebasile
He did say it was too cold outside, so maybe camping wouldn't work. :)

------
pasbesoin
I've done my own personal "cost/benefit" for these things.

We might call it "dollars saved / aggravation induced".

Short answer: Ratio is consistently way too low.

Message to retailers: Make my life easier, if you want my business. (Fair
price for a good product and support.)

------
apricot13
If your in the UK [http://www.hotukdeals.com/black-
friday](http://www.hotukdeals.com/black-friday) lists all the current deals.

------
patrickk
For anyone based in Germany/Europe, mydealz.de lists offers, you can sort by
"hot" to see the most popular ones. (not affiliated)

------
MichaelBurge
Any good deals for setting up a home GPU cluster? Like GTX 1080s, motherboards
with multiple PCI Express slots, etc.

------
jgooch
I'd love to see aCloud or identify deals on Amazon Web Services training. lets
hope that it happens.

~~~
andrewhayter
Same here, keeping my eye out for exactly this.

------
Steppschuh
Newton Mail subscription is 50℅ off at the moment, which I find is a great
deal for their service.

------
NoCanDo
Not really. It's just a marketing scam.

------
kyriakos
digitalocean had some good deals for cyber monday last year if I am not
mistaken. I haven't checked this year.

