Poll: Where do you live?

[binarynate]

I read a tweet that referred to HN as "Silicon Valley", which struck me as odd because I suspect most HN users, like me, are located elsewhere. This piqued my curiosity about where HN users are located, so if you don't mind me asking, where do you live?

Edit: Sorry about the randomized ordering (I forgot HN does that for polls). Thanks ahead of time for using cmd+f or the equivalent to find and vote for your state or country. Also, each US state is included as "US: {state name}".

[jarrenae]

Visualization (updates every few seconds): https://ae.studio/random/where-does-hacker-news-live

[skykooler → jarrenae]

Would it be possible to show the text for the smaller blobs when you hover over them? (There's an alt-text that might be supposed to be doing that, but it just shows "undefined: undefined" no matter what I hover over.)

[LimitedInfo → jarrenae]

hey jarrenae,

Thanks for this update. I've included a couple points below to improve on before our next meeting:

- can i get a similar look to this but in pie chart format? Maybe just include top ten labels?

- I would like to see a larger size of the visual on the page

- the color scheme is okay but try experimenting with black font for the locations

Best, LimitedInfo

[jarrenae → LimitedInfo]

hi LimitedInfo,

Sorry for the delayed response, I was waiting on a response from our dev team, and Susan in accounting.

I appreciate the feedback but I'm currently assigned to other tasks, so if you'd like revisions please contact Issac and submit a request for some of my hours.

Also please stop leaving fish in the fridge.

Best, jarrenae

[amrangaye → LimitedInfo]

I’m sorry but I can’t help but ask: what is this? Is OP your worker and this is work comms? Just curious.

[LimitedInfo → amrangaye]

haha no worries, it's a bit of satire on your typical work email. I'm a data analyst so emulating what I see a lot.

[amrangaye → LimitedInfo]

Oh I see :-D thanks for clarifying.

[spdebbarma → jarrenae]

Hey, thanks for this; but on hover, they all show up as `undefined:undefined`. I'm on Firefox 96.0(64-bit), if that's any help.

[joshspankit → jarrenae]

Suggestion: Group the US states in to a larger “US” bubble.

All the others (unless I missed it, in which case Sorry!) are total for the country

[kroltan → jarrenae]

Hi from Florianópolis too!

[gauchojs → kroltan]

Do you recommend a Porto Alegrer move to Floripa? My work is remote now...

[kroltan → gauchojs]

I can't compare Porto Alegre since I have never gone there except as a waypoint when visiting the extended family, and I have lived in Florianópolis my whole life, so take it with a grain of salt. Personally I like living here, since it's basically a very provincian capital, so you kind of get the best of both worlds: fast internet (very important for us IT folks), decent infrastructure, urban conveniences and calm living.

Housing is relatively expensive on the island, you could rent a house elsewhere for the same amount as a small 2-bedroom apartment on the island.

It is a rather safe city in terms of violent crime, which from what I understand will be a welcome change from PA. Especially on the smaller neighbourhoods.

One interesting thing about Florianópolis is that it works more like 3~5 separate boroughs: Continent, Downtown, North, East, and South, ranked by urbanization. So your experience with the city will vary a bunch depending on where you live.

I have lived most of my life in the South, which feels like a much smaller city, and has the slower pace of life to match, but it means that if you need to go to the bank or refuel you car you have to go almost all the way to Downtown. The upside is that it has a good "nice neighbourhood"/"cost of living" ratio. I currently live in an apartment in Açores (not the Portuguese archipelago!) and it is a lovely small planned-ish neighbourhood which is as far south as a good internet link goes.

If you are a more bohemian person or with an active social life (pandemic notwithstanding) you might be interested in the East, which already has some conveniences like banks and gas stations (not sure why I'm fixated on those lol I don't even have a driver's license) and plenty of good eateries and bars, while still being a calm neighbourhood in the residential areas. I spent a couple of years in Lagoa da Conceição, and despite being a thin-walled kitchenette behind the bus terminal, it was surprisingly chill. Lots of congestion if you're a car user, though.

If you are a native city-dweller and can't imagine going without McDonalds and going to the movies all the time, then you'll want Downtown, or Continent if you're not particular about quickly reaching the rest of the island (there is also lots of congestion at peak hours on the bridges leading in).

I can't say much about the North either since I haven't lived there, but it's generally a big urban sprawl, with lots of foreigners/tourists during the summer season, which means you'll probably have to brush up on your Spanish to do basic human interaction, as well as the general stereotypical infrastructure chaos caused by a sudden flood of temporary residents (supermarket queues, loud neighbours, etc)

That's all to say, if you want to routinely move between these mentioned regions, you'll need a car. Public transport is actually pretty good, with plentiful buses and a very reasonable business model (a bus fare includes transfers between lines at a terminal, as well as distinct lines in the same hour), but that gets old fast. But given the very segregated "boroughs", the only way between them is the road, either on your own car, a ride-sharing app, or bus.

That's basically it as far as general moving advice goes, if there are any specific facts you'd like let me know.

[kk6mrp → jarrenae]

Now that is awesome!

[lhorie]

Pasting this in dev console will give you a quick and dirty rundown. It sorts locations by points.

    [...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => [el.textContent.trim(), el.nextSibling.textContent.trim()]).sort(([,a], [,b]) => parseInt(b) - parseInt(a)).map(a => a.join(' - '))

As of this post, California is leading, followed by other places w/ large tech hubs (Germany, UK, Canada, NY, Washington)

[toqy → lhorie]

This is begging for a console.table

     console.table([...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => [el.textContent.trim(), el.nextSibling.textContent.trim()]).sort(([,a], [,b]) => parseInt(b) - parseInt(a)))

[gkfasdfasdf → toqy]

Current top 10:

  'US: California' '79 points'
  'Canada' '48 points'
  'US: Washington' '39 points'
  'US: New York' '36 points'
  'Germany' '35 points'
  'United Kingdom' '34 points'
  'US: Massachusetts' '19 points'
  'Netherlands' '18 points'
  'US: Colorado' '17 points'
  'Sweden' '16 points'

Colorado #9? Really?

[wongarsu → gkfasdfasdf]

As percent of total responses, as of right now:

    'US: California', '10.87%'
    'Canada', '5.79%'
    'United Kingdom', '4.51%'
    'US: Washington', '4.45%'
    'Germany', '4.45%'
    'US: New York', '4.32%'
    'US: Colorado', '2.10%'
    'US: Texas', '1.97%'
    'US: Massachusetts', '1.84%'
    'France', '1.78%'

The US in total makes up 49% of responses so far (even though it is nearly 10pm in most of Europe)

Edit: quick and dirty one-liner to get the full table with relative values:

    data = [...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => [el.textContent.trim(), el.nextSibling.textContent.trim()]).sort(([,a], [,b]) => parseInt(b) - parseInt(a)); total = data.map(a => parseInt(a[1])-1).reduce((a,b) => a+b, 0); console.table(data.map(a => [a[0], ((parseInt(a[1])-1)/total*100).toFixed(2) + "%"])); us = data.filter(a => a[0].startsWith("US:")).map(a => parseInt(a[1])-1).reduce((a,b) => a+b, 0); `US makes up ${(us/total*100).toFixed(2)}% of ${total} responses`

Edit2: made one-liner even dirtier to account for counts starting at 1

[lhorie → wongarsu]

Be mindful that the dataset is 1-indexed (i.e. zero votes equal a score of 1), so your script is probably a bit skewed towards non-US.

[wongarsu → lhorie]

Good catch. Accounting for that brings the US up from currently 50.2% to 52.8%. It also brings California up from 11.75% to 12.86%. I updated my code above to account for that (having to fight the urge to refactor it to be more sensible)

[young_unixer → wongarsu]

It would be cool to see it relative to the population of the country.

[e12e → wongarsu]

Is there are reasonable way to do this on a mobile browser?

[wongarsu → e12e]

Maybe rewriting it as a bookmarklet that displays the results on the page?

Anyways, here's the current result in a pastebin: https://pastebin.com/fR89qMKk

[gabrielsroka → wongarsu]

I posted these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30213991

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30215244

Edit (this version subtracts 1 to see the real score and pops open in a new window):

  javascript:open().document.write('<meta name=viewport content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"><table>' + [...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => ({place: el.textContent.trim(), score: parseInt(el.nextSibling.textContent) - 1})).sort((a, b) => b.score - a.score || a.place.localeCompare(b.place)).map(e => `<tr><td>${e.place}<td align=right>${e.score}`).join('') + '</table>')

[e12e → wongarsu]

Good tip, thank you. Bookmarklets work as normal(?) on Firefox on Android, and can be invoked via the address bar on Chrome:

https://paul.kinlan.me/use-bookmarklets-on-chrome-on-android...

A random intro to bookmarklets: https://betterprogramming.pub/are-bookmarklets-still-useful-...

[icco → wongarsu]

TIL about console.table. Thanks for sharing!

[TulliusCicero → gkfasdfasdf]

Denver and Boulder have a good amount of tech. A bit surprised it comes out ahead of Texas though.

Also the UK and Germany being about the same is interesting. Germany does have a slightly larger population, but of course the UK is natively English speaking.

[nicholasjarnold → TulliusCicero]

There is an admittedly surprising amount of tech work here (CO). I moved here from Chicago nearly a decade ago for a startup job (not telecommunications, ad tech or government related), and have found that the marketplace for tech jobs has grown heavily since then.

Also, given the new(ish) move to remote work that many firms nationally have begun to embrace there is also a strong showing here of people that work in Colorado, but for firms located elsewhere. This is my personal current situation, and I work with a guy who is moving here from the midwest in a couple months to work 100% remote. It's more and more common.

[hwc → TulliusCicero]

Texas is without power at the moment.

[vel0city → hwc]

Less than 1% of people in Texas lost power from this storm, and most who did lose power lost power for only a few hours tops. More people lost power in Ohio and Tennessee from this storm than people in Texas.

Only two people in my network of people I know lost power in Texas, one of which was a coworker's neighbor because said coworker's tree dropped a branch on the neighbor's overhead power delivery line.

[bdcravens → hwc]

Actually our grid has held up pretty well this time around.

[yurishimo → bdcravens]

It also didn't get nearly as cold as last year, and not for as long. Plus, the providers ramped up production the first evening to the point where wholesale rates were negative to incentivize more usage.

Another week+ of 0 degrees would likely have not been as smooth...

[Rebelgecko → hwc]

My parents house in California had no electricity for over a week (Christmas through New Year's, and it was sporadic until about Jan 8). I think the state is still doing fine as a tech hub.

[kelnos → Rebelgecko]

I think the point is that if a large portion of Texas currently didn't have power (which seems to not be the case, but whatever), then they might be under-represented in this poll because I imagine fewer people in place without power would be browsing HN than usual.

[capableweb → hwc]

Thought you were joking at first, how can an entire state be without power? But seems you're right, how the hell does that happen in a first-world country?

Tried to access some dashboards that are supposed to show some data, but not sure if I can't access it because I'm not in the US/Texas or if it's down as well (because they don't have power?)

- https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards

- https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/gridconditions

- https://www.ercot.com/gridinfo

Says "This request was blocked by the security rules" so I'm assuming it's the former.

[vel0city → capableweb]

ERCOT doesn't do power delivery, you wouldn't see how many people are without power by checking out ERCOT. You would want to look at one of the several power delivery companies, such as Oncor.

https://stormcenter.oncor.com/

They show 7,073 customers affected by outages out of 3,835,901 customers served. That's 0.18% of customers affected.

Texas-New Mexico Power is another power delivery company in Texas.

https://www.tnmp.com/power-outage-map

They are showing 1,195 customers affected. They serve ~400k customers. So ~0.3% of customers are without power for that company.

Austin Energy is another power company in Texas, they serve pretty much the entire city of Austin so ~1M customers. They are reporting 24 affected customers. So 0.0024% of customers affected.

https://outagemap.austinenergy.com/external/default.html

The above poster is not right, and neither are you for suggesting some massive amount of the state is without power.

[capableweb → vel0city]

Thank you, that oncor website seems to be available to me. I was browsing around some news article that seemed to echo the same sentiment, tried to access the source data myself and couldn't, so made an assumption. That was an error on my part and I'm sorry for that. Thank you for providing a better source that seems accessible worldwide.

[vel0city → capableweb]

> so made an assumption

You shared lies and slandered a state suggesting its a third world country based on false data.

[runako → vel0city]

To be fair, our power grid does have a tendency to fail regularly across the US. Texas last year, California's rolling blackouts, NY blackouts, etc. There's a reason that upper-middle-class homeowners have been buying Generac generators en masse.

[vel0city → runako]

Power grids tend to fail just about everywhere that experiences extreme weather. Its not necessarily a US-only thing. Its just that the US experiences a pretty large share of extreme weather compared to most of the developed world. Far more tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, etc. affect the US than say, Europe.

[runako → vel0city]

California's rolling blackouts were not the result of any particularly extreme (for California!) weather. Similarly, hurricanes are not new to most of the hurricane-afflicted parts of the country. Wildfires have been a force in the US for a long time, and the West has experienced seasonal wildfires for decades.

The difference is the US doesn't generally build or maintain infrastructure in a fashion commensurate with the extant risks here (which are different than those of e.g. Germany). Obviously, it is possible to keep a grid running when it is extremely cold outside, see the Nordics and Russia, for example. The US just makes systematic choices not to build & maintain to that standard.

