Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine - <AUTHOR> https://digital.com/about/altavista/ <comment><USER2> This article misses one of the primary reasons for AV's demise -- we didn't update our primary index for several months just as Google was gaining mindshare. A ridiculously high percentage of our front page links were 404s, while Google was always fresh.

This was particularly bad because one of our earlier strong points was fresh indexes. Our ability to refresh the supplementary index on the fly was awesome. When you lose one of your primary strengths, it's noticeable.

I don't mean to minimize the downside of losing focus. That's one of the biggest lessons I learned while working there. I'd say that our failure to maintain a high quality index was directly caused by our loss of focus, in fact. But it's important to remember that both UI and the underlying index quality matter.

"What about PageRank?"

Eh, not actually unique to Google. Remember that Jon Kleinberg was developing HITS in parallel -- AV was well aware of the concept of measuring page importance using incoming links, and we had our own implementation. It may not have been as good. It's hard to tell when your underlying data source is stale.

Also, any AV article which doesn't note that we bought Elon Musk's first company is inherently flawed. ;)

<comment><USER3> From the article: _" [Alta Vista] broadened the use of boolean operators in search. Like some competing search engines, it supported AND, OR, and NOT."_

My recollection is that Alta Vista supported boolean operators, but defaulted to _OR_ while Google defaulted to _AND_. So searching Alta Vista for something like "$CommonWord $UncommonWord" would return results with high-ranking pages for $CommonWord that drown out all the low-scoring pages for $UncommonWord, whereas Google would return results that match the intersection (which would actually be relevant to the user's query). I'm convinced this default might have made a bigger impact on Google's success than any PageRank magic.

<comment><USER4> Although it's very much anecdotical, I, too, distinctly remember that Google defaulted to AND (unlike today, a very hard AND at the time), and that this made a noticeable difference in searching habits.

My theory on why this might matter even for people who knew how to use the operators is this: With OR as default, you would first try your query without operators, get page upon page of irrelevant results, and then start to narrow your query down. With AND as the default, you would type in the query, and if you only got a few irrelevant results, or often no results at all, you would try alternative terms instead.

It seems that progressing from no result to desired results by choosing alternative terms just makes more sense than having to wade through irrelevant stuff, and the default encourages one methodology over the other.

Today, it's very hard to make Google return no results at all. Not just because the amount of content grew to an unimaginable scale in the meantime, but also because Google has become way, way fuzzier in the way it interprets search terms, likely to better suit a larger and different audience. A lot of times today, I have to switch to "verbatim" mode first, at least for technical stuff.

<comment><USER5> The problem with AND as a default is that 'normal' people (i.e. people who have no idea what boolean means) operate search engines something like this: 1. type some words in, and get no or incorrect results; 2. add some extra words, and repeat the search, with the idea they are making the search more specific; 3. be confused as to why they still don't get the results they want. a default of OR, on the other hand, means adding search terms ends up being useful...

<comment><USER6> Defaulting to AND means that you aren't just searching for the most common term in your query that drowns out the rest. Also, adding terms narrows the query down rather than making it more general. This behavior strikes me as far more natural for "normal" people.

<comment><USER5> sure, i agree, except that they also apply this 'narrowing down' logic when insufficient or no results are returned, thinking the query needs to be more specific in order to work. i have observed the following sort of behaviour:

        1. entering 'invisible marmalade teapot' and getting no results
        2. changing to 'invisible marmalade teapot with tartan cosy', again nothing
        3. so 'invisible marmalade teapot with tartan cosy in outer space', ditto

you get the idea...? it's just like in the real world, when you might go to a bookshop and say

        You: do you have that new crime novel in stock?
        Bookseller: er, i don't know which one you mean?
        Y: the new crime novel by john grisham, pelican something or other?
        B: oh, right, yes, here it is!

and everyone is happy.

default _OR_ in a search engine would mean my first example eventually starting to return results about transparent space coffee pots with tartan cosies, ignoring the first few terms but the rest match, which is often helpful, particularly if you're doing an exploratory search for something where you aren't sure of the exact details.

<comment><USER6> `eventually starting to return results about transparent space coffee pots with tartan cosies ... which is often helpful`

I don't find your examples compelling.

If you want to do an additional search that does not depend on your first terms, you simply bring up a new search window.

In your 'real world' example, the equivalent search queries would go something like

search: new crime novel

result: way way too much stuff

search: new crime novel john grisham pelican

result: exactly the right book because every one of those terms applies

<comment><USER5> Hm. I think perhaps a better way of putting it is that the hard AND issue is when people search using a natural language type query (I know about stop words, assume these are always filtered out) and include some extraneous term, so 'What is that new crime novel by John Grisham about a Penguin I think?' will return nothing, and no amount of extra terms added at the end will help, until you delete 'Penguin'... Of course it's anecdotal, but I still suspect it's one of the reasons for the hard AND to OR switch...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I miss most about Altavista was the boolean search operators, and being able to reliably insist that words either must or must not appear in the results with the + and - characters. With Google these operators are seemingly just hints that it feels free to ignore.

+noir +film -"pinot noir"

<comment><USER8> I'm nostagic for precise search, but I wonder how it would have fared with the scale we have now.

(Edit: scale and diversity of input data but also audiences)

Google regularly fails to include all words I searched (even if it's only three or four), often retrieving completely useless results. I doubt it's due to incompetence; I take it as a signal that they're now struggling to match the volume and characteristics of the data they have to ingest to an adequate user experience.

<comment><USER9> I suspect it's a reflection of the way the majority of their audience interacts with search.

For a large number of people, Google's ability to answer the underlying question, rather than explicitly identify pages where all search terms appear, means it works better. If you think of Google as a way to get answers, this is good.

If you think of Google as a search engine, and particularly if you have historical experience with (and expectations of) search engines, this is very frustrating. And the workarounds of clicking the "must contain" link (or surrounding all of your search terms with quotation marks) are a seemingly unnecessary inconvenience.

As a personal anecdote, I was an early adopter of smartphones (particularly relative to a non-technical audience). So I was excited when I could speak to my phone, then disappointed when I discovered that I had to structure my queries and instructions very carefully.

