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Ask HN: Is there anything worth purchasing on Black Friday/Cyber Monday?

54 points by coreyp_1 ↗ HN
I just haven't seen anything that catches my eye (and many sites make it surprisingly difficult to browse their Black Friday deals). I refuse to go out and shop (it's too cold, & I don't really want to mess with the crowds), but I would buy something online if it was a good price & I had a use for it.

Any suggestions or discoveries?

61 comments

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GuiA
The nature of your question in itself indicates that there is nothing you should buy. Buy things if you need them, otherwise leave your wallet in your pocket.
sorahn
I took it to mean "I have some extra money, and I want something to fiddle with, is there anything that the hackernews readers know of that might be on sale?"

But maybe that's just my question...

ralmeida
I took that point too, and there's also another point... there's software that's on my list for a while (JetBrains and Hazel come to mind, in particular), but since the exchange rate for me is bad, a sale might tip me over the edge.
tedmiston
JetBrains does nice discounts around conferences. PyCharm was 30% off for PyCon for example. I think anyone can use the code whether you attend or not.
slededit
I purchased a 1TB EVO 850 from newegg/amazon (both have the same price). But I had a specific need for large fast storage.
ctchocula
Thanks for the heads up! Been meaning to buy one for gf's 2012 MBP, and now seems like the best time.
hga
Yeah, Newegg has a variety of interesting storage deals, I picked up 1 out of 2 $30 refurbished Dell branded Seagate Cheetah drives they had that are the same model as I used 3 of in a computer I built in 2011, all the original drives are of course beyond Seagate's 5 year enterprise warranty service (which is good in my experience). Might save me time and trouble when one of the original drives gives up the ghost.
ryuker16
Slickdeals.net is your friend. Some TV deals and SSD deals. Amazon discounted all its hardware stuff around 15% it seems. Picked up the fire 4k box for $65.
Steppschuh
Newton Mail subscription is 50℅ off at the moment, which I find is a great deal for their service.
cookingrobot
HTC Vive is $100 off this weekend on Amazon.
lwhalen
Does the Vive support Macs or Linux yet?
icecreammatt
Valve has indicated that support for it is coming soon. Their recent developer conference they demoed it running on Linux. I'm not sure how well it's going to work on Mac with the lack of decent graphics cards unless maybe using a Hackintosh.
geocar
Then I'll consider it "soon".
lwhalen
Eeeexcellent. It'll be a cold day in hell before a Microsoft operating system darkens my network, especially the likes of Windows 10.
sunnynagra
It is essentially $200 off through the Microsoft Store.

$100 off and $100 gift card

svacko
If you are into a software architecture, @simonbrown is offering both of his software architecture books for FREE on Leanpub https://twitter.com/simonbrown/status/800340593507438593 https://leanpub.com/b/software-architecture
hga
Thanks. Having started this game in 1997, in some respects fortunately with punched card FORTRAN and hands on use of an IBM 1130, since that sent me straight to the library because I knew there had to be better ways, and being cash strapped right now I'm not in the market for architecture books. But for free? I'll try them for sure, and who knows, may pay him some real money in the future, nothing ventured, nothing gained. At least for me, one good free book has more than a few time resulted in that.
grecy
Put some gas in your tank and head out camping for a weekend.

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

jakebasile
He did say it was too cold outside, so maybe camping wouldn't work. :)
jakebasile
If you're a gamer, there's tons of stuff on sale. On Steam you can get Doom for $20, and it is well worth it. I'm also binging on The Division which is $25 with an optional $20 season pass for some extra stuff. If you want something more low key Stardew Valley might be the ticket.
kek918
Yeah it's pretty dangerous to browse Steam now... I already purchased 4 games today (even two AAA titles), and I still have 5-6 untouched games from the last christmas sale.
majewsky
> I only have 5-6 untouched games

FTFY :)

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

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

kek918
Interesting! 40 of my 102 games haven't been played yet. Jesus christ, I'm gonna have to call in sick next week to catch up here.
patrickk
For anyone based in Germany/Europe, mydealz.de lists offers, you can sort by "hot" to see the most popular ones. (not affiliated)
govind201
Top discounts by product category: http://blackfriday.semantics3.com/dashboards/RJ7EP446XUIOLEU... Might aid the discount hunting process, if not the decision making process.
Two9A
It's worth noting that there are lots of stores not indexed by Semantics3, and Amazon is one of the big ones they miss out.
govind201
Amazon is part of the list of sites being tracked. Any reason you felt otherwise?
[deleted]
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kyriakos
digitalocean had some good deals for cyber monday last year if I am not mistaken. I haven't checked this year.
enibundo
The urge to buy is real. Just be frugal and enjoy your day :)
vldmr
I'll just leave it there. Real discount for domaine names, shared hosting and ssl. https://www.namecheap.com/domain-hosting-ssl-deals/black-fri...
_puk
Thanks for the link, but current deals all gone (other than Comodo Instant SSL, lots of those left)

New ones at 6am EST

vldmr
NP, I waiting for .website domain.
azazqadir
There are other hosting deals out there as well. Check out Cloudways that is offering 25% off for 3 months.
weavie
Apress [1] are doing ebooks for £9.99 and print books for £12.50.

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

[1] http://www.apress.com/gp/shop/cybermonday?&token=cyber16&wt_...

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

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

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

jgooch
I'd love to see aCloud or identify deals on Amazon Web Services training. lets hope that it happens.
andrewhayter
Same here, keeping my eye out for exactly this.