[vel0city → runako]

What kind of similar weather risks do the Nordic countries or Germany experience that would be an equivalent to the tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires the US experiences on a very regular basis? I truly don't know what kind of similar risks they face and would like to rectify my ignorance.

[Retric → capableweb]

https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/gridconditions

Is showing green for me, so some people might be without power but most of the state is fine.

[dfxm12 → capableweb]

But seems you're right, how the hell does that happen in a first-world country?

An interesting note is that Texas has its own power grid, more or less, and it isn't federally regulated.

more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-it...

[lordnacho → TulliusCicero]

All the relevant people in Germany as well the rest of the continent speak English pretty well.

[TulliusCicero → lordnacho]

I think that’s overselling it slightly. Yeah most techies in Germany are proficient or better in English, but that’s still gonna lead to less English website usage than a natively English speaking population.

[idleproc → TulliusCicero]

Well, EastEnders was on...

[afr0ck → TulliusCicero]

It's funny how the UK and Germany are growing with the same rate. I checked 10 minutes later and they were 56/57, then I did it again few minutes later and they were 67/68.

[bdcravens → TulliusCicero]

As I type this Texas is at 35 votes; looks like 5th behind California, Canada, Germany, and the UK

[starwind → gkfasdfasdf]

Google and Amazon have a pretty big showing in Denver/Boulder area and Apple's expanding an engineering office here.

Denver's also a big telecommunications and defense hub. Both industries employ armies of developers

[rakkhi → gkfasdfasdf]

Can't we just aggregate all of the US or worth splitting out cities/states/provinces for other countries also.. Think it makes the point of even this forum being US centric

[smt88 → rakkhi]

This forum is run by a US company and was originally made for their US portfolio.

Large US states are more populous than most countries, and the US tech industry is orders of magnitude larger than most countries'.

If US weren't broken out, it would be a huge outlier at the top and wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

I don't know of any other country that would make the chart that much more interesting by being broken up.

[Mc91 → gkfasdfasdf]

I know a programmer who moved to Colorado, mainly because he likes to be able to go out on hikes and that sort of thing.

[maxverse → Mc91]

I lived in Boulder for 2 years, and it's not just that there are gorgeous places to explore in CO - there's a culture of adventure and exploration here; everyone is much more likely to finish work early and go hiking, or take a snowboarding break in the middle of the day. It's encouraging and awesome.

[gabrielsroka → toqy]

More efficient, uses integers, and sortable in the table:

   console.table([...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => ({place: el.textContent.trim(), score: parseInt(el.nextSibling.textContent)})).sort((a, b) => b.score - a.score))

[gabrielsroka → gabrielsroka]

with tie breakers

     console.table([...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => ({place: el.textContent.trim(), score: parseInt(el.nextSibling.textContent)})).sort((a, b) => b.score - a.score || a.place.localeCompare(b.place)))

[gabrielsroka → toqy]

If you're on a mobile browser, paste this into the address bar:

    javascript:document.write('<table>' + [...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => ({place: el.textContent.trim(), score: parseInt(el.nextSibling.textContent)})).sort((a, b) => b.score - a.score || a.place.localeCompare(b.place)).map(e => `<tr><td>${e.place}<td align=right>${e.score}`).join('') + '</table>')

[cardamomo → gabrielsroka]

That doesn't seem to work on Firefox for Android, sadly

[gabrielsroka → cardamomo]

It doesn't seem to be supported. Ironic that the bookmarklet was invented by them.

It works on Chrome for Android.

[gabrielsroka → cardamomo]

Sometimes the browser will remove the leading 'javascript'. In that case, type it back in.

[newaccount74 → toqy]

I wanted a total for the US:

    console.table([...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => [el.textContent.replace(/:.*/,'').trim(), parseInt(el.nextSibling.textContent.trim())]).reduce((d, [k,v]) => {d[k]=v + (d[k] || 0); return d}, {}))

I can't figure out how to sort that, though...

[binarynate → newaccount74]

I created a page with the current results that includes a total for the US:

https://nate.org/hacker-news-location-poll

[gabrielsroka → binarynate]

Haha, great minds think alike.

Are you accepting PRs? If so, align=right. Thanks!

To see the sorted results: https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hnpoll.html?id=30210378

Source: https://github.com/gabrielsroka/gabrielsroka.github.io/blob/...

[Larrikin → binarynate]

Percentage next to totals would make this perfect

[binarynate → Larrikin]

Good idea—I just added a percentage column, as well as a row at the bottom for the total count

[gabrielsroka → newaccount74]

  Object.entries

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

[newaccount74 → gabrielsroka]

Oh, I need to type Object.entries(x) instead of x.entries()

Makes sense, otherwise entries would contain itself.

Thank you!

[eyelidlessness → newaccount74]

Entries only iterates enumerable items (unless you make something evil). None of the native types with entries in their prototype iterate over that method

[shafkathullah → newaccount74]

Just click on 'Value' in console to sort by value

[gabrielsroka → toqy]

To see the sorted results: https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hnpoll.html?id=30210378

Source: https://github.com/gabrielsroka/gabrielsroka.github.io/blob/...

[runjake → toqy]

Neat!

Noob question: is there a similar way to dump it to JSON, instead of a table?

[finnigja → runjake]

Just replace console.table with JSON.stringify for the quick-and-easy dump of exactly the same data as is in the table...

JSON.stringify([...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => [el.textContent.trim(), el.nextSibling.textContent.trim()]).sort(([,a], [,b]) => parseInt(b) - parseInt(a)))

[AntonyGarand → runjake]

Replace `console.table` with `JSON.stringify`:

JSON.stringify([...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => [el.textContent.trim(), el.nextSibling.textContent.trim()]).sort(([,a], [,b]) => parseInt(b) - parseInt(a)))

[zander312 → toqy]

this is fricking awesome!! thanks!!

[mmcnl → toqy]

TIL. Cool!

[lhorie → toqy]

Good call!

[Andrew_nenakhov → lhorie]

One must adjust for the fact that it is a very late evening or deep night on the other side of the planet, and the poll might sink from the front page by the time everyone wakes up back here.

[davidkuennen → lhorie]

With US combined:

console.table(Object.entries([...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => [el.textContent.trim(), el.nextSibling.textContent.trim()]).reduce((rv, [a,b]) => {var key = a.split(": ")[0]; rv[key] = rv[key] || 0; rv[key] += parseInt(b); return rv;}, {})).sort(([,a], [,b]) => parseInt(b) - parseInt(a)))

  'US' 959
  'Canada' 114
  'United Kingdom' 96
  'Germany' 96
  'France' 35
  'Netherlands' 30
  'Sweden' 30
  'Poland' 24
  'Brazil' 24
  'Denmark' 19
  'Switzerland' 18

[Archelaos → lhorie]

I think for a ranking the data should be normalized by population. If I calculate it for seven leading regions manually, the current numbers are as follows:

  US: California  535 / 39.51 Mil. = 13.54 / Mil.
  Canada          244 / 38.01 Mil. =  6.42 / Mil.
  Germany         232 / 83.24 Mil. =  2.79 / Mil.
  UK              220 / 67.22 Mil. =  3.27 / Mil.
  US: New York    206 / 39.52 Mil. =  5.21 / Mil.
  US: Washington  199 /  7.71 Mil. = 25.81 / Mil.
  US: Texas       122 / 29.15 Mil. =  4.19 / Mil.

There might even be some hidden champions in the lower absolute numbers.

[eriksjolund → Archelaos]

Nordic countries also get high numbers:

  Sweden  74 / 10.35 Mil. = 7.15 / Mil.
  Denmark 40 /  5.83 Mil. = 6.86 / Mil.
  Finland 33 /  5.53 Mil. = 5.97 / Mil.
  Norway  31 /  5.38 Mil. = 5.76 / Mil.

but nothing beats

  Vatican City 6 / 825 = 7273 / Mil.

[Archelaos → eriksjolund]

I had always suspected the Jesuits behind HN.

[culi → lhorie]

Now we need to divide the votes by the population of each place

[jeromegv → culi]

Yes, hilarious to see "South Dakota" as a specific region, but Canada as a whole.

[doodlebugging → jeromegv]

This reminds me of a visit to a store in the DFW area (Texas) called "World Market". They sell all kinds of things from all over the world that you would have a hard time finding anywhere else including food, furnishings, decorations, knick-knacks, gee-gaws, and other shit, etc.

Employees there that I talked with had never noticed that for everything sourced outside Africa the outline and flag of that nation was displayed but for everything from Africa there was only an outline of Africa labeled as "Africa".

Geography is so important especially today with the ability to connect to anyone, anywhere in near real time.

[geocrasher → jeromegv]

The answers to the poll are so the OP knows where we are from.

The questions in the poll are so we know where the OP is from.

[adamrezich → jeromegv]

I know right? East River SD and West River SD are practically different countries.

[protomyth → adamrezich]

Truthfully, it should have been West and East Dakota, not North and South.

Happy to see both Dakotas have votes.

[awb → lhorie]

Would be interesting to see it expressed as a % of population as well to see HN density, as well as quantity.

[lolinder → awb]

I didn't get the data to do this globally, but here it is for the US (data from https://api.census.gov/data/2021/pep/population?get=POP_2021...*):

    const totalPop = {"Oklahoma":3986639,"Nebraska":1963692,"Hawaii":1441553,"South Dakota":895376,"Tennessee":6975218,"Nevada":3143991,"New Mexico":2115877,"Iowa":3193079,"Kansas":2934582,"District of Columbia":670050,"Texas":29527941,"Missouri":6168187,"Arkansas":3025891,"Michigan":10050811,"New Hampshire":1388992,"North Carolina":10551162,"Ohio":11780017,"South Carolina":5190705,"Wyoming":578803,"California":39237836,"North Dakota":774948,"Louisiana":4624047,"Maryland":6165129,"Delaware":1003384,"Pennsylvania":12964056,"Georgia":10799566,"Oregon":4246155,"Minnesota":5707390,"Colorado":5812069,"New Jersey":9267130,"Kentucky":4509394,"Washington":7738692,"Maine":1372247,"Vermont":645570,"Idaho":1900923,"Indiana":6805985,"Montana":1104271,"New York":19835913,"Puerto Rico":3263584,"Connecticut":3605597,"Florida":21781128,"Virginia":8642274,"Massachusetts":6984723,"Illinois":12671469,"Mississippi":2949965,"Arizona":7276316,"Utah":3337975,"Wisconsin":5895908,"Alabama":5039877,"West Virginia":1782959,"Rhode Island":1095610,"Alaska":732673};
    console.table(
      [...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')]
      .map(el => ({place: el.textContent.trim(), score: parseInt(el.nextSibling.textContent)}))
      .filter(el => el.place.includes("US:"))
      .map(el => ({...el, place: el.place.replace("US: ", "")}))
      .map(el => ({...el, totalPop: totalPop[el.place]}))
      .filter(el => el.totalPop != undefined)
      .map(el => ({...el, density: el.score / el.totalPop}))
      .sort((a, b) => b.density - a.density)
    )

[dang → lhorie]

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30211916.

[bsimpson → lhorie]

So you're saying I should have checked the comments before opening the console?

$$('.score').map(node => [node.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.previousSibling.innerText?.trim(), parseInt(node.innerText)]).sort(([,scoreA], [,scoreB]) => scoreB - scoreA)

[glassprongs → lhorie]

Nice work

[Aptrug]

I was curious to know which locations are ranked the highest, so I made this quick 'n' dirty shell script:

    #!/bin/sh
    curl -s 'https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378' | awk '
    BEGIN {
        FS = "[<>]"
    }
    {
        for (i = 1; i <= NF; ++i) {
            if ($i == "font color=\"#000000\"") {
                printf "%s, ", $(i+1)
            } else if ($i ~ /^span class="score" id="score_/) {
                print $(i+1)
            }
        }
    }
    ' | sort -t',' -nk2

It scrapes the web page, so it's kind of fragile.

[lunatuna → Aptrug]

Working well for me! Thanks.

[xtracto]

Great to see several people from Mexico!

BTW, the fact that only the US country has options separated by state reminds me of when I lived in Europe, and sometimes we got together with a bunch of international. Invariably the "where are you from" question would pop up, to which almost everyone would answer with their country... except Americans, who would answer with their state haha.

Once, I asked someone where they were from and I think they answered some random US state, he then asked me the same, and I answered with the state where I am from in Mexico... he had no clue where that was hahaha.

[burlesona → xtracto]

US states and EU countries are generally similar in size. If you ask an Italian where they are from it would be a bit odd if they said “Europe” wouldn’t it?

I think it also speaks to the degree of autonomy and identity among the states. The US originally thought of itself more like the EU is now, a collection of sovereign nations that agreed to a very strong alliance (first confederation, then federation). The difference is when the US’ “brexit” moment happened the northern states decided the southern states didn’t have the right to leave and enforced their opinion at the cost of 1 million lives (out of a population of about 32M at the time).

So that settled that and now the US is one country, not a collection of countries.

But the original idea still plays a large role in how people think about things.

[legutierr → burlesona]

> The difference is when the US’ “brexit” moment happened the northern states decided the southern states didn’t have the right to leave and enforced their opinion at the cost of 1 million lives.