A few years ago I was on a road trip with a very non-technical friend. We decided to stop for Chipotle. Had it been up to me, I would probably have pulled out my phone, opened Google Assistant (or perhaps Maps directly), and told my phone (speaking as clearly as possible) "navigate to the closest Chipotle" or something similar.

But I was driving, so she just pulled out her iPhone and half-shouted "I want a burrito!" at it. And that worked just fine.

Point being, I had expectations for how things should work based on interactions with earlier iterations of an interface. She didn't.

<comment><USER10> > If you think of Google as a search engine, and particularly if you have > historical experience with (and expectations of) search engines, this is > very frustrating. And the workarounds of clicking the "must contain" link > (or surrounding all of your search terms with quotation marks) are a > seemingly unnecessary inconvenience.

Google really needs to develop a "pro mode" search engine that works for this use case. I get the need for an "answers engine" for less savvy users and more casual use cases, but it's a _massive_ company. It can afford to execute two products in its core competency (rather than umpteen messaging apps that it will kill, along with a lot of other useless and/or doomed stuff).

<comment><USER11> "Google really needs to" in the sense that it would be useful, or that it would be a good investment for them? Sure it can afford to do it, but how would it help them make more money?

<comment><USER12> > Sure it can afford to do it, but how would it help them make more money? > reply

It keeps the power users on the site so they wont have to look for an alternative. Power users if they find something better might influence no power users to the other site

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A few historical notes: Paul Flaherty (1964-2006) was a principal engineer at the the Digital Equipment Network Research Laboratory. Paul is credited with having the idea for Alta Vista, but I think that it was Andy Freeman's sudden flash of insight that led to Paul's development.

Paul had been in Italy at a trade show; when he returned he talked with Brian Reid, who headed the Lab, about the need to find a demonstration project that showed off the top-of-the-line Alpha computers.

Paul and Andy and I used to have lunch together frequently. At one point, just after Paul returned from Italy, we were talking about Internet search at lunch. I'd been using the Magellan search engine and had some comments about how useful a better search engine would be.

Andy began talk about the problem and sketched out how a better search engine might work and how a web crawler could gather the information needed to do an index.

Paul listened and then went back to his office and enlisted Brian Reid's help in resourcing a search engine project. Brian got Louis Monier and Mike Burrows involved. The three of them did the hard work of reducing the concept to a real program running on an Alpha computer.

Alta Vista was an instant success with Alta Vista computers overflowing Paul's office and cluttering the hall nearby as the team worked to satisfy market demands for search.

<comment><USER14> They sure used a lot of electricity at DECWRL!

[https://milk.com/wall-o-shame/bucket.html](https://milk.com/wall-o- shame/bucket.html)

<comment><USER15> Wow! But talk about a story that ended too soon. I want to hear about repercussions for the restaurant!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I recall a dinner party where a few people were discussing the web, probably 1994. Essentially we all agreed the web was unusable because it was too hard to find what you were looking for; the best ideas we had for solving that problem were pretty bad.

Google changed the world. What used to be buried on the 3rd or 4th page of Altavista results, if it appeared at all, was suddenly front and center. (Yahoo's directory was rarely useful at all.)

I'm not a fan of Google today, but for years I would tell everyone I knew about it.

(Edit: fixed the year.)

<comment><USER17> Do you think Google is the new AOL? Way back AOL had their homepage where you saw an AOL recommended part of the web. You still had access to the web but for most first time users it was easier to use than a web browser alone.

I say this because I've been wondering if we now have a Google snapshot of the web instead of AOLs homepage. Don't get me wrong search is much better than a more or less static homepage of topics.

Are we all in a Google search bubble?

<comment><USER18> One of those "Google is the new AOL" moments hit me when I heard a commercial for Google on the radio recently. Specifically, it was someone explaining that they had a feature built especially for veterans to find jobs relevant to them, and that you could get to it by typing "jobs for veterans" into Google search.

It just sounded so much like the old AOL Keyword feature, which a lot of people forgot about, but was literally often advertised on TV or radio as how to get to a given site or web feature.

<comment><USER19> I do not understand how you guys can call Google the new AOL, Google search works like a charm at a huge scale. What is the problem?

<comment><USER20> I think the crux of the others' point is that Google's increasingly complex secret sauce for returning search results, combined with its general ubiquity, has perhaps created a monoculture whereby we view the Web almost entirely through Google's lens. AOL's "curation" of the web via its portal was a bit more direct for sure, but I can see how the effect could be similar.

<comment><USER21> Oh believe me you can find all sorts of non curated filth as well using Google as well. I think it is still a pretty good engine for "if you insist, here is the path to rabbit hole". If you let google know about you, it will tune the results for you. I keep my history for this reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Altavista were also the first ones doing online translation.

babelfish.altavista.com, anyone remember that?

The Babelfish being Douglas Adams' fictional fish that you stuck in your ear to use as a universal translator.

there was also a fake domain called alta-vista.com that was very much of the goatse variety.

<comment><USER23> There was also astalavista which hosted crackz, key-generators, and similar things.

The name always amused me, partly as a homage to the Terminator franchise, and partly Altavista.

<comment><USER24> And they had an amazing forum, I remember learning Photoshop there and reverse engineering with a group called FFF (Does anything remember a guy with the mr clean profile pic, Mr. X i think..?). Then they decided to redesign the forum and everyone left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Altavisa and astalavista for years! Astalavista was for your all your serialz, crackz and porn passwords back in the day of http basic auth and 56.6k modems

<comment><USER26> Astalavista! Reminds me of warez listings and downloading Photoshop for days.

<comment><USER27> The popups. Oh god the popups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> ... and in 2019 the "digital.com" domain is apparently hosted by a site that can't handle the traffic of this article. SPECIAL BONUS: Their current robots.txt appears to be blocking the old Digital.com pages from the WayBack machine. Argh.

<comment><USER29> The Internet Archive stopped honoring robots.txt back in 2017 because "Robots.txt meant for search engines don't work well for web archives"

Not sure without a bit more digging whether they honor explicit rules for their crawler.