It was over a century and a half ago, but we still owe the union soldiers who died in the US Civil War a debt of gratitude for their sacrifice in ending the scourge of slavery in the United States. Their lives paid for the freedom of millions of men and women. Their sacrifice saved us all from the debasement of living in a society in which one person can be owned by another person. You do disservice to their memory when you characterize their primary motivation as being to "enforce the opinion" of the northern states with regards to the southern states' right to secede.

Not all of them were motivated primarily by the abolitionist cause, obviously—many fought because they were conscripted into the army—but those union soldiers knew that they were fighting to end slavery, and they knew what they were risking to fight for that cause.

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy6AOGRsR80

It's also worth pointing out that the Civil War started after the South Carolina Militia, cheered on by the civilian population of Charleston, bombarded Fort Sumter with artillery until the US Army forces that had peaceably occupied the fort surrendered.

Who was it that enforced their opinion on whom?

[burlesona → legutierr]

I largely agree with your comment, and did not mean to in any way to disrespect the value of the Union victory and resulting end of slavery. Re-reading my comment I wish I had said the North choose to enforce their _decison_ rather than _opinion_.

FWIW I think the history is actually complex and interesting. The southern succession was clearly driven by slavery, but the historical record shows that the war was not initially pursued by the north on abolitionist grounds. If you read Lincoln’s inaugural address[1], which came after the first states succeeded, he promised not to end slavery. Rather he argued he had a legal duty to keep the states together.

Regarding Fort Sumter, what’s actually unusual there is that 35 soldiers who were likely all locals decided they didn’t want to be part of succession and tried to hold out rather than do what virtually all other US forces in the south did and change allegiance. The much larger confederate force did besiege and bombard them, but no one died in combat, and they eventually surrendered[2].

The first combat fatality occurred when a mob in Baltimore ambushed US troops marching through [3]. Recall that Maryland did not succeed so the first “Union death” was caused by “Union civilians” who didn’t want the army to continue further south. Also recall that the Emancipation Proclamation[4] did not end slavery in the Union states that still had it (Maryland, Missouri, and the newly formed West Virginia), so it wasn’t until the thirteenth amendment passed after the war that slavery truly and fully ended.

Most historians I’ve read argue that abolition rose in importance over the course of the war, specifically as a way to reframe the war as a moral imperative and maintain support for it (which flagged early on). So by the end, the characterization as a war to end slavery is true, but it’s difficult to argue that was true from the outset. At the start the war was very controversial, and Lincoln’s stated objectives were merely to hold the Union together, which he saw as his legal duty.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln's_first_inau...

2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter

3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_riot_of_1861

4: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln's_first_inau...

[sofixa → legutierr]

> peaceably occupied

Isn't that an oxymoron?

[amilios → burlesona]

The US is still far more culturally homogenous than the EU, so this comparison falls kind of flat. Even if the US began as you say, with large cultural differences, it isn't really the case anymore. You could make the argument that there is a cultural divide between cities and the countryside for sure (in the sense that someone from Austin and someone from Boston are more similar than someone from Austin and someone from the Texas countryside), but this divide exists within individual EU countries as well, and is not limited to the US.

[albrewer → amilios]

> The US is still far more culturally homogenous than the EU

U.S. cities, maybe. But get gather natives from the rural parts of any state and you'll find a ton of cultural variation. Saying rural Louisiana and rural Oregon are culturally homogeneous is just wrong. Sure, we all speak one language, but so do France and half of eastern Canada.

[xeromal → amilios]

You can be culturally homogenous and still have different identities. Put a Georgian (US) and California in the same room and they will not have much in common.

[selestify → xeromal]

> Put a Georgian (US) and California in the same room and they will not have much in common.

What? If they're both from major cities in the two states, they have way, way more in common than a Belgian and a Slovenian in the same room.

[sofixa → xeromal]

Same language, same culture ( books/TV shows/movies/music, cuisine ), a lot of shared history.

A Serbian and a Portuguese are much farther apart ( language, cuisine, history ( even if there are some small parallels like both being occupied by a foreign neighbouring power, independence being won by blood, and an oppressive regime in recent history, Ottoman occupied Serbia , world wars, Yugoslavia couldn't be farther from seafaring trade and colonialism Portugal).

[foxrob92 → burlesona]

Dunno if your geographic size argument holds much water. Australia is about the same size as the continental US, but we always get lumped in as one entity. Canada appears to get the same treatment.

[burlesona → foxrob92]

Population is a factor. Canada has slightly less population than California. Australia has less than Texas.

As I understand it the US states also have more legal autonomy and thus a lot wider divergence in local laws and policies compared to the internal divisions of most other countries (but I’m not an expert on that).

But my point was mostly psychology… whether they ought to or not, most Americans think of the state they live in as an important distinction, while my experience is that in most other countries that isn’t seen as very important.

[anikan_vader → burlesona]

> The difference is when the US’ “brexit” moment happened the northern states decided the southern states didn’t have the right to leave and enforced their opinion at the cost of 1 million lives (out of a population of about 32M at the time).

An interesting analogy, but it downplays two key differences. Firstly, the confederate states opened fire on union troops, whereas Britain did not start a shooting war when it left the EU. Secondly, there is no provision in the constitution of the United States for a state to leave the union, unlike in the EU.

As a final point, I would note that the United States of America by that point had a history of using military force to expand (in line with Thomas Jefferson's "empire of liberty" doctrine), including two attempted invasions of Canada, the Mexican-American War, as well as successful wars (and massacres) against the Native peoples. So if you do take the position that the confederacy had the right to secede from the United States, it is hardly a surprise that the USA then took the opportunity to use military force to annex a smaller neighboring nation with a weaker military, limited infrastructure, and insufficient foreign support to defend itself.

[austinjp → burlesona]

If you asked someone where they were from and without context they said "Molise", that would be a bit odd, no?

[lolinder → austinjp]

Molise has a population of 300k. The smallest state in the US is Wyoming at almost twice the size (580k).

That also doesn't address the parent's observation that US states view themselves as having very distinct identities.

A better example from Italy might be Naples, which has a population big enough to be a US state and which does have a very distinct identity. And I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear someone introduce themselves as from Naples.

[austinjp → lolinder]

Since when does the population size of a nation (especially in comparison to a region in another country) have anything to do with its status as a nation? Should Andorra be on this list, or just merged into France, perhaps?

[lolinder → austinjp]

It's not status as a nation, it's recognizability as a distinct place.

When someone asks where you're from, you're likely to reach for the most specific unit that you think that they will recognize.

In some conversations that will be the nation. In other conversations that will be the region. In other conversations that will be the city or even the neighborhood.

One major factor that affect how recognizable a placename is is population size.

[austinjp → lolinder]

> When someone asks where you're from, you're likely to reach for the most specific unit that you think that they will recognize.

Agreed. Considering this thread was international in scope, I've been disappointed by the apparent lack of awareness some people have of the way the rest of the world sees their nation.

[Handytinge → lolinder]

> That also doesn't address the parent's observation that US states view themselves as having very distinct identities.

Most countries I've been to do this. However just as you wouldn't be able to pick the (to me) obvious differences between someone from Perth and Victoria, I wouldn't be able to pick the nuanced difference between someone from Wyoming and New York. They all sound American to me.

[Morgawr → lolinder]

Naples is not a region though, it doesn't make any sense to compare that in this conversation. Maybe Campania would work though.

[lolinder → Morgawr]

The point isn't to compare regions to regions, is to compare geographical designators by how likely someone outside your country is to recognize the name. Population size and distinctive identity are two factors that matter in that regard.

In some conversations the most recognizable name will be the city. In others it will be the region. You pick the one that is most likely to be recognized.

[austinjp → lolinder]

> Population size and distinctive identity are two factors that matter in that regard.

Identity, yes. Population size, no. Vatican City? Monaco? Ireland?

> In some conversations the most recognizable name will be the city. In others it will be the region. You pick the one that is most likely to be recognized.

Exactly. Since this thread has been about international identities, it would be useful to consider how a nation is perceived by those from outside that nation. The name of the country is way more accessible than regional specifics.

[kinduff → xtracto]

I was very glad too, and I'm pretty sure not everybody has answered yet since it's "viernes godín".

I'm from Michoacan, and reading or seeing the clueless expression when I answer gives me some sort of joy and proudness.

[elboru → kinduff]

I’m from Chihuahua, I always explain the dog comes after the state, not the other way around XD

[dkarl → xtracto]

When I was in Europe as a student, everybody wanted to know what state I was from, so I got used to answering that way. Surprisingly, everybody seemed to know all the U.S. states, and had pretty strong mental associations with a lot of them. I'm from Texas, and to them, that meant horses and cowboys and George Strait and "howdy, y'all!"

[skydhash → dkarl]

A few I have from watching TV and games (probably incorrect).

Vermont -> green hills

Dakota -> hard deserts and Amerindians

Nevada -> sand desert

Texas -> ranches.

Arizona -> Lots of sun and hot.

Florida -> beach and spaces.

Kansas -> Big corn farms.

Massachusetts -> US version of Europe.

Missouri -> Rivers.

[skykooler → skydhash]

> Massachusetts -> US version of Europe.

Really, that's all of New England - New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, maybe parts of Pennsylvania depending on who you talk to.

[silpheed5 → skydhash]

Missouri, I bet you watched Tom Sawyer cartoons as a kid?

[onionisafruit → xtracto]

As an American I do this because I always get the follow up question of where in the US. It’s just more efficient this way.

[austinjp → onionisafruit]

If you asked someone where they're from, would you expect them to say, for example, Almaty instead of Kazakhstan?

[lolinder → austinjp]

Did you miss the part where OP said that most people expect them to specify which state they're from?

Whether you like it or not, it's usually insufficient for someone from the US to simply say that they're from the US. It's a big enough place with enough externally-visible cultural variation that people want to know.

[gus_massa → lolinder]

Inside Argentina, if someone ask me where I'm from I', expected to specify the province where I'm from. (And in some cases, the part of the province, like "Santa Fe" and "Rosario".) My guess is that it happens in all countries. But if I talk with people that lives abroad, usually "Argentina" is enough. The US is not special in this.

[austinjp → xtracto]

When someone says they're from America I'm occasionally tempted to ask, "which, north or south?"

[aunty_helen → austinjp]

This is a very very common retort if you call the USA “America” whilst in South America.

Of course you can double down if you really want to get eyes rolling by following up with something like “the good one”, “el primer mundo”, or “the rich one”

[xorcist → austinjp]

The geographic version of "PC or Mac" perhaps?

Honduras, Guatemala and the other countries in Central America would be the Linux equivalent, being left out.

[gojomo]

A useful poll!

But the very-literal should be reminded: the linguistic mechanisms of synechdoche & metonymy often result in a fuzzy use of parts, or regions, or emblematic examples, or associated items to mean some other closely-related more-amorphous entity.

For example, "the White House" for the entire elected president's policy team, no matter which part (or if it's operating from some other place). "Wall Street" for finance, even that outside of New York. Someone's "good eye" to mean their entire skills of evaluation (of detail, aesthetics, potential, etc).

And of course 'Silicon Valley' for, depending on context:

• a narrow geographical region around the south SF Bay

• dominant industries in that region, especially computer/infotech

• the whole SF Bay Area, or even Calfornia - at least to the extent there's some (possibly thin/alleged) connections to tech or the SF bay

• all computer/infotech companies everywhere, with weak but not absolutely-required implication of some connection (HQ/roots/investors) to above

• mindsets highly associated with the any of the above

These shifting boundaries based on context/intent annoy people who prefer precision, but are inherent to terms used this way.

[Aperocky → gojomo]

Well there's at least 7 user who lives in North Korea, so people are taking it with the seriousness.

Otherwise, out of 1000 people, there'd be at least 200 that are from North Korea, maybe another 100 that lives in Antarctica.

[ImaCake → gojomo]

My anecdata, as an outsider who is a researcher, is that silicon valley is either the south SF bay area or the mindset. I certainly mean the latter when describing HN to others.

[posix_compliant → gojomo]

I'm fascinated by this comment, and I'm trying to figure out why. I think it's that the author makes good points about an interesting topic, uses correct english, and even draws upon relevant examples; yet, somehow the post has an overall feeling of clunkiness.

The author starts off with "But the very-literal should be reminded". Already any readers have to implicitly know that "the very-literal" refers to the specific group of individuals who have read the original post and also have a tendency to take things literally. It's not incorrect english, but since the word "literal" is more commonly used as an adjective, it does take a beat to realize that it serving to create a plural noun as part of "the very-literal". Again, not crazy strange, but it's a language device that is more commonly seen in other contexts rather than on Hacker News.

The reader might now be expecting the author to describe what specifically shouldn't be taken literally, but instead author continues with "the linguistic mechanisms of synechdoche & metonymy". I think it's a big leap to expect the reader to know: a) what a "linguistic mechanism" is, ie, how does it differ from a phrase? b) what "synechdoche" is c) what "metonymy" is

So now not only is the reader still in the dark about what they shouldn't be taking literally, but now they are likely grappling with trying to understand these definitions unless they are in the likely minority of people who already understand all of these.

The author continues: "often result in a fuzzy use of parts, or regions, or emblematic examples, or associated items to mean some other closely-related more-amorphous entity." To me, this just reads as a poor redefinition of the previously mentioned terms. It's like saying "when words are used non-literally, it results in the non-literal use of words". It's not WRONG, per se, but it just leaves the reader more confused about what ultimate point the author is trying to make.

To the author's credit, this sentence is immediately followed up with two good examples of synechdoche; however, unless the reader previously understood its definition the ultimate point of these examples is lost. On the other hand if the reader did previously understand the definition of synechdoche, then these examples only further the previous redefinition. At this point, the reader still hasn't been told what they aren't supposed to be taking literally.

Finally, the author mentions "Silicon Valley", and it becomes more clear the the crux of this comment is regarding its definition. More examples are provided regarding the specifics of how "Silicon Valley" could be non-literally interpreted -- which is probably the gist of what the author was trying to convey in the first place, but it was buried 88 words into the comment.

All in all, this comment could be distilled down to: "Silicon Valley shouldn't be interpreted literally; it can be interpreted a few ways, here are some examples."

[tluyben2]

Not sure if this post still ranks in the morning as it's evening in the EU so probably not many people will answer, while the Americas will. I know there are a lot of people from the EU here.

[capableweb → tluyben2]

Yeah, would depend on how long it'll be featured on the frontpage page indeed. I know people who only check the /best page once a week or something like that too who would probably miss this unless a ton of people upvote it.

Or maybe we can ask @dang to give it a "jobstory" treatment so it keeps around the frontpage for longer?

[belval → capableweb]

I mean dang could probably just tell us the actual geo breakdown of users...

[young_unixer → belval]

And if someone knows a little bit of statistics and someone else knows a little bit about browsing patterns relative to timezones around the world, then we can correct for front page decay.

[rkuykendall-com → capableweb]

Well it's only 3 hours old and it's currently #14 on /best, so there is probably a good chance everyone will see it.

[marapuru → rkuykendall-com]

Chiming in here from the Netherlands at 12 in the night. My guess would be most people check HN during business hours and on weekdays. Based on that guess, my next guess would be that Europe is underrepresented in this poll :-)

[Sharlin → marapuru]

Chiming in from Finland at 1:42 AM. But I may be an outlier :D

[rkuykendall-com → marapuru]

Yes, but on /best, which is pretty stable over a few days, it is now #4

[tremon → tluyben2]

Also, it's friday evening now in Europe. I usually don't read HN in the weekends, only during defocus time at work.

[ImaCake → tluyben2]

I’m reading this at 7am from Perth. On a Saturday, so I imagine Australian engagement might be low for the next few hours still.

[paxys → tluyben2]

Especially considering most of the world would have already signed off for the weekend by now.

[profstasiak → tluyben2]

Im off to a party, see you later HN

[tluyben2 → profstasiak]

I remember vaguely being young and friday nights meaning something different than other nights... Meanwhile I'm (in Portugal) trying to fix a dependent type tutorial that bit rotted.

[jll29 → tluyben2]

Don't know about other parts of PT, but Lisbon has too great a night life to spend Friday night debugging :)

[dgellow → tluyben2]

Idris?

[tluyben2 → dgellow]

No, I use Idris (2) quite a bit and am quite advanced at dependent types, however I was looking to go further and found [0] and a course using it, but that course uses a 4-5 year old version which has a lot of issues so I am fixing those. I already gave up running the project on a m1 (not really worth solving that issue as I have a x86 Linux machine anyway) so now I just puzzling to get all the stuff from the course to work.

[0] https://github.com/siddhartha-gadgil/ProvingGround

[dgellow → profstasiak]

Have a great time!

[echelon → tluyben2]

Also it was posted in the afternoon for those on the US East coast. (A Friday afternoon!)

Unless this sits near the top of HN for a week, it's very likely to be skewed.

[yreg → tluyben2]

We will need to do another one in other timezones

[sigil]

There were similar polls in 2013. We could compare against those to measure tech dispersal over the last decade!

- "Poll: Where are you currently living?" (Countries, 2013) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6582647

- "Poll: If you're in the US, What State Do You Live In?" (US states, 2013) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5222370

[wyager → sigil]

That might measure HN moving to a wider audience rather than the original audience physically moving.

The community is clearly a lot different than in it was 2013. I would guess a relatively larger portion of people outside of the Bay Area is part of that.

[sigil → wyager]

For sure, this would only be a rough measure of tech dispersal itself, not a longitudinal study of HN users. The latter is interesting to us HN old timers, but the former is a consequential thing for the whole world.

[culi → sigil]

I'd like to see these votes divided by the total population of each place

[paxys → culi]

If the goal of the poll is to determine where HN users/the tech industry is concentrated, whether the overall population in those areas is high or not doesn't really matter.

[culi → paxys]

Sure, if that's the goal. What if my goal was to understand just how over-represented English-speaking regions of the world were in the HN demographics? Nothing wrong with having multiple goals

[namrog84 → culi]

Every geographic survey is just a population heat map result or something

https://xkcd.com/1138/

[momenti → culi]

And population IQ.

[mothsonasloth]

Why does America get states and UK doesn't get England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?

[phkahler → mothsonasloth]

>> Of course, in 2008, pure investment banks largely failed.

Each US state is about the size of a European country, sometimes with similar population. That's one of the things that always comes up in polls of what surprised Europeans about the US when they visited - just how big it is.

[rvense → phkahler]

It's... still one country, though. And while I understand that Americans are very preoccupied with the difference between California and New Jersey, please understand that it's not that important (or obvious) to the rest of us.

[qeternity → rvense]

The same can be said for England vs UK (or London vs England for that matter). I say that as an expat in London…

[glandium → rvense]

Fun fact: there's a program in Japan that interviews and follows foreigners. One of the first questions is "where do you come from". Most Americans answer with a state name.

[ceras → glandium]

I've watched some YouTubers do that. For the people that say "United States," a common very follow-up question is "where in the United states"?

That tracks with my own personal experience internationally: if I just say "the US," people ask for more specifics. So I now just respond with more specificity to start.

[glandium → ceras]

Here's the thing: when I answer to such a question that I'm French, I also do get the followup question "where in France?". (although if the question is "where do you come from" rather than "where are you from", I now answer that I come from Japan, which gets WTF looks and different followup questions (but I only do that outside Japan, where I live))

[austinjp → ceras]

This isn't an experience unique to people from the US (see other comments). Would you consider saying "State Name, USA"?

[ceras → austinjp]

My mistake, I see now the person I responded to may have meant that Americans say just the state. In the videos I've watched, and at least for myself, I usually hear it like you suggested: state + USA.

[glandium → ceras]

Indeed, that's what I meant. And for less known states, that's usually followed by an awkward silence until they do say US.

[rossdavidh → rvense]

I suppose it's because the main issue is whether or not HN is "Silicon Valley", and so if you're in the UK (for example) you are not Silicon Valley regardless of if you are in NI, Scotland, Wales, or England.

[bcrosby95 → rossdavidh]

I don't see how this poll determines this. I'm in LA but not silicon valley and had to pick California.

[aziaziazi → rossdavidh]

In that case, may the poll should have been binary ? edit: typo

[IncRnd → aziaziazi]

Actually, that's probably the reason - the poll was by binarynate not uknate.

[spiderice → rvense]

Then make your own poll that is split up how you like it. I see no problem splitting up large countries in polls like this. If only this poll did more of it. I'm not sure you have the knowledge to speak for "the rest of us" about how polls should be split up.

[capableweb → phkahler]

China and India has a bigger population, and China has a similar landmass as the US yet is just one option in this poll.

[tasuki → capableweb]

On the other hand, as of right now, China has 1 point and India 9. That combined is less than Poland, which has 15.

It makes sense to have finer granularity for the poll options people will actually choose.

[capableweb → tasuki]

It's 04:33 in the morning in China (in one of the timezones at least), makes sense.

[Jcampuzano2 → capableweb]

China uses one timezone as far as I understand, so it's 5am for all of China atm.

[numpad0 → capableweb]

China is currently has 7 points, 19 hours later. India is 72, Russia is 23, Vietnam 7, UK is 242. hmmm

[jogjayr → tasuki]

People in India are asleep right now.

[Macha → tasuki]

Is HN even accessible behind the great firewall?

[perlwle → Macha]

HN has been blocked for more than a year now.

[sexy_seedbox → capableweb]

No choices for Hong Kong or Macao.

[mlindner → capableweb]

China also has relatively few people that simultaneously speak English well enough to read/post here while also having easy access to VPNs. If I had to take a guess I would bet there are more people that are Chinese first generation emigrants that live outside of China on HN than there are Chinese citizens that live inside China on HN.

[presentation → mlindner]

Pretty much anyone who speaks English well enough to read/post here would have easy access to a VPN. Firewall is easy to hop, you just need to know that you want to.

[muzani → capableweb]

There's less people from China and say, Russia, on this site than Minnesota. I think it's a bit weird but the detail works.

[sedan_baklazhan → muzani]

Not that weird. There are much more popular local websites in Russia at least.

[capableweb → sedan_baklazhan]

You mind sharing any of them if they are similar to Hacker News in terms of content, comments and audience? I love browsing websites in languages I don't yet understand fully.

[sedan_baklazhan → capableweb]

habr.com (habr.com/ru has much more content than English version).

[croes → phkahler]

By that logic China or Russia should also be listed with each single province or state

[tazjin → croes]

Yep. Russia's largest federal subject (Yakutiya) is a third the size of the entire US, and it's one of 85 subjects)

[robjan → croes]

Should have at least listed the Special Administrative Regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau which have their own passports and currencies. I'm not going to vote for China since I am not allowed to enter 95% of it without a visa.

[blueflow → croes]

... especially India

[vetinari → blueflow]

Both Russia and India are federal countries, just like USA, so might be a good idea.

But where to draw the line? Switzerland is also federation...

[Fuhrer01 → blueflow]

lol, there are barely 60 people from India.

[dools → phkahler]

If you’re going by geographic area Australia should definitely be split up by state.

[vetinari → phkahler]

Big, but relatively unpopulated. Even California would rank together with Poland.

[mlindner → mothsonasloth]

Because the premise of the question was Silicon Valley, so they need a category that separates Silicon Valley away from as much as possible without making the list too long. So split every state out and then have every country after that as those are also "outside silicon valley". If it was just the US as a single option it would not actually fit the premise of the question.

This question feels primarily aimed at the US population, IMO.

[capableweb → mothsonasloth]

OP wanted to prove that HN isn't Silicon Valley-centric and instead showed their bias toward US-centrism :)

[xtracto → capableweb]

This is the right answer, but it is not OPs fault, it is a typical custom of Americans. I saw it invariably happen while living in Europe and interacting with a highly international community (Americans were the only ones that answered "where are you from" with a state, everybody else, including Canadians, Indians, Russians, Mexicans, etc named their country)

[jessriedel → capableweb]

The more pervasive bias is to think countries are the best way to carve reality at its joints.

[aidenn0 → capableweb]

Well I'm US:California, but definitely not SV.

[andrewxdiamond → mothsonasloth]

Well, we have states that are almost 3 times as large as the entire UK. If the pollster listed every region the size of Wales, this would be a very long list

[mjmasn → andrewxdiamond]

Wales and Scotland are countries...

[LAC-Tech → mjmasn]

Outside the UK, "country" usually means "independent state".

The UK usage is more local than anything else, because if you're going to call Wales a country you'd really need to call things like Bavaria or Texas countries.

[andrewxdiamond → LAC-Tech]

To be fair, there’s a lot of Texans who would like to call Texas a country as well.

[LAC-Tech → andrewxdiamond]

Right and you've illustrated my point - outside the UK country means "independent state".

Inside the UK it seems to mean "Independent state + Wales + Scotland".

[andrewxdiamond → mjmasn]

Do you mean to say that referring to countries as regions is incorrect? I thought “region” was a pretty generic term for geographic area, regardless of political boundaries

[dghughes → andrewxdiamond]

Canada has one a territory out of three and that one territory is 20% bigger than Alaska. And only 36,000 people live there.

[munk-a → mothsonasloth]

Also - Canada is a monolith, at least break out Quebec!

[czbond → munk-a]

> Canada is a monolith

Canada must be separated into 100 different pointless micro services each with a different docker configuration created by the summer C.S. intern.

HN joke.

[Apocryphon → czbond]

Sounds hard, but just keep on truckin'

[monkeybutton → munk-a]

Seconded! Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver are all large and distinct tech hubs.

[munk-a → monkeybutton]

I like that list except Waterloo - I think if you're going to make a serious argument about Waterloo than Berkeley/Oakland would be a separate hub from Silicon Valley - and ditto for Worchester, Boston and Cambridge MA. Waterloo definitely has its own thing going on but it's pretty darn close to being an offshoot of Toronto at this point.

[mikepurvis → munk-a]

There are definitely people who commute all over the GTA, but I still feel like Waterloo Region is culturally distinct from Toronto proper— Google and Facebook are in Waterloo; there's the devices heritage from Blackberry and then later companies like Thalmic and Pebble; there's the robotics presence in Waterloo with Clearpath, Voyis, Avidbots, and Aeryon/FLIR; and finally there's networking companies like Blue Coat, Sandvine, and Arctic Wolf.

I guess I don't know as much about the Toronto scene, but based on the recruitment emails, it seems to be a lot more fintech, game/mobile dev, and big data analytics stuff.