Edit: (but a little looking at comments indicates that they don't, and notes that ia_archiver is Alexa, not the Internet Archive)

<comment><USER28> Hmmm, and their robots.txt seems to not be at fault. I wonder if they excluded it to not overlap with Alta Vista, still it's tragic that digital.com isn't browsable in the wayback machine.

<comment><USER29> This may be a question of age. DEC was acquired by Compaq in 1998, then the IA was only a couple years old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As I vaguely recall, from my own perceptions as web search was arriving:

* There were a bunch of early "full-text"-ish search experiments, but Lycos best proved its immense value and potential first.

* Then, AltaVista arrived with breadth & speed beyond what had previously been possible. Still, it required a bit of expertise to craft your queries.

* Then, Excite burst ahead with a _quality_ breakthrough. Something about their use of HTML-styling & in-link text meant that even with fewer sites, the results were much better.

* Then, Hotbot (powered by Inktomi) had an era of best mix of fresh-content, deep-content, and quality ranking.

* Then, all those pioneers dropped the ball, in one way or another, letting Google out-rank, out-crawl, and out-business-model them. (And much of Google's business-model was pioneered by "Goto", later "Overture".) Sad, really, especially how many coulda-shoulda competitors eventually died inside Yahoo. (Including Overture.)

<comment><USER31> This is right on. To add some color from my memory as a Lycos employee, it felt that many of the early search engines dropped by the ball in their rush become "portals". There was this mass delusion that it was important to hold the user's attention as long as possible in order to serve more ads--to own or otherwise control the content that users ultimately ended up at. Web search itself was seen as a commodity. This didn't seem so obviously wrong at the time. The Web was so much smaller.

<comment><USER32> I had say 2000 buble bursting also played part. It was easier to survive for a nimble startup and hard for behemoth with huge employee count and little revenues. I wonder if that didn't happened then if we would have more competition in this space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "...AltaVista was essentially a test case for one of Digital's supercomputers, the AlphaServer 8400 TurboLaser."

I loved the seeming technical excesses of Digital so much. Nothing they did seemed as calm and staid as Cray, Sun or even SGI.

Think about that name - _Alpha Server 8400 Turbo Laser_

<comment><USER34> The "8400" part almost seems arbitrary to the rest of the name

<comment><USER35> Everyone still names their crap like this. "Dell Optiplex 7010" or "Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GTI RTX ETC ETC" gives me absolutely zero information about the product other than what to google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If I remember correctly, Altavista produced better results than Google back then, for me at least. However, Altavista took seconds to load the first page (on 56k) whereas Google's first page loaded almost immediately.

I honestly didn't expect Google to have survived the dot-com bust back then. This was before they figured out online adword auctions.

<comment><USER37> Google was immediately better then anything else from day one. Google was launched in Fall of 1997. In January 98 is when I started using it and it was hands down better then crawlers or any other search engine.

<comment><USER36> I fear all we have now is anecdotal evidence. :-) In my case, it was a gradual conversion to Google from Altavista than something immediate.

So, funny thing: Back then, if one search engine didn't have what you were looking for, you would try another. Now, if Google doesn't have what you are looking for, where do you go? Does it mean the answer does not exist on the Internet? Do you try Bing or Duck?

<comment><USER38> Duck is Bing.

[https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-Bing-API-used-by- DuckDuckGo](https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-Bing-API-used-by-DuckDuckGo)

There are effectively only two competitive search engines in the U.S. and European markets today. In those markets, Bing is the only market pressure keeping Google honest.

<comment><USER39> DDG is just a whitelabeled Bing? That's interesting.

<comment><USER40> There are only three major worldwide English language indexes—Google, Bing and Yandex. For all the praise DDG gets here, it couldn't exist without Bing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I remember having 'a go on the Internet' round my friends house in the early nineties. He said go on type anything you want to know about.

So I searched for 'Amiga games'. It came back with a screen full of junk.

I looked at my friend and said 'none of this has anything to do with Amiga games'.

He said no you need to '+computer' '-Spanish'.

I said to him, 'who's crappy idea was this?'

Needless to say we all got better at booolean searches and Altavista was light years ahead of yahoo.

Google was a welcome change, made the internet a cool place for about 10 years.

</comment><comment> m-p-3 The website seems to be struggling, I pinned it on my IPFS node using 2read.net

[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmQXeXmMMVfPL9Syqgkoo8zLf6noGrSnGFbnetL...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmQXeXmMMVfPL9Syqgkoo8zLf6noGrSnGFbnetLHT2o79H)

If other IPFS users wants to pin that to distribute the load, that'd be great.

<comment><USER42> thanks, worked for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > On its launch day in 1995, the new search engine saw around 300,000 > visitors. One year later in 1996, it was serving 19 million visitors each > day.

> (hardware) up to: 12 64bit 350MHz processor, 14GB RAM, 39TB storage

220 hits/s dynamic content on that is _very_ impressive.

</comment><comment><USER44> The main reason I started using Altavista was because it was faster. I don't know why this wasn't mentioned in the article, it was one of main points of the Altavista architecture.

We probably can't appreciate it because Google is truly FAST and we are spoiled by it. But the alternative search engines were slow, slow, slow.

</comment><comment><USER45> I remember having to use all those meta search engines that combined the results of several engines together to average out all the trash of each result set, and then Google appeared and was better than that.

<comment><USER46> Dogpile!

Makes you wonder about stuff like Kayak today in the travel space. Is there some better way out there waiting to be found?

<comment><USER47> sadly enough the answer here is also google. flights.google.com hotels.google.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Vividly remember why AltaVista failed -- they monetized way TOO QUICKLY. Everyone was griping about its sluggishness. Then a few months later a friend pointed me to this new google.com thingy, with its minimalist page, and no ads!

</comment><comment><USER49> The link repeatedly gives me nothing but

403 Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /about/altavista/ on this server.

<comment><USER50> Likewise. Since this was live.

<comment><USER49> Ah, could it be that his site is one of the crazy American sites that deny readers from the EU access because of GDPR? I am in the EU.

Well, I don't think this article is worth finding out.

<comment><USER51> Canadian here, I'm blocked as well and we don't have GDPR

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Altavista was a great showcase on how powerfull servers and internet were at that era: before it, internet was considered something that needed Yellow Pages to be viable. With altavista the content gained relevance over the location, suddenly you didn't need to know where to find it, knowing what you wanted was enought.