[908B64B197 → mikepurvis]

> there's the devices heritage from Blackberry and then later companies like Thalmic and Pebble

Wouldn't brag about these to be honnest.

[mikepurvis → 908B64B197]

No, it's not a brag— but they were all pretty influential and continue to cast a long shadow over the tech culture of the region. Particularly Blackberry, since it made a lot of staff very wealthy, who then went on to found, advise, invest-in, and work-for other companies using those skills.

It's not hard to look around Communitech and clearly see a bunch of startups still running essentially on BlackBerry money.

[monkeybutton → munk-a]

Well I don't personally have a horse in that race. I'd definitely be interested in seeing the results for a regional Canadian poll though.

[schlopper → munk-a]

Now now... You'd just be pandering to the separatists.

[munk-a → schlopper]

I think now a days most of those are in Calgary if we're being honest... they want an "independent western canada" which some how manages to ignore that British Columbia even exists.

[Apocryphon → munk-a]

Sad no one remembers that Newfoundland was the most recently sovereign polity.

[belval → schlopper]

No kidding, why is that guy trying to split Quebec from Canada? :(

[908B64B197 → belval]

Isn’t it… already the case? Culturally speaking, it looks and feel like a separate state. At least that’s the impression I got.

[belval → 908B64B197]

Oh yeah definitely, I was half-kidding. Quebec and the rest of Canada have a lot of very significant differences. We are probably more divided right now than we've been ever since the last referendum.

An example I love to give is the holiday "Victoria day" in Canada which is called "Patriot's day" in Quebec, celebrating the attempted revolution in Quebec that were brutally put down by the English in 1837-1838.

[jessriedel → munk-a]

Canada is smaller than California.

[munk-a → jessriedel]

By land area Canada is about 20 times as large as California, by culture I'd consider Canada to have a few much more distinct areas than California (comparing Toronto vs. Vancouver vs. Calgary the distinctions are pretty close to the range you'd get across the whole of California by my opinion - with Quebec being radically different... Quebec is less like Vancouver than Texas or Mississippi is like California). By population there's only a really narrow difference between the two - so I really don't agree with that assessment.

Also, as a former Vermonter please don't you dare call me a New Hampshirite - but for a survey like this you can probably lump everything from Philly to Bangor into one chunk.

[stackedinserter → munk-a]

> By land area Canada is about 20 times as large as California

Cornfields and tundra don't post on HN much.

[belval → stackedinserter]

Now now, we also have forests and lakes.

[munk-a → belval]

And so many mosquitos - we've got an entire province solely inhabited by mosquitos (within a margin of error) that we call Manitoba!

[dadro → munk-a]

Thank you for stopping at Bangor, parts of Maine south of there are Northern Massachusetts!

[jeromegv → jessriedel]

And larger than all the remaining 49 states. Why divide by states then?

[jessriedel → jeromegv]

Because the alternative to not dividing by states is have a monolithic US, vastly larger than all other geographic units.

Like, pick a threshold of size N. Start at the top, divide at countries, and the recursively keep dividing any given node until you have passed under the threshold N. California gets divided before Canada (and the UK).

[dahfizz → mothsonasloth]

At the time of commenting, US states have 3 of the top 5 positions (and the top 1). So it seems that a US state is roughly comparable to other countries in terms of HN readership.

[LAC-Tech → mothsonasloth]

I mean by that logic India is the most hard done by here - (perhaps) the worlds most populated country reduced to a single data point.

[lhorie → mothsonasloth]

I posted a script above to get a sorted rank. This other one gets you the aggregate numbers for US:

    [...document.querySelectorAll('.fatitem table .athing')].map(el => [el.textContent.trim(), el.nextSibling.textContent.trim()]).reduce((a, [c,s]) => c.startsWith('US') ? a + parseInt(s) - 1 : a, 0)

As of this comment, there are around 10 times more votes for US than the second most voted country (Canada). A fourth of those US votes are for California. Meaning, there are twice as many votes for California as there are for Canada.

This suggests that Silicon Valley still represents a significant portion of the HN community.

[Crosseye_Jack → mothsonasloth]

I’m sure Boris promised this in the Brexit Manifesto along with Blue Passports…

Someone get him on the phone, oh wait, it’s past 5pm on a Friday evening, he is probably at a “work event”.

[tmalsburg2 → mothsonasloth]

If the US as a whole was a single option, we would not be able to tell whether the people who vote for it are in Silicon Valley or not.

[tagoregrtst → mothsonasloth]

Because everyone has heard of most the US’ states, but most people wouldn't have a clue where South Tyrol, or Chubut are.

Also, in IT or CS, a state like TX or CA are more prominent than any European one. CA is probably more important by itself than all of Europe. Even PA or GA are heavy hitters that would smoke most similarly sized EU countries.

[CRConrad → tagoregrtst]

> CA is probably more important by itself than all of Europe.

I recall reading (years ago) that "If California were an independent country, it would be the sixth-largest in the world"... Which would still (at least at the time) put it behind Germany. So, faaar from "more important by itself than all of Europe".

> Even PA or GA are heavy hitters that would smoke most similarly sized EU countries.

Given how wrong you are about California above, I very much doubt this one.

[agilob → mothsonasloth]

It's like on the reddit wars:

- Americans = stupid, can't tell where Lithuania is

- Americans respond: name all states!

- Europeans respond: name all regions of all European countries

You're right, regions like London, Bristol, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Bracelona, Frankfurt, Munich, Warsaw, Cracov, Wroclaw should have separate options

[croes → agilob]

Nope, the US should be a single option.

Just poll for countries.

[legerdemain → croes]

The question was whether HN = Silicon Valley. Just poll for "Silicon Valley" and "not Silicon Valley."

[mlindner → agilob]

Regions aren't defined by their cities.

[binarynate → mothsonasloth]

Sorry about that! This was an oversight on my part. In retrospect, I wish I had included separate entries for regions of UK, Canada, and others. I thought about adding new entries for them now, but it seems a bit too late since folks have already been voting.

[renewiltord → mothsonasloth]

Because American states are more significant than British regions. UC Berkeley alone has more Nobel laureates than Wales+Scotland+NorthernIreland. Think of it as Huffman coding on significance.

[onion2k → mothsonasloth]

Maybe the author looked at the UK and thought "Look at the state of that!"

[poniko → mothsonasloth]

Yeah and I'm totally missing Norrland in Sweden. Bummer ..

[Hokusai → poniko]

And someone has added imaginary places like Finland, as a joke.

[Toutouxc → Hokusai]

I bet that if you tried to invent a language for this "Finland" thing, it would look like total gibberish!

[foxfluff → Toutouxc]

カナカッキタカナシ

[dghughes → Hokusai]

Some people in central Canada I have spoken with actually don't know that where I live is a Canadian province. They've never heard of it. Plus time zones too they said they thought it ended at Eastern time but there are two more time zones past that.

[tagoregrtst → dghughes]

What! There’s only 10 provinces!

And I prefer to say it’s one and half time zones past EST ;) gotta respect that half hour time slot. I just love Newfies.

[Fuhrer01 → Hokusai]

There is no down vote, IDK how Austrians will vote.

[rubabredwan]

https://wheredohnuserslive.vercel.app/

[dvdkon → rubabredwan]

Thanks! Bug report: "Czechia" on the map is showing 0 votes, since the poll item is "Czech Republic". Also you might want to account for "1 vote" meaning both no votes and actually one vote (not sure how, though, information is just lost here).

[rubabredwan → dvdkon]

Thanks for the catch. Czechia should show now.

[eloox → rubabredwan]

Nice :) What library did you use for the graphics?

[rubabredwan → eloox]

https://www.react-simple-maps.io/

[jakub_g]

HN is definitely not SV only, but I often observe discussions where folks involved write something country-specific, do not state where they live, and assume implicitly everyone in discussion lives in the same country, they understand the context, and the way things work in their country is the only possible way.

[matheusmoreira → jakub_g]

I love it when people do that because almost always someone else will post a counter example that disproves those assumptions. Learned a lot of facts about other countries here because of this and I try to provide examples from my own country as well whenever possible.

[sph → jakub_g]

That's usually Americans, expecting everybody else to be American as well or they should know how the US works if they don't.

[lucb1e]

Might the timezone have a significant influence on the poll outcome, like during which hours of the day per place it is at #1? (How many polls would we need at different times of day to see what the effect of that is, just two?) Alternatively we could plan this, pin it at #5 for 24/48 hours on working days AoE, and then lock voting or something.

Or someone pulls up access logs, since I frankly doubt that it's a sizable percentage of users that use a VPN compared to the error bars of this poll. Countries with low English rates might just participate less, thus have fewer accounts, thus fewer people bother logging in or creating an account for this poll...

[huhtenberg]

It's Friday night in Europe.

Results will be skewed towards countries that aren't yet drinking, i.e. the US and Canada.

A simpler and way more accurate thing to do would be to ask mods to just tally up visits of logged uniques over one week and share the aggregates.

[kzrdude → huhtenberg]

That reminds me to open the beer! Lucky I voted first though.

[lagrange77]

Please add 'Orbit', that would be really cool. I think the chances for an astronaut to be on HN is at least as high as him being on Instagram.

[jbboehr → lagrange77]

Well, in an unverified poll, it would be more likely be some rando: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

[MaxLeiter]

This makes me want to create a house-swap service for HN users. Take a two week vacation in someones home (and them in yours) with the social contract established by your HN profiles

[darwinwhy → MaxLeiter]

Do it!

https://loginwithhn.com/

[tluyben2 → MaxLeiter]

Yep, that's a great idea. That and house rental with the trust because HN; you can stay anonymous (as far as your profile would be anonymous) until both sides say yes (based on comments + karma).

[message → tluyben2]

I imagine drama if shit hits the fan…

[sph → MaxLeiter]

With the assumption that HN-goers are more trustworthy than average.

I will make no guarantee to be a trustworthy person.

[MaxLeiter → sph]

no such assumption, just view a persons profile and decide if you trust them. Some (like me) use our real identities, so it should be possible to get a sense of us. People have varying comfort levels, but I don't see how the average HNer would be worse than the average AirBNBer

[_ktx2]

I've emailed with a lot of folks on this website and it's far cry from Silicon Valley centric.

I would love to hear from someone who complains about "centrism" as to why. This is a pretty new thing I've seen as far as a complaining trend. Across my childhood I was on IRC networks that were either based outside of the US or in gaming communities that were international. I never once sat around wondering about how "centric" any of the communities were, even though many of them completely diverged from how I knew life to be.

[idrios]

May be worth noting that it's currently the lunar new year so there might be quite a bit less activity from China and the rest of East Asia at the moment.

[dgellow → idrios]

Happy new lunar year

[LAC-Tech]

I mean we're geographically dispersed. But if you had to pick our capital, it would be silicon valley, surely.

(Living in a village in rural NZ here)

[aunty_helen → LAC-Tech]

Says the Ranfurlian coming from a country that has a geographic center as its capital instead of the most populous city -.-

[pmkiwi → aunty_helen]

To be totally fair, the capital should be Nelson which is the true geographic center of NZ!

[mihaic]

The questions now is where are people from that wouldn't answer this? I'm sure the lurker factor is different per location.

[gojomo → mihaic]

Indeed, it could be interesting to make a heatmap based on explicit responses, then another based on HN's internal IP logs (w/ the clunky geo IP deductions that can be made from that), to see if there's any areas of large divergence – then hypothesize if those are more due to:

- selective propensity-to-respond-to-poll

- misleading geo IP data

- other software-agents/traffic-drivers/usage-differences (eg: some areas/cultures skim headlines once a day, others get deep in the comments)

[rytill → mihaic]

There must be another category "voter" in between commenter and lurker.

Content creator > Commenter > Voter > Lurker

I wonder what percentage of users vote frequently but don't comment.

[Anthony-G → rytill]

I like the concept of voters being an intermediate category between producers/writers and consumers/readers. However, I’d argue that, on Hacker News, the commenters are the actual “content creators” of the HN “community”. It’s easy to submit a URL while it takes substantially more effort (time and thought) to make a useful contribution to an interesting discussion (though submitters are necessary to kick-start the discussions).

[austinjp]

Yeah so I'm just going to say it: some perspectives expressed here about valid home identities are really disappointing.

All the way from "it's not as big as my country so I'll decide if it gets to be considered a country", through "your local definition doesn't count", to "make your own poll then".

Yeeeeesh.

Conversation here is supposed to be stimulating. Instead, parts of this thread are narrow-minded, petty, and alienating.

Frankly, it's depressing.

/rant

[Thorentis]

I think this highlights just how bad the HN poll function is. Is it too hard to sort by votes and maybe add a thin line below each to show relative size?

[anthelios]

We could ask dang if he can share some stats if he’s allowed to. It’s an interesting question!

[capableweb → anthelios]

Don't think there is any way of getting the stats on where people live automatically. At most they would probably be able to get most commonly used locations, as a IP belongs to a location, but that doesn't mean that the user lives there (or even that the user is physically around there [VPNs], but probably usually right).

[hammock → capableweb]

IP data would be close enough to the actual aggregate proportions

[hunter321 → hammock]

Given how many people browse HN at work it would be super skewed.