Google was a big step afterwards, showing that even when you know what you want, you might not express it correctly, so having some ranking on results was helpful.

</comment><comment><USER53> Altavista was my favorite search engine before Google. Being able to put in a query (which could have logical expressions) instead of a directory of links was awesome!

</comment><comment><USER54> The approach that Altavista took didn't scale with web growth. It was based on the idea of database searching, where the engine was supposed to return all pages that matched a query. This meant that you couldn't expect to type a generic term and get a useful result; you'd be overwhelmed with random pages. You could find pages that contained an exact phrase, and this could be useful for finding out what some error message means. But as the web exploded in size, the results you could easily get from Altavista got worse and worse; you could fight by adding more and more qualifiers to filter out what you didn't want, but junk results were mixed in with good results.

That's why Yahoo had a business: search engines were of limited use pre- Google, so you needed a hand-curated list to find the good stuff on the web.

Google was first to figure out an effective algorithm to rank results by quality. People immediately stepped in to try to game the system with link farms, junk tags and the like, but even so, it was a revolution.

</comment><comment><USER55> Starting 2005 both altavista and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlltheWeb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlltheWeb) were just frontend templates and CSS stylesheets around the Yahoo search, even ran on the same servers. I'm surprised Yahoo kept the separate brands live until 2011.

</comment><comment><USER56> "Yahoo closed AltaVista quietly in 2013."

Wow - what must have it been like to work on/for AltaVista in late 2012? Seems like a kind of extreme professional exile at that point.

</comment><comment><USER57> A case of Baader-Meinhof today: I was reading about AltaVista an hour or so before this was posted. (Hyperlink trail: DARPA's Memex -> Memex -> Paul Flaherty)

</comment><comment><USER58> Not mentioned in this article, there was an attempt to reboot Altavista into a Google competitor: raging.com

[https://www.geek.com/news/altavista-is- raging-565120/](https://www.geek.com/news/altavista-is-raging-565120/)

</comment><comment><USER59> Although it is a historical (and disavowed) footnote, the Open Text Index launched in April 1995 and sported full text indexing of web pages -- more than 6 months before Alta Vista's launch in December that year.

It did serve as a back-end search for Yahoo! though it never could keep up with the full query volume. It was lambasted by the creators of Google for experimenting with putting clearly-marked ads in search results. That transgression looks hilariously quaint to modern eyes.

[https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/72/Open- Text-C...](https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/72/Open-Text- Corporation.html)

</comment><comment><USER60> When David Wetherell, of CMGI fame, bought Alta Vista and was driving it to the IPO, I remember telling him urgently that Google was eating AV lunch. He just brushed me off, as if I was telling him nonsense. Same fate with Lycos and if you will Yahoo.

</comment><comment><USER61> I have to admit there are times when I miss Altvista, particularly since the quality of Google's search results has plummeted for me to the point where DDG is at least equally good.

I really, really miss those boolean operators.

</comment><comment><USER62> Anyone else getting "You don't have permission to access /about/altavista/ on this server." ?

<comment><USER63> Didn't you hear? They stopped updating their indexes.

/s

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I think the main takeaway from this is really conception. There was a problem that a team set about to solve. They were left on their own to operate because solving search wasn't really what the company was interested in, as much as showing how powerful their computers were.

Left to their own devices Altavista became a successful search engine because it was able to focus on what users really wanted from search and do tremendous pioneering in that area.

It was my default search engine of choice before google gained steam.

However, from there, once value was created corporate entities began to try and extract more value. Now the user was no longer front and center, and unless the business decisions coincided with what the user wanted you would obviously begin to move the product further and further away from it's core user benefits.

This is a very typical processes in most businesses. Businesses till think that their needs come first, rather than their customers/users. This happens so frequently that it really is a just insane that no one addresses it. Eventually those business people get enough things wrong that they are left no choice but to return to the core of what made them successful and just hope that the market hasn't moved away to a competitor.

In Altavista's case the market had already shifted.

Doesn't matter how many books you write on this subject this continues to occur and really highlights the need for a strong product focused CEO so that they can ensure that the customer comes first and the business second.

</comment><comment><USER65> Lycos is still running.

[https://www.lycos.com](https://www.lycos.com)

</comment><comment><USER66> DEC was based in Maynard, MA not CA. We had a couple excellent teams in the Bay area that were acquired from Xerox as I recall. The Systems Research Center in Palo Alto and WRL.

AltaVista was not the only business that DEC failed to capitalize on. We had an $800M networking business when Cisco was just starting. DEC defunded that business to invest more in other projects. We had a storage server business that we sold to a little company call EMC too. It's quite sad...

<comment><USER32> Number of things DEC missed out on: personal computer, DOS, search engine, networking, storage.

How can something having so much lead keep missing out on so big? What they could have done differently?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> DEC wanted to sell Alphaservers (and VMS). Altavista was a great demonstration of scale and speed and distributed computing (versus a giant mainframe). Crawling and indexing speed. Tons of open ip connections, security,etc were all selling points. Bring large customers to see the physical Altavista and also the ip exchange helped sell lots of systems. DEC was a hardware company. Google wasn't. Made a lot of difference in priorities.

<comment><USER32> So DEC missed out on IBM PC revolution, Microsoft DOS and now search engines!

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I use to be an Altavista user. In Middle School one of my teachers showed us Google in the computer lab and I've been using it ever since. What I remember standing out at the time was Google's UI; it was just a logo, a text input, and two buttons. I thought that was neat and just kept using it after that. The search results may have been better, but that wasn't why I made the switch.

</comment><comment><USER69> Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /about/altavista/ on this server.

Apache/2.4.10 (Debian) Server at digital.com Port 443

</comment><comment><USER70> I remember being in an Internet Cafe, being as always frustrated by not being able to find anything for my search on both Altavista and Yahoo. Back then Altavista was my primary search engine, but I hated it.

The I saw "Google" loaded on another computer and decided to try it out. The difference in quality was overwhelming, in that first session it made me smile and made an instant convert out of me.