[bradlys → hunter321]

Correct. You'd get a lot of people who suddenly seem to live in Columbus, Ohio or other random non-tech spots within USA due to AWS VPN and other such things.

[hammock → hunter321]

Let's test it

[gwbas1c]

IMO, it's worth breaking CA up in the survey. At a minimum, Northern and Southern.

Califorina at times is like many states. Living in the Northeastern US, "California" is kind of like combining New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine into a single state.

[a_chris → gwbas1c]

Yeah, why not split north Italy and south Italy then?

[xtracto → a_chris]

And Mexico, there are at least 3 main regions: Northern Mexico (with cities like Tijuana, Monterrey, Chihuahua, Juarez, etc), Central Mexico (Mexico City, Guadalajara, Leon) and Southern Mexico (Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Chiapas, etc).

[ggm]

4 Vatican City is probably people on wifi in the library/museum? I know a decade back our IPv6 measurement consistently picked up 1-2 people from a v4 /24 and associated v6 /32 which I think were the Vatican library. There's said to be a transient population down in the low thousands and a far smaller low hundred resident overnight. Wikipedia says pop. 829 but I think the census night may be a bit different. (If I was a college or sorority I'd ask everyone to book in on census night because it helps with funding models based on capitation. It's probably true in all nations not just micronations but the distortion would be higher for small populations)

[usr1106 → ggm]

Probably 2-3 people trying to be funny... (remember: it starts counting at 1 without any vote yet)

[missedthecue → ggm]

Or it could be people lying

[fedorhk]

Hong Kong & Macau are missed. Counting them as China would be quite a stretch.

[progre → fedorhk]

Please remain in your designated living space. A reeducation officer is being dispatched.

[noobermin]

I'm going to keep it real, it's hard to believe people are from Micronesia, even if it's 1 or 2 per island given you only have 18 people from Ohio.

Come to think of it, none of the options are less than 1 point...

[lenzm → noobermin]

Each option starts with 1 point like a new submission.

[binarysolo]

This thread would be way more useful if one of the HN mods were willing to share (a maybe obfuscated) traffic snapshot of the site.

As it stands we're gonna get: who on HN bothers to comment on a poll. :)

[dotancohen → binarysolo]

..and is browsing HN while the poll is active. Right now Israel is in Shabbat and many people won't be anywhere near a computer. And I suppose that India is sleeping!

[Tistron]

With some US states weighing in at dozens of millions of people, and me having a Swedish father, an Icelandic mother and Danish residency, I would have voted for "Scandinavia". Currently at 75 points (Sweden + Denmark + Norway + Iceland), which puts us after New York and before Colorado :) Adding Finland for "The Nordics" does not change our placement.

[paxys]

Does every option get one vote by default? Seems to be a weird design choice.

[binarynate → paxys]

Yes, I guess that's just how things work on HN

[divbzero]

TIL: Swaziland was officially renamed Eswatini [1] in 2018. The country has always been eSwatini (“land of the Swazis”) in the Swazi language, and now its English name matches.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eswatini

[RIMR]

The 5 people reporting in from North Korea tell me that this poll isn't going to be accurate.

[danuker → RIMR]

Anyone can implement IPoAC, even with limited technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPoAC

[fartcannon]

So Canada, the second largest country in the world - a width of nearly 1/10th the earth - is second in this list to California. California is a lot like Vancouver and Toronto, but it's not remotely like the Maritimes, or you know, Quebec.

Ah well. Neat poll, thanks.

[loufe → fartcannon]

I was a little dissapointed to see Canada was not divided into the provinces.

[grouseway → loufe]

I'm just happy enough that we aren't referred to as the "land mass to the north"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFM1X0o2pnc

[Tenoke]

I was curious if the UK or Germany will rank higher and am somewhat surprised that after you adjust for population (which is a small adjustment) they basically rank the same and are only outpeformed by Canada (by a fair amount) which surprises me somewhat.

[agucova]

Now I really want to meet those other two Chileans.

[Panther34543]

Who here is originally from the U.S. but migrated to another country since remote jobs became commonplace?

I've got a great remote job for a U.S. company and about $60k available for a downpayment; I'd love to be able to buy a place abroad (and hopefully obtain residency/citizenship).

Unfortunately, places like Italy or Spain seem to require foreign nationals to have much more initial cash and prevent mortgage loans for more than 50/60% of the purchase price. I can afford a decent mortgage, but I just don't have a lot of liquid cash at the moment.

Has anyone here done anything like that?

[jaggs]

Wow, big surprises here so far. Africa and Middle East almost totally unrepresented with 0s everywhere? That's crazy for the size of population? And the Marshall Islands ranking higher than Wyoming, USA?

[baron816]

I never thought about it before, but HN must be blocked in China, right? I wonder how it’s impacted their engineering culture to not have access to forums like these where people can freely share knowledge.

[namelosw → baron816]

> HN must be blocked in China

It was only blocked in recent years. As far as I can recall it's around 2019. They usually only block things that are influential enough.

And most engineers do have VPN. I'm actually surprised there are so few votes from China since many people I know do check out HN frequently. My guess is they're mostly lurking and don't have enough karma.

> I wonder how it’s impacted their engineering culture to not have access to forums like these where people can freely share knowledge.

There are many engineering forums and communities - as long as they don't get political it's perfectly fine. IMO the engineering culture is very strong in China (not as strong as in the US, but far above the world average). But I'm yet to see something great and big like HN as many high-quality contents are limited in private WeChat groups. The bigger problem is not that people cannot express themselves freely, but rather communities tend to get deteriorated over time like Quora and Medium.

Maybe a close approximation to HN would be V2EX [0] (Interesting it's also blocked in China. So in fact, many communities outside GFW still target the Chinese audience).

The barrier for people to participate in English communities like HN is still the language. People use Stackoverflow daily because they could skim through the code. But the majority still prefer reading and writing Chinese.

[0] https://v2ex.com/

[seanmcdirmid → namelosw]

VPNs are finicky: they come and go and while usually you can find one that will work, it’s a constant struggle with the GFW because the one you used last month is not working this month. I just relied on my connection at work (a direct line out of China) because everything else was too much trouble.

[namelosw → seanmcdirmid]

I agree. I was struggling with this many years ago. And I was concerned about the security and privacy of VPN providers.

Eventually, I ended up spinning my own VPN with Algo [0] like four years ago and it worked really well for me for these years. I use VMs in Hong Kong for connection speed, and use VMs in California for country specific stuff (ADs and news for Hong Kong are super annoying XD).

[0] https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

[seanmcdirmid → namelosw]

That would work. I had some friends who figured out a way to use their free Azure time (I was working for MS China at the time) to create their own VPN, but I don't think that lasted very long.

[namelosw → seanmcdirmid]

I happened to use free Azure credit from the MSDN subscription as well. The VMs in East Asia (Hong Kong) region are working great for me for years, and the traffic is fast both in and outside China without blacklists and whitelists.

That being said, it also depends on the protocols and the network:

- OpenVPN would get blocked immediately.

- AnyConnect gets interrupted regularly but is usable.

- IKEv2 and Wireguard are what works for me now.

- My major network is China Unicom and it works great.

- But when I switch China Mobile I get interruptions sometimes.

I guess it is finicky after all :-|

[IncRnd]

From the cli (at least on a mac):

curl "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378" | grep -e '<font color="#000000">' -e " points<" -e "point<" | grep -v -e "#x27" -e "id=binarynate" | sed "s/ //g" | sed -e 's/<[^>]*>//g' | sed '$!N;s/\n/ /' | sort > WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego.txt

[agopaul]

France 28 vs Germany 68 vs Italy 11

I guess that says a lot about the tech scene in Italy

[AnotherGoodName → agopaul]

Germany has roughly the same ratio of English speakers to the above and this is an English language site. 23m vs 45m vs 17m respectively.

[naetius → agopaul]

Does it?

May it be that HN is more or less known among tech workers in country “X” (eg: due to language, etc…)?

[agopaul → naetius]

Sure, you can even say that both France and Germany just have larger populations than Italy. But still I would argue that being open to the international tech scene is pretty important to have a local tech scene. It's also crucial to keep up with innovation.

[naetius → agopaul]

Would you say that consuming HN is some sort of "benchmark" that measures how open a society is to the tech scene?

[cozzyd → agopaul]

or maybe Italians are more likely to be doing something else on a Friday night?

[pomian → agopaul]

Or what they are doing at the time this poll came out.

[divbzero]

Are there really (as of now) 7 North Koreans among us? If so I’m curious how you discovered HN.

I find it especially surprising because that’s more than the 6 South Koreans who have responded to this poll.

[timbit42 → divbzero]

More likely 7 comedians.

[anamax]

> I read a tweet that referred to HN as "Silicon Valley"

CA is more than SV. (That said, while the Los Angeles basin has a lot more people, it and the San Francisco bay area are more alike than they are like central valley CA, let alone mountain or desert CA, even though many SF people like to think that they're different than LA.)

Note that many of the "where is investment going" surveys count San Francisco and Silicon Valley separately. (That may be to keep the graph axis reasonable.)

[rsendv]

North Korea has more HN users than I'd expect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[frays]

HN is easily one of my favourite websites. I get to learn from interesting posts and smart comments from people all around the world, then bring this knowledge into my work and life.

Thank you.

[bradlys]

Was hoping there was going to be a Silicon Valley option (Or SFBA) but nope... Just California - you know - a place which has 40million people with a lot of them not in SFBA.

[danuker → bradlys]

Upvote this if you're from SFBA (3 votes as of 15:27 PST)

[danuker → bradlys]

Upvote this if you're from California but not SFBA (0 votes as of 15:27 PST)

[gabrielsroka]

To see the sorted results: https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hnpoll.html?id=30210378

Source: https://github.com/gabrielsroka/gabrielsroka.github.io/blob/...

[jsiaajdsdaa]

Love how NY and California have roughly similar populations but NY is under-represented here.

WA has much less population yet is just as present as NY here. Speaks volumes!

[silisili]

This would be really nice as a map view. HN polls are useful, but for this many entries is a mess. Plus, the visualization alone would be fun to see.

[ninefathom]

PSA to those attempting statistical analysis of the results: people can live in multiple places, and the poll does indeed allow such selection. Assuming in analysis that one vote is equivalent to one person may lead to inaccurate conclusions, as will attempting to build relationships between this data set and those where people are usually represented only once (like US census data).

[asimpletune]

I think of Silicon Valley not so much as a geographic region any more, but rather a way of working, that has been exported all over the world now.

[jandrewrogers → asimpletune]

The Silicon Valley way of working assumes the unique culture of the western US in which it developed, which exists independent of tech. While the ways of working are straightforward, it is difficult to export the social context in which they evolved and the expectations built into that. This is the hidden assumption of the Silicon Valley way of working.

I believe one of the reasons Seattle emerged as the second tech juggernaut city, versus another random metro in the US, is that it shares the same western US culture as Silicon Valley and therefore could adopt Silicon Valley's methods unmodified and expect similar results. In other parts of the world, and even in e.g. the eastern US, the impedance mismatch between the Silicon Valley way of working and the socio-cultural milieu are pretty visible.

[mankyd → asimpletune]

Eh, sort of. As an east-coast resident who has worked for both tech startups as well as large companies, (currently one of the large SV companies), I will say I still view SV as a very different vibe than any work culture I regularly experience here. Anecdotally, my colleagues - past and present - would agree.

[divbzero]

> Edit: Sorry about the randomized ordering (I forgot HN does that for polls). Thanks ahead of time for using cmd+f or the equivalent to find and vote for your state or country. Also, each US state is included as "US: {state name}".

I also noticed the arbitrary ordering earlier but it now appears alphabetized. Thank you HN mods for implementing sort for this outlier of a use case.

[zoba]

This surprisingly complete list doesn’t appear to contain a “Remote/Nomad/Airbnb” option … unless I missed it?

[binarynate → zoba]

Good point! I just added a new "Nomad" option. There's also an "Other" option for anything else.

[asow92]

I would be curious to see the split between upstate and downstate New York. They might as well be different states.

[hateful → asow92]

Long Island, also. Before remote work was more popular, it was very difficult to search for jobs on Long Island in the past. If you put "New York" you get NYC. If you put "50 miles" you get Connecticut.

[asow92 → hateful]

I used to work in Manhattan for the reason you mention, but now that remote work is more viable I moved back home to the finger lakes region.

[the_duke]

Too many options. I'd have found a continent poll more interesting, I bet many will just not bother scrolling.

[cobbaut → the_duke]

Scrolling? You do know about / right? Just type /Belg (or Ctrl-f) to find Belgium.

[j_4 → cobbaut]

Well, I did ctrl+f but this is actually the first time I'm hearing about / for quick search, haha. Thanks!

[the_duke → cobbaut]

Well,sure,I use Vimium anyway. But we shall see.

[hycaria → cobbaut]

Which browser?

[Avshalom → hycaria]

Firefox.

it used to actually default to quick searching anything you typed (with / quick searching only links) but now you have to fiddle with an option for that.

ETA: in the spirit of the thread: I'm in Albuquerque, New Mexico, US. Which I've said before.

[jakub_g → Avshalom]

There's also ' (apostrophe) for "quick find, in hyperlinks only". I sorely miss it when using Chrome.

[Avshalom → jakub_g]

Firefox's quickfind behavior is a solid 25-30% of why I never switched to chrome.