Another difference is that Google did not have any ads initially, and when they finally added ads, they were clearly highlighting them as ads, instead of masking them as regular search results. And overall their interface was really clean compared with their competition.

I don't know if it was my search patterns, maybe other people had a different experience, but the difference was night and day.

Even today, I may whine and moan about Google, but their Search is still the best and I'm saying this as a DuckDuckGo user.

</comment><comment><USER71> I like reading this comment thread on why google may have been superior to altavista. It gives a more "adult" perspective on something I remember as a kid.

I was in middle or high school, and remember using several different search engines: altavista, lycos, yahoo, dogpile, etc. they all were bulky portals and search results probably weren't great (that's why I used so many).

Then one day a friend said "hey have you used google?" I said no, and he showed me.

-it was clean/simple

-the search page (and results) loaded really fast

-the search results must've been better as well

-I remember I liked the quirkiness of it too. It felt fun to use Google

From that day on I only remember using Google, until recently given their size, been using Duck Duck Go more often. It's pretty good for regular search (though maybe 10% queries return some less relevant results than Google) but product search still has a long way to go.

</comment><comment><USER72> I'd like to see the source code for Altavista released to the Computer History Museum. I think it is of historical significance. If anyone knows who currently has that code, please post a comment. I think there is a lot to learn from examining old computer code.

</comment><comment><USER73> I still use 'ping av.com' as a quick test for internet connectivity. Still works even though it's seemingly owned by a Chinese company now.

<comment><USER74> I am in the 'ping ibm.com' camp

<comment><USER75> ping yahoo.com

Old habits die hard.

<comment><USER76> Im a ping 188.8.131.52 guy. Fast to type.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For some reason I don't recall using Altavista very much. I was aware of it, but I remember using AskJeeves and Yahoo search much more.

</comment><comment><USER77> As a European early adopter I still remember the day i switched from recommending Altavista to all my friends and family to Google. Speed was definitely not the reason. It was purely about the usefulness of the results. There was just a point in time where Google surpassed everyone else in relevance of the 1st page of results, and there was no going back.

<comment><USER32> Do you remember the year this happened for you?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Google cached version of site: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:i-IE6l...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:i-IE6lZl8LIJ:https://digital.com/about/altavista/+&cd=1&hl=hr&ct=clnk&gl=hr&client=opera)

</comment><comment><USER78> I remember getting a free polo shirt with the AltaVista logo embroidered on it. I don't recall the specific circumstances that led to being sent a shirt, and I wore holes in it so I no longer have it, but it really was superior to the alternatives before Google came along.

</comment><comment><USER79> Domain related. Digital.com later sold, AV.com sold. Premium domains everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER80> Ca. 1996 we implemented ad blocking Altavista in our corporate net through DNS rewrites because the ads were already annoying back then. Comparatively small but also with comparatively low bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER81> I still remember exactly the day a friend of mine called me, saying: "There is this new search engine, it's so much cleaner than Altavista, and better, it jus has a strange name: google"

</comment><comment><USER82> What I miss is how well it rendered on mobile phones. My handset is pretty old, the relatively lightweight page was a pleasure to use.

</comment><comment><USER83> Alta Vista was great. The skill was in the user, yhough, not the algorithm. Construct searches like:

(word AND word) NEAR (word OR word)

and it worked great.

</comment><comment><USER84> I used to use something called webcrawler as a kid. Was it a search engine or just a meta-search engine?

</comment><comment><USER85> I even used the free dial-up (ad-supported) internet that Altavista provided back in the day!

</comment><comment><USER86> I preferred allinone.com instead. Comedy to see different iframes of search knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER87> I remember that they payed $3 million dollars for the altavista.com domain.

</comment><comment><USER88> Prior to Google I liked infind.com meta-search

</comment><comment><USER89> pizza "deep dish" +Chicago

</comment><comment><USER90> Before Google, companies operated like a government office. I suppose, Google brought in a shift in thinking of internet companies.

</comment><comment><USER91> No permission to access ...

<comment><USER92> same thing

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Anyone remember hotbot?

</comment><comment><USER93> I miss HotBot. Anyone remember that?

<comment><USER94> That was probably the best single engine before Google. Around the same time, I also used the meta-search site dogpile.com - which still exists.

<comment><USER95> Surprised no-one has mentioned metacrawler so far:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaCrawler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaCrawler)</comment></comment></comment>


Algorithmic Governance and Political Legitimacy - <AUTHOR> https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/05/algorithmic-governance-and-political-legitimacy/ <comment><USER2> _The rationale offered is that automated decision-making will be more reliable. But a further attraction is that it serves to insulate various forms of power from popular pressures._

Who in their right mind would argue that? The benefit is that it's a lot faster. If machine learning worked as well as mechanical engineering, we would have a serious industrial revolution on our hands.

<comment><USER3> > If machine learning worked as well as mechanical engineering, we would have > a serious industrial revolution on our hands.

True, but it can be non-obvious that algorithms can produce such problems.

Also an unexpected result from an algorithm can be compared to an unexpected result from an application of law, including a consequence of a contract. Like one can complain that an algorithm is wrong for whatever reason in a particular case, similarly one can complain that a law requires some unfair things in some case, or a contract leads to some actually non-agreed consequence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those interested in this topic, BBC's documentary _All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace_ is a great watch covering everything from communes, and Any Rand's influence upon the founders of Silicon valley, and of course Algorithmic Governance.

"All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is a BBC television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis In the series, Curtis argues that computers have failed to liberate humanity, and instead have 'distorted and simplified our view of the world around us.'"[0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_\(TV_series\))</comment>


Apple told some Apple TV+ show developers not to anger China - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/apple-china-tv-protesters-hong-kong-tim-cook <comment><USER2> Apple are beholden to China. Sure, China is a huge market for them but I think the bigger issue is manufacturing: if they piss China off they won't have anything to sell, anywhere! I'm sure Apple execs know this and I hope they're quickly planning to reduce, if not remove this dependency.

<comment><USER3> Chinese people are also beholden to China (the government). It may be a political game to you, but trying to destabilize the government would have serious consequences to the livelihoods of the people there, just because some policies (that don't affect you) don't agree with your world view.

Even though there are kinks in their regime, for the most part they've lifted hundreds or millions out of poverty. Imagine if the U.S. had a massive foreign power prodding it during the early years of slavery, manifest destiny (the justification for eradicating the Native Americans), racism, drug war, Vietnam, and mass incarceration.

Yes, they have a big brother-style regime, but they are also capable of sorting out their own political issues. And if not, they'll reap the consequences without you having to do it form them.

If you really believe in democracy, then trying to influence their politics from afar is ultimately going to be far-less democratic than they influencing their own politics. I understand they don't have directly elections or a multi-party system, but that does not mean there is not opinion sharing in policy decisions, or intra-party elections. In a representative form of government direct-elections are not really a thing anyways.

If you truly support democracy, the last thing you would do is to try to influence the policies of another people. That would be robbing them of their self-determinacy, even if it is to prevent them from robbing themselves of it.

<comment><USER4> That is very much a Mainland Chinese World view, which is accurate to the point of only to Mainland Chinese people, and no offence intended.

>they've lifted hundreds or millions out of poverty

And they did, by first and foremost down to joining WTO.

Once this government starts ( and has already done so ) influence or force Rest of the world to cooperate or kowtowing to their own self interest, which fundamentally undermines everyone else basic value and principles, then it is no longer their _own_ policy and issues.

And that is about as civilised as I can put it.

<comment><USER3> > That is very much a Mainland Chinese World view, which is accurate to the > point of only to Mainland Chinese people, and no offence intended.

Yes because this is a Mainland issue. So only Mainland opinions are legitimate. They enact their policies with their best interests in mind, however misguided it may be because a foreigner can only enact policies with their own interests in mind, however well-guided they may be. A white person probably shouldn't go into a black community to tell them how they should run things for their best interests.

The issue isn't that they are doing something right or wrong—all governments will enact policies that are disagreeable... the US included (in the case of Edward Snowden). The issue is that to the Chinese they will never take the protests of foreigners seriously because foreigners will have their own interests in mind, not to mention are generally poorly educated about _Chinese_ policy decisions in general.

Trying to influence policy from afar is simply a form of taxation without representation. A foreigner really should have no say in the policy decisions of afar because 1) they do not have to suffer the consequences of the policies, 2) they cannot understand the experiences leading to such policy decisions and 3) as a result of 1 and 2 they will always have _their own_ interests in mind rather than those or their constituents. Imagine a product manager in the US trying to manage a product built by a team of engineers in China for the Chinese market. He'll sure fail because he will have no grasp pf the product in practice being used over there, and for that reason anyone that detached from something should not be trying to exert influence for their own interests.

A poor inner city black family may have a whole different set of daily problems than a rich white suburban family. Imagine if the white family admonishes the black family because their kids are failing school or dealing drugs. In absolute terms dealing drugs is wrong, illegal, and failing school may be a sign of bad parenting, but in reality the needs and priorities of the black family are on a completely different level from the white family.

Disenfranchising the Chineses' right to self-govern because of your limited frame of reference that they are _doing it wrong_ is myopic. Waging political and ideological war against them because they do things differently is the true crime. You should criticize their bad policies by pointing out why they are bad, not by disenfranchising and belittling the voice of the rest of the population.

<comment><USER5> You talk a big talk about right and wrong, but it's clear to everyone that the CCP is intent on not honoring the agreement that HK be allowed to elect their own leader.

That's what this is about: tyranny versus freedom. It's disingenuous and frankly racist to compare this struggle to what a poor family lives through, and then conflating that with their skin color. I'm sure there are legitimate concerns with regards to the justice for minorities, but your argument is that that's only the concern of black people? No. Your argument is a very typical CCP stance that the West best keep out of their dealings. No, I say, let's stand for freedom and democracy when it is truly being attacked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I see lots of trailers for upcoming Apple TV+ shows that look vaguely interesting, but then I remind myself that it's Apple and they'd never risk doing anything even remotely edgy, racy, subversive or controversial.

Don't want to risk offending someone and harming the brand and it's squeaky- clean, inoffensive values!

<comment><USER7> They shouldn't even be in the content creation business. But shareholders demand their 10% growth every year.

iTunes was great, but can you imagine Apple-made music?

<comment><USER8> U2 but with rounded corners!

<comment><USER9> So, U2 from _All That You Can 't Leave Behind_ onwards?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apple used to say "Think Different" \- perhaps allowing individuality and creativity. Overwhelmingly, it now feels like they want us all to think in the same Apple ordained way.

</comment><comment><USER11> What I don't understand is how the US accepts doing business with China, allowing tourist and student visas for a country that can just block US companies from doing business there without due process

The moment the CCP tried to influence a US company the US should have responded in kind - open the market or face tariffs

<comment><USER12> Exactly. Some people probably knew well before 2012, but since the publication of Why Nations Fail it should be more common knowledge that doing business with an extractive political system makes very little difference in their chance of becoming inclusive. (A better economy does not translate into better politics.)

It's upon other political systems to ratchet open these totalitarianist systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. American companies: don't piss off China. 2\. American companies: make more money than ever before from China. 3\. China now controls those companies even without holding majority shares. 4\. ...

</comment><comment><USER13> So, Apple has become China's bitch or was it already?

Thanks for increasing the influence of authoritarian regimes in our Western world.

Last time I checked, freedom of speech is a human right.

Thanks for not defending it.

With a gay ceo on top ( with all respect, it means they should better respect/understand Western values and freedom than other companies), these actions make clear that privacy and security are not on top of apple's list as they claim. It's profits and nothing else. They just pack innovation to have another POV and privacy and security was the easy tactic.

Screw you, crApple.

</comment><comment><USER14> Remember when the US entertainment industry was considered part of American soft power? I guess that is now Chinese soft power?

</comment><comment><USER15> As said hk is the frontier. You can't fight the dragon who has such a large market and production empire. You can't. We know.

We fight still.

Not because we see hope. But we fight may be we can have hope. Or our kids. Or our grand. Or at least we can tell them we do not run like our father and grands. We stay and fight.