[rascul → Avshalom]

It's unfortunate when web sites hijack the slash key for their own uses (github gets me with this every time).

[Avshalom → rascul]

github hijacks so many keys, can't stand it.

[ShakataGaNai → the_duke]

Cmd/Ctrl+F plus your country name.

[gruturo → the_duke]

Is that really a concern? Surely the HN audience knows how to use the Find option in their browser.

But if it makes you feel better, I'm sure someone will whip up a regex or perl oneliner to get to the row data and then sort/aggregate it in 20 different ways, or color a heatmap, or in any style of chart you prefer.

[dang]

I did a little REPL tweak to sort the options alphabetically. Sorry I didn't see the need for that earlier.

[jc_yc_2022]

Made a visualization here using Tableau Public: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jconcepcion/viz/YCPol...

[unnouinceput]

@dang

This needs to be pinned for at least 36 hours at the top of HN to make it as accurate as possible. Can you do it, please?

[mastazi]

I think that places like APAC are going to be a little bit under represented because of the timing. As an example, it's currently 9am on a Saturday in Sydney Australia.

In US it's still Friday and people are at work, e.g. it's currently 2pm on a Friday in the West Coast of the US

[rbanffy]

Team Ireland ftw!

9 people isn’t bad for a small island.

[CalRobert → rbanffy]

It's easy to forget we're only as populous as a medium-size city. Ireland punches above its weight in soft power and influence, really.

[rbanffy → CalRobert]

And it's beautiful.

[husamia]

Here is a plot https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSYahKij2EKVRCuXEJvLmkvFKLbW...

[binarynate → husamia]

Ranking of the current results:

https://nate.org/hacker-news-location-poll

[husamia → husamia]

Country Votes US: California 258 Canada 129 Germany 119 United Kingdom 110 US: New York 104 US: Washington 100 US: Texas 56 US: Colorado 51 US: Massachusetts 45 US: Illinois 42 France 40 US: North Carolina 38 Sweden 34 Netherlands 34 US: Oregon 34 US: Pennsylvania 32 US: Virginia 30

[chickenmonkey]

I'm sure there are many Indians on HN, but they probably reside somewhere in the US.

[keewee7 → chickenmonkey]

They are asleep.

[samuell]

I'm afraid the difference in time zones means this post will be on the front at wildly different times in the day for different parts of earth, might quite heavily skew the results.

I guess you'll still be able to make your point though.

[atlasunshrugged]

Is Washington the State or DC?

[TulliusCicero → atlasunshrugged]

The state. DC is listed as District of Columbia.

That area's confusing though, since the metro encompasses both DC proper and then multiple states.

[asveikau → atlasunshrugged]

There appear to be entries for both.

[atlasunshrugged → asveikau]

Ah thanks, I was looking up DC - did not think to do "District of Columbia"

[dumbfounder → atlasunshrugged]

Me too. Don't you love it when you come to a dropdown form and they simply forget DC altogether? That's my fav.

[testplzignore]

I'd be interested to see the results of this poll compared to the monthly "Who is hiring?" thread. Are the distributions the same? Is there a supply/demand mismatch?

[herbst]

HN crowd is usually mixed, better than Reddit or anything where the US clearly dominates.

I can tell by reactions to some more critical answers, and how they change depending on the time of the day :)

[yaseer]

Is HN easily accessible in China?

Noticed how small the representation is in comparison to India and Japan and was curious if this is the local market's choice, or the great firewall in action.

[fmasood → yaseer]

I cannot access it without a VPN at the moment, and language is also a big factor.

[Elof]

US: California

[echelon → Elof]

California doesn't have to be the center for tech anymore as the world has shifted to a distributed workforce.

The US doesn't, for that matter, and you can tell it's happening due to all of the new international investments.

Edit with some sources:

https://news.crunchbase.com/news/europe-vc-funding-unicorns-...

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Market-Spotlight/Venture-c...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-24/startup-f...

[FanaHOVA → echelon]

Bay Area is still by far the center of the tech world. Maybe in 10-20 years that will change if like you said people move out and the network effects vanish, but I don't see any signs of that happening. Unlike what you might read people say on Twitter, plenty of talent is still here, and there's a lot of people moving back after having left during COVID.

[vecinu → echelon]

> you can tell it's happening due to all of the new international investments.

Any sources? Last data I saw showed VC investment in SV eclipses anything around Europe or Asia. There's just a lot more money, especially money with a serious risk appetite, in the US, than elsewhere.

[ShakataGaNai → echelon]

As someone who lives in California (SF Bay Area), I'm excited about this. It's good that we distribute things a little more, not just in the USA but in the world. Some places will always favor (culturally speaking) the entrepreneur/tech startup more than others, but it's good for that to work its way out to others.

[dec0dedab0de → echelon]

I have heard the hypothesis that the main reason Silicon Valley was able to grow is because non compete clauses are invalid in California. So people can start a side business competing with their employer, and only risk being fired (as long as they dont steal IP) They could also freely hop from company to company without waiting in between.

[not2b → dec0dedab0de]

Yes, it's argued here that this is how Silicon Valley won out over the Boston area (DEC, Pr1me, Wang, MIT, so many other great universities):

https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/2/13/14580874/google-self...

[adventured → not2b]

The more liberal atmosphere around non-competes surely played a role. Silicon Valley was also ideal because the land was inexpensive in the early days, compared to most metro area real-estate, the weather was vastly superior to East Coast cities like Boston and NY, and the culture on the East Coast was stuffy, slow and rigid (whereas there was excitement to going west, blazing a new trail; the culture of California was very different from the East Coast). Having the old corporate giants on the East Coast was oppressive and antithesis to the birth of something like Silicon Valley. SV was the new world, they built it up from farm land.

Given the context, it doesn't matter if Boston has nice universities: they become poaching grounds for Silicon Valley in that respect. The Yankees don't care if their minor league teams are in Tampa or Atlanta, they're taking the talent regardless of where it's at. The talent will almost always happily move for the right price and or opportunity.

[not2b → adventured]

The "silicon" in Silicon Valley got its real start with the "Traitorous Eight", who had the audacity to leave an employer and go immediately into direct competition with that employer. Not sure what role state laws played in making it possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight

[not2b → dec0dedab0de]

California doesn't completely prevent companies from limiting side businesses, they might be able to claim your work depending on your employer agreement and how similar it is to what your company does. But they can't keep you from working in the same field if you quit.

[kd5bjo → dec0dedab0de]

I always understood it to be rooted in raw materials: The silica mines were there, which attracted semiconductor fabs, which attracted hardware companies, which attracted software companies, etc.

[austincheney → dec0dedab0de]

That’s nice in theory and likely a factor over some areas. The primary differentiator is a culture of local access to VC funding. It explains both the timeline and geographic distribution.

[_skel → austincheney]

The concentration of VC funding didn't happen before the local tech companies. It happened because of the local tech companies.

[adventured → _skel]

It happened simultaneously, they required eachother in lockstep.

Shockley was the spark that set SV on fire (not HP). By chance he ended up in the SV area, moving from New Jersey to Mountain View because his ill mother lived in Palo Alto. Beckman Instruments provided the capital for Shockley to start his company, which led to Fairchild (also formed by outside capital) and off it went.

Those companies would not have existed without the venture capital that made them possible. Shockley was not going to bootstrap his company, and the traitorous eight were similarly not going to leave without significant financial support courtesy of Fairchild Camera.

[_skel → adventured]

That's all different in character from modern VC in the valley though. People were not forming firms with the intention of seeking out tech startup investments in a systematic way like they do today. A unique culture has emerged since then.

When the traitorous eight left Shockley, what they did would have been career suicide on the east coast. Now it is encouraged in Silicon Valley corporate culture.

[Elof → dec0dedab0de]

It also has some world class universities, fantastic weather, and is surrounded by beautiful nature

[alserio]

Looks like half the population of Vatican City voted on this poll.

[tamaharbor]

Commenters here are such nerds. That’s why I love his place.

[joshspankit]

Similar to the fact “Canada has about the same population as California”, it seems the number of HN users in Canada is about the same as in NY.

Fascinating

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I noticed that every single country/state, has at least one vote.

Just for Ss & Gs, you should add "Greenland," and "Antarctica."

[capableweb → ChrisMarshallNY]

That's because of the architecture of HN (and indirectly Arc I'd presume) where every created `item` (stories, comments, individual poll-items) starts with 1 point by default, as the author surely would have upvoted it anyways.

[madcaptenor → capableweb]

So to correctly interpret the results one has to subtract 1 vote from each?

[ChrisMarshallNY → madcaptenor]

Except that the author obviously ticks one. Not sure if they are allowed to, or be satisfied with 1 of everything...

[capableweb → ChrisMarshallNY]

One or more (me and I'm sure others too, live in multiple countries). You're allowed to vote in your own polls as far as I know.

[agilob]

Nice of you to distinguish Georgia and US Georgia ;)

[madcaptenor → agilob]

Glad I saw this when I searched for Georgia, as someone who lives in US Georgia.

[bayoucountry]

Louisiana folks: want to do a meetup in nola or br?

[EmilStenstrom]

Looking forward to a visualization that ranks each reply by capita too. Should separate the tech hubs from the large populous regions.

[ppipada]

Are HN Poll points calculated directly as number of votes? Are there any karma thresholds? Is there some formulae involved?

[jimbogr77]

It would be great if we could see the voters of our country. I would like to contact thinking alike people from Greece :)

[kyleblarson]

I'd also be interested to see a poll that asks what the population is in the locality where the responder resides.

[jonathanleane]

+1 for team Australia.

Anyone in Sydney want to go for a beer?

[jerrygoyal]

since it's late night in asian countries I hope the poll stays on frontpage till tomorrow to get better stats.

[msilb]

Switzerland with (currently) 19 votes (+1:)) is overrepresented for its relatively small population size (~9m).

[ryzvonusef]

+1 from Pakistan

BTW, if you have the HN Enhancement Suite extension, you will not be able to see the poll, or the comment box.

[tbrock]

Wow I just moved to CLT and would love to meet more people that are engineers in the area, where are you all?

[muzani]

The poll does prove that there's probably more people from Silicon Valley here than the rest of world.

[binarynate → muzani]

Currently 554 votes out of 4521 are for California. That does make California the largest single state / country, but there are over 7 times more people from other parts of the world.

[colordrops]

Seems that california should have been broken down into regions as well. At least north vs south.

[illwrks]

I'd love to see another poll asking where people originate from to complement this one.

[AviationAtom]

Wonder if the one vote for Georgia the country was actually meant for the US state of Georgia

[bcon]

I wish analytics had an 'audience view' to help communities understand themselves.

[spacehunt]

Hmm, can't find Hong Kong.

[xtat]

Splitting up California would help my understanding - at least socal/nocal

[fakethenews2022]

Next time, keep it in alphabetical order but randomize the starting letter?

[mb82br]

Brazil

[matheusmoreira → mb82br]

Sim.

[Lewisssss → mb82br]

aqui

[notuger → mb82br]

presente

[atmb4u]

Wait until east wakes up (India and other South East Asian countries)

[throwawayacc2]

Who are the 4 people in Vatican City? Are you the Churches tech core?

[KerryJones]

A surprising a mount of people in Illinois, what city y'all in?

[fortran77]

I spend 7 months/year in CA and 5 months/year in Israel.

[kristopolous]

Where's Palestine?

[laurex]

Canada broken up into West and East would be helpful.

[breakout]

Greetings from Poland Warsaw city to be specific:)

[y4mi]

Where is the option for "your basement"?

[onion2k → y4mi]

Get out of my basement!

[saki709]

Croatian, but studying in Netherlands sooooo

[Ekami]

French Polynesia, not in the list tho

[pelagicAustral]

Falkland Islands. Not listed innit...

[ohlookcake]

I refuse to participate, on account of the overwhelming America-centrism. I realise that by doing this I'm skewing it even more, but

[nobody9999 → ohlookcake]

>I refuse to participate, on account of the overwhelming America-centrism. I realise that by doing this I'm skewing it even more, but

Not sure why you'd see it that way. Especially since the US has more English speaking folks than any other country[0].

Since HN an English language site and there are more (by a lot) English-speaking folks in the US than any other country, it's not surprising that there are more folks from the US on here than other countries.

What steps do you suggest to reduce the "America-centrism" of HN? Refusing to participate in a poll certainly isn't viable as a means to do that.

As an English speaking resident of the United States, I'd love to see more non-US stuff here on HN.

A poll that might be useful in this context is a comparison of the numbers collected here as compared with the location of submitters as a whole.

I've found that online translators mostly suck, which limits the usefulness of foreign language submissions on a site that's in English.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...

[z16a]

Why isn't Canada broken out...

[tiborsaas]

Hungary is missing from the list :)

[tptacek]

Illinois 81! In your FACE, Sweden!

[whollacsek]

How about us nomads?

Please be inclusive. /s

[binarynate → whollacsek]

Good news: I just added a new "Nomad" option. There's also an "Other" option for anything else.

[glimmung]

United (!) Kingdom: Yorkshire

[rabbits77]

In a van down by the river.

[mikefallen]

Canada

[voisin]

What order is this list?

[rexreed → voisin]

52-card Pickup Sort

[jolmg → voisin]

It changes with every refresh.