</comment><comment><USER16> > _"Given how authentically good Apple is at protecting user privacy, it 's > very dismaying to see it doing the wrong thing in other areas, especially > its relationship with the [Chinese Communist Party]," one former Apple > employee told BuzzFeed News._

Apple seriously needs to stop knee jerk reactions and pause to think about the values its been trumpeting. Its actions seem to portray a company that will say things that are favorable to it in the market. I don't believe that to be the case in every instance with Apple, but soon these actions will drown out the positives it has done on its own initiative.

The sooner Apple moves manufacturing out of China, the better for it and others. There are many other markets it can make money in.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure it's realistic for many or any countries to move manufacturing out of China. Say assembly is moved out of China, they still need to source the parts, and how far do you go with this? To the point where Apple is making, in their own factories, every resistor, capacitor, logic IC, ribbon connector, PCB etc? This would seem to require a reversal of the changes in manufacturing that have occurred over recent decades in a much shorter period of time.

I am no fan of China - in the news recently a couple of our politicians have been called out as having a 'cold war mentality' just because they pointed out there differences between Australian and Chinese values - but I have to keep using Apple devices to develop and support software for clients. Likewise, I bet no matter what Apple does there will be others who stick with them as a matter of commercial reality. 'Commercial reality' has been and will continue to be China's way to be a mandatory part of world events.

<comment><USER18> Why is not realistic? Just look at Samsung's Vietnam operation -- there are now over 200 suppliers who relocated and set up shops in Vietnam. There are also now at least dozens of domestic suppliers and contractors supplying parts for Samsung. Samsung is the largest producer of smartphones in the world and most of their mobile devices now come from Vietnam, contrary to Tim Apple's ridiculous claim that no large scale electronic production is possible outside China.

<comment><USER17> How many of those basic components still are manufactured in China? My argument was that it's impossible to remove China completely from the supply and manufacturing chain, not that it's impossible to move 'production' outside of China.

<comment><USER18> I'm guessing probably none today. The smartphone business is heavily commodified at this point and there is no "basic components" that be made exclusively only in China. As I noted earlier in my comment, there are over 200 suppliers and subcontractors who set up shops and make basic parts for Samsung in Vietnam. Further, none of the "key" components such as AP, memory, storage, wireless radio, display, or glass, is made in China. Lastly, considering South Korea's recent brouhaha over THAAD, no South Korean company wants any further economic risk from political conflict with China and have been severing their dependency on Chinese suppliers last two years.

<comment><USER17> Thank you for the extra information, looks like my info and hence opinion is not up-to-date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "anyone who would betray their ideals just to make money in China isn't worth a lick of spit." \- Stan South Park

<comment><USER20> How is Apple betraying their ideals here? The entire point of Apple as a for- profit company is to earn a profit. They are doing what they are saying is the most important for them. Big surprise?

Seems many Americans think that companies somehow have to have a moral or something. The explicit purpose of setting up a for-profit company is to make it explicit that the company is out after earning a profit.

If there is a choice between two options, and one will lead to less profit, the choice is obvious to them. If you think Apple is "for encryption" because they are just the good guys, you're missing the picture of why a company exists in the first place.

<comment><USER21> If you are content with letting any company or executive off the hook with everything because "the purpose of a corporation is to increase shareholder value" then you have given up on democratic society.

<comment><USER20> I'm not content with that, but people seems to have the wrong expectations about what a for-profit is all about. Of course, there are ways to get profit that are illegal, but agreeing to self-censor (or be censored) by states is up to the companies. If it gives them more money, you can't be shocked when they chose that way.

I would only put trust in organizations who are not for-profit companies if it's for important things. I couldn't care less about food-delivery services for middle-class and above, but for hospitals, prisons, water, electricity and so on, you can't have (well, you can [look at the US], but usually doesn't turn out great for the people, only the stakeholders) for-profit companies running them as the incentives are all misaligned.

<comment><USER22> If Apple was transparently a profit-at-all-costs operation you'd have a point, but if you look at their advertisements you'll see them invoking humanistic values constantly. They should, at the very least, be criticized for hypocrisy.

<comment><USER20> "if you look at their advertisements you'll see them invoking humanistic values constantly"

The reason companies do this is not to be a friendly company in general and care about the world and it's people. If that was the point, they would have created a non-profit or similar. The criticism of hypocrisy should come when they make those ads instead.

Look at the Activision/Blizzard situation where a player was banned for speaking for a cause they believe in, they release different statements in different countries (one pro-China in China and one not pro-China in the US), and applies different rules in different cases where it makes sense for the market. In China, shouldn't speak about freedom for Hong-Kong and in the US, it's important you support LGBT. The company will reflect that in their advertisement, where they want people to buy their products.

<comment><USER22> And when they're caught lying, they should be criticized and penalized in the marketplace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Every world power worth the title forces trading partners to treat it like a delicate flower or otherwise lose the opportunity to trade and even though the US is the current largest economy in the world China is on track to surpass it so US companies have almost no choice but to appease the heavy-handed Chinese government.

<comment><USER24> > Every world power worth the title forces trading partners to treat it like a > delicate flower or otherwise lose the opportunity to trade and even though > the US is the current largest economy in the world China is on track to > surpass it so US companies have almost no choice but to appease the heavy- > handed Chinese government.

Yes, but what China does is go one step further by making extremely clear that Western corporations who want to do business with China don't disparage the Chinese government publicly, don't talk about Tibet, don't call Taiwan a free country...

And every company has the choice, it's just that they chose to abide by Chinese rules, that's all.

I mean the bill always comes due, always. For 30+ years the west has depended on China to produce consumer grade products such has high tech, toys, and what not, looking the other way when it comes to human rights, and now people are complaining that a bloody dictatorship behaves like one? When trade agreements were signed, why did no other world power imposed ethical conditions on China? Because building our stuff in a bloody dictatorship to drive down cost is what all the west wanted, that's all.

It's a bit easy to wake up 30+ years later and act all surprised that there are political consequences to this.

Look at Hollywood, the biggest propaganda tool in the world, bending over backward not to offend China because of their cinema market. All these "actors/activists" so vocal about everything, you never hear them talking about China curiously, That's the bill I was talking about earlier. Now they work for China.