[joshSzep]

Los Angeles, California

[rman666]

US:Wisconsin:Milwaukee

[stubbornboi]

you know maybe it should be with multiple columns...

[Beegle]

Who are you and what do you want with this data? Google or Facebook?

[binarynate → Beegle]

Just a curious mind: https://nate.org/about

[sawirricardo]

Hi from Indonesia

[Aeolun]

Why do people in the US always feel compelled to add their state?

[tempestn → Aeolun]

In the context of HN where (apparently) a little over half of the audience is in the US, the state is pretty relevant. (I say as a Canadian.)

[chitza]

so that tweet was right, eh? at the time of this writing, I'm seeing: California 274 Canada 137 Germany 127 UK 116 New York 110 Washington 104 ...

So yeah, "Silicon Valley".

[anyfoo → chitza]

I don't think that's super conclusive. As others have mentioned, Californians are awake and during their workday right now, other timezones may be sleeping, and some might not see the post at all because they tend do read HN less on the weekend, for example.

I would not be surprised at all if California has a big share, but I don't think this poll is a sure enough way to gauge that. It would have been more insightful if California wasn't one of the top answers right now.

[jolmg → anyfoo]

> and some might not see the post at all because they tend do read HN less on the weekend

True. This poll may have been better posted on any other weekday.

[andersco]

US: New York City

[alifbae]

Karachi, Pakistan

[paracyst]

Boulder, Colorado

[patel011393]

US: Pennsylvania

[notsag-hn]

Uruguay! First?

[DougHolland]

USA: Wisconsin.

[johncla99]

US: Washington

[yakshaving_jgt]

Nice try, NSA.

[krono]

Gekoloniseerd?

[mahirsaid]

US: MICHIGAN

[aqeelat]

Saudi Arabia

[digikazi]

UK: England

[jeliotj]

US: Montana

[mlindner → jeliotj]

You pick by upvoting your choice in the poll.

[4m1rk]

Visualization from your terminal (https://github.com/amirkarimi/hn-poll-visualizer):

    $ ./main.py "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378"
    
    US: California                    [560]  ****************************************
    Germany                           [263]  *******************
    Canada                            [253]  *******************
    United Kingdom                    [246]  ******************
    US: New York                      [214]  ****************
    US: Washington                    [202]  ***************
    US: Texas                         [124]  *********
    US: Massachusetts                 [101]  ********
    Australia                         [101]  ********
    Netherlands                       [ 99]  ********
    US: Colorado                      [ 96]  *******
    US: Illinois                      [ 85]  *******
    Sweden                            [ 85]  *******
    India                             [ 78]  ******
    France                            [ 74]  ******
    US: Oregon                        [ 69]  *****
    Poland                            [ 68]  *****
    US: North Carolina                [ 61]  *****
    US: Pennsylvania                  [ 60]  *****
    US: New Jersey                    [ 58]  *****
    US: Virginia                      [ 54]  ****
    US: Florida                       [ 54]  ****
    Switzerland                       [ 54]  ****
    New Zealand                       [ 46]  ****
    Spain                             [ 44]  ****
    US: Georgia                       [ 43]  ****
    Denmark                           [ 43]  ****
    US: Michigan                      [ 42]  ***
    Finland                           [ 41]  ***
    Brazil                            [ 39]  ***
    Austria                           [ 39]  ***
    Italy                             [ 37]  ***
    Norway                            [ 36]  ***
    US: Ohio                          [ 34]  ***
    US: Minnesota                     [ 34]  ***
    Israel                            [ 34]  ***
    Ireland                           [ 34]  ***
    Japan                             [ 33]  ***
    US: Arizona                       [ 31]  ***
    Czech Republic                    [ 31]  ***
    US: Utah                          [ 30]  ***
    US: Maryland                      [ 30]  ***
    US: Wisconsin                     [ 28]  **
    Romania                           [ 27]  **
    Belgium                           [ 26]  **
    Russia                            [ 25]  **
    US: Tennessee                     [ 23]  **
    US: New Mexico                    [ 20]  **
    Hungary                           [ 20]  **
    Serbia                            [ 19]  **
    Portugal                          [ 19]  **
    Mexico                            [ 19]  **
    Argentina                         [ 19]  **
    Croatia                           [ 18]  **
    Ukraine                           [ 17]  **
    US: Missouri                      [ 17]  **
    US: Connecticut                   [ 17]  **
    US: Indiana                       [ 16]  **
    US: Idaho                         [ 16]  **
    Turkey                            [ 16]  **
    US: Kansas                        [ 14]  *
    US: Iowa                          [ 14]  *
    Bulgaria                          [ 14]  *
    US: New Hampshire                 [ 13]  *
    South Africa                      [ 13]  *
    Singapore                         [ 12]  *
    North Korea                       [ 12]  *
    Lithuania                         [ 12]  *
    US: Nevada                        [ 11]  *
    US: Kentucky                      [ 11]  *
    US: District of Columbia          [ 11]  *
    Slovenia                          [ 11]  *
    Greece                            [ 11]  *
    US: Vermont                       [ 10]  *
    ...

[cdaringe]

US: Oregon

[fsnowdin]

~vietnam~

[nuker]

ISS

[sbela]

Hungary

[cwillu]

Hell

[KoftaBob → cwillu]

New Jersey's already on the list

[AdamJacobMuller → KoftaBob]

As someone who lives in New Jersey, fuck you and you're 100% correct.

[_6mdd]

blinded from the glow

[101008]

I hope there is someone who knows how to code in this community to parse the results and do a nice visualization. I have a cousin who knows about computers, if noone knows here how to do it, I can ask him to try. He always helps me with my printer.

[Zenbit_UX → 101008]

I'm currently working on a vue + vuex server side rendered PWA with client side hydration.i found the perfect UI component library which only adds ~3mb of overhead,which went paired with Chart.js and of course wrapped with VueCharts.js should be able to query a graphql endpoint to process the results and display in the browser. What do you all think of kubernetes, overkill?

[windowshopping → Zenbit_UX]

I thought it was serious until I got to the 3mb part, that was where the tone became clear.

It's funny because I found the first sentence so upsetting. "With client-side hydration" -- I was just thinking to myself god these stupid buzzwords, what does that even mean, just another recycled concept with a new web 3.0 name.

[eyelidlessness → windowshopping]

Client-side hydration has been a term of art since component-based web apps have been built with the same code on the server and client. It’s not some new buzzword. It’s an exceedingly common term and has been a major focus in the space for years.

But loljs or whatever plays well so go for it.

[e12e → windowshopping]

Client side hydration might be the waterboarding of data visualization.

[whalesalad → Zenbit_UX]

have you considered the blockchain? and/or at least consider adding a language that is not Java, but runs on the JVM.

[elpakal → whalesalad]

I don’t know I feel like gRPC did you know it’s used at Google?

[igetspam → elpakal]

This comment should come with a trigger warning.

[Aeolun → whalesalad]

I hear JavaScript is the new hotness.

[riidom → Zenbit_UX]

I prefer the printed version from parent poster, thanks

[ProZsolt → Zenbit_UX]

Kubrernetes is an old thechnology. It should be serverless!

[jcun4128 → Zenbit_UX]

Add haproxy on it

[TranquilMarmot → jcun4128]

Don't forget to put it behind Cloudflare, too, wouldn't want it to go down from too much traffic

[rubabredwan → 101008]

https://wheredohnuserslive.vercel.app/

Visualized it by countries and us states. Should update every 30 seconds.

[mordae → rubabredwan]

Please fix Czechia vs. Czech Republic mismatch. And Macedonia vs. North Macedonia.

Also, per-capita hacker density would be cool as well.

[binarynate → rubabredwan]

That's awesome! Thank you for making this map.

[Yajirobe → rubabredwan]

The US map is bigger than the rest of the world

[tempestn → rubabredwan]

Should make this a top level comment so it can get voted to the top.

Edit: appears you did already!

[cheeaun → rubabredwan]

Singapore is missing :(

[l0b0 → 101008]

Ask codegolf.stackexchange.com, there's probably a Mathematica one-liner to display a globe with colour-coded areas.

[abdusco → l0b0]

I never understood the purpose of languages with unicode operators that can supposedly express a 30 line script in like 2 symbols.

Are they purpose built on the spot for CodeGolf?

[lgeorget → abdusco]

Not on the spot, a condition for the answer to be accepted is that the language must exist before the challenge, but yes, many languages exist only just for the purpose of golfing. Mathematica is a legitimate language though, it just is the case that some operations are surprisingly compact.

[LeifCarrotson → lgeorget]

Like checking if an image is of a goat:

    ImageInstanceQ[x,"caprine animal",RecognitionThreshold->i/100]

https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/71680

[danuker → abdusco]

I doubt Mathematica is built for code golf. Check out Burlesque (which is ASCII).

https://mroman.ch/burlesque/docs/BLSQ.html

[e12e → abdusco]

If ask for a "histogram" of the data, did I just write a 30 line script as a single word?

[airstrike → l0b0]

Someone should actually post it there and then post the question here...

[emacs28 → 101008]

I think I can help, I've been learning how to make bar graphs from tables in microsoft word

[binarynate → 101008]

Good idea! I created this page that shows a table with the current results:

https://nate.org/hacker-news-location-poll

[stronglikedan → 101008]

I'll try to whip up an Excel macro over the weekend, but I can't promise anything.

[ShakataGaNai → stronglikedan]

Excel Macro's... What does a virus have to do with visualizations?! /s

[cerved → ShakataGaNai]

It IS only VIRAL if you make it from clicks on the emails!!

ALWAYS make clicks with the RIGHT to be SAFE from VIRALS

[jarrenae → 101008]

I got you. Where does hacker news live? visualized: https://ae.studio/random/where-does-hacker-news-live

[radiator → jarrenae]

Thank you but unfortunately only the large discs are readable. I think a sorted datatable might serve the purpose better.

[zhoujianfu → jarrenae]

Nice!

A lot of Germans!

Gummipuppen!

[bityard → 101008]

This is literally the best comment I've ever read on this site.

[101008 → bityard]

Thank you so much. I can sell you the NFT of this comment if you want. Or you can sell it to me I guess.

[Crosseye_Jack → 101008]

Can he help stop my Microwave from blinking 12:00 all the time?

[geocrasher → 101008]

Just do it in Bash, of course! Take the poll andcopy/paste it directly into a file called 'hnpoll', then run

   sed -e ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g' -e 's/points/,/g' -e 's/point/ ,/g' -e  's/,/\n/g' hnpoll | awk '{ print $2 " "$1 }'  | sort -n | grep ^[0-9] | tail -n 20

12 Finland

12 Serbia

13 Norway

13 Romania

15 Belgium

15 Israel

15 Spain

16 Austria

19 Switzerland

20 Italy

21 India

22 Australia

22 Denmark

26 Brazil

26 Poland

35 Netherlands

36 Sweden

41 France

124 Germany

132 Canada

See- easy!

And if you want the US states, even easier:

    grep US -A1  hnpoll  | sed  -e ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g' -e 's/points/,/g' -e 's/point/ ,/g' -e 's/,/\n/g' -e '/^$/d' | sort -r |cut -d: -f2 | awk '{ print $2" "$1 }' | sort -n | tail -n 20

15 Arizona

16 Michigan

16 Minnesota

16 Ohio

16 Wisconsin

17 Maryland

18 Georgia

25 Florida

28 Jersey

31 Virginia

32 Pennsylvania

35 Oregon

39 Carolina

42 Illinois

47 Massachusetts

51 Colorado

59 Texas

103 Washington

110 New York

265 California

And people say Bash is a terrible language...

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

Get the total number of US results:

   echo $(grep US -A1  hnpoll  | sed  -e ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g' -e 's/points/,/g' -e 's/point/ ,/g' -e 's/,/\n/g' -e '/^$/d' | sort -r |cut -d: -f2 | awk '{ print $2 }' | sort -n | grep ^[0-9] | paste -sd+ - | bc)" United States"

943 United States

Combine them a bit...

   sed -e ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g' -e 's/points/,/g' -e 's/point/ ,/g' -e  's/,/\n/g' hnpoll | awk '{ print $2 " "$1 }'  | sort -n | grep ^[0-9] | tail -n 20; echo $(grep US -A1  hnpoll  | sed  -e ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g' -e 's/points/,/g' -e 's/point/ ,/g' -e 's/,/\n/g' -e '/^$/d' | sort -r |cut -d: -f2 | awk '{ print $2 }' | sort -n | grep ^[0-9] | paste -sd+ - | bc)" United States"

12 Finland

12 Serbia

3 Norway

13 Romania

15 Belgium

15 Israel

15 Spain

16 Austria

19 Switzerland

20 Italy

21 India

22 Australia

22 Denmark

26 Brazil

26 Poland

35 Netherlands

36 Sweden

41 France

124 Germany

132 Canada

943 United States

[barbazoo → 101008]

This made me almost spit out my tea, well done :)

[stepri → 101008]

I've also made a page with a map (World and US States) and tables: https://stevenprins.com/snippets/hn-where-do-you-live

[iechoz6H → 101008]

Could you ask him about random list generation too? And whether or not order influences outcomes? Thanks

[aksss → 101008]

I have a cousin twice removed who knows FoxPro and could do this.

[austin_y]

US: Alabama