<comment><USER25> The blindspot most people have here towards atrocities committed by Western governments is really striking. The United States regularly invades other countries (causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, destroying Libya), armed Sunni extremists in Syria, backs the Saudi dictatorship and the Israeli occupation, is economically strangling Iran and Venezuela, ran a global abduction and torture operation, still runs a global assassination program, and spies on the communications of billions of people around the world. Yet suddenly, everyone is up in arms about China as the threat to the world that must be stopped. This sudden paranoia just happens to coincide with American foreign policy interests - preventing the rise of a challenge to American hegemony.

A couple months ago it was Russia. Now it's China. In a year from now, it will be the next country it's convenient to US foreign policy to hate.

<comment><USER23> I'm not at all thinking that the US is exempt from atrocities of foreign policy from regime change to unfounded wars. The one distinction that exists is that elected officials are the ones that carry these things out in the US such that in some way all Americans carry the burden of those actions, in China, not so much. Xi has taken steps to be leader for his lifetime; China is carrying out mass camps where Uighurs are being systematically targeted for their religion among other things. Being an American, I know I can be blind to my government's policies and how they affect other nations, I mean, we use the fact that the US dollar is the world reserve currency such that it can use the power of the US Treasury to wield the banking system to shut down nation banks. Great power, much responsibility and all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> noah-kun American films often use military assets and personal, and give the military final cut on the films. They follow rules set by the navy, Air Force, etc to portray their personnel and decision making in a certain, glorifying way. This program has been rampant in US film, but it's arguably increased in it's offerings to film makers; more money, more sets, more extras--and more demands. Film franchises work with U.S. forces to produce recruitment material using the film's IP, story, actors and brand.

Black Mirror, from memory, season 3 episode 5(?), a soldier fights a non-human enemy that is simply hiding from them. [Spoiler ahead] Turns out, military manipulation of the soldier's brain causes him to see non-humans where there are actually helpless humans.

Independence Day 2 lent their story, one of fighting alien invasion, to US armed forces recruitment videos. Actors gave mock interviews about their brave children who fought the aliens, and viewers were encouraged to join the REAL armed forces to be like the fictional ones fighting the fictional enemy.

This scratches the surface of what I mean to compare Cook's alleged requests to. Apple, without military money, asked writers to be sensitive of another nation. Their motive: a wider audience and more subscribers and customers. Heinous and selfish--sure, why not--but a far cry from recruiting folks to dump napalm on villages or use Iraqi farmers as target practice.

As a freaking media company, producers and other executives ask for content and define the market in which they want to address. It sounds like that's all Apple's really done. And if they've actually made an effort to curb US propaganda about China, then, even better. But I think it's more about expanding to a very promising market.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, the fact that any appearance of US military assets requires Pentagon to approve the script means that Hollwood is unable to record a movie depicting modern US millitary in any critical or non-heroic manner. Is you look at the records, you can see that the requirements are very strict, to the point where many movies aren't even allowed to depict US millitary losing in larger combat operations.

This obviously shifts the tone of any war movie to the point where we could almost call it propaganda. How can movies be true to history if they're not allowed to ever show a major player in a bad light?

<comment><USER27> > Yeah, the fact that any appearance of US military assets requires Pentagon > to approve the script means that Hollwood is unable to record a movie > depicting modern US millitary in any critical or non-heroic manner.

Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon ... There are probably more movies critical of war than promoting it. Actually, the general theme is to display the senseless of war than to glorify it. To say hollywood is in the pocket of the pentagon is to ignore most of its history.

China on the other hand, won't approve a movie if winnie the pooh appears in it.

<comment><USER26> Yes, movies about old operations can be made because you can get/mock hardware without military approval. But note how those are all more than 50 years in the past.

And we didn't even get to censorship of any sexual content, where depictions of human bodies make sure that US will censor it.

It's really hard to be sympathetic to this US hand-wringing where we've had our own content censored constantly under conservative American value system on American platforms.

<comment><USER28> This is a spurious comparison- at the end of the day if you wanted to make a movie or Documentary denouncing the army- you can in america.

You can't in China.

The act of NOT giving resources and bases to film makers is not censorship.

<comment><USER26> It doesn't matter if something is forbidden by directly via law or via indirect pressure of money. The result isn't all that different.

<comment><USER28> Since The results are very different, in practice and observable reality, I would have to say that the statement is wrong.

For all the indirect pressure, anti war movies do exist as do movies that challenge American systems and narratives of superiority - from within their own country.

Dissent is enshrined as a part of existence in america.

In China it is anathema, and they explicitly and implicitly act to maintain that strength.

Hence the whole point of the article - it's not america which is asking Apple to take down apps because they hurt China's image, and it's not America telling the NBA to correct its errors.

When people kneeled in america during football games, or highlighted their protest, it was handled publicly and all sides were audible. political tribes fought over the act on the air waves- but that's something that doesn't happen in China at all; No one was whisked away to a re-education camp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Apple: We're totally LGBTQ friendly!

Also Apple: We make all of our products in a country that brutally oppresses these people!

<comment><USER30> I got the impression Chinese people didn't really have as much of an issue with LGBTQ people as other cultures, because they don't have as much religious hangups as people from a christian background. Is that inaccurate? I know the Chinese government suppresses speech it doesn't like, but is it actively doing things against LGBTQ people? Honest question.

<comment><USER31> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_China)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This makes me want to anger China. What would be the best way to go about it for an individual person?

<comment><USER33> As one person? I'd go with art and/or memes. Winnie the Pooh is verboten in China because one person made a comparison of Xi to Winnie and it took off. I know some people are doing this with Overwatch (creating art and memes of Mei supporting the Hong Kong protests) with the idea of getting Overwatch banned in China as well.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Winnie is a Canadian-British treasure and it makes me a little disappointed that he gets to be associated with someone like Xi. I do understand that it undermines the strong-arm image, but still...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This whole situation is depressing.

Here's a list of companies that have bent over for Chinese censorship requests:

[https://github.com/caffeine- overload/bandinchina](https://github.com/caffeine-overload/bandinchina)

You can add any others that you know of.

This is what it must have felt like for a sane person watching the Nazis coming into power.

<comment><USER35> I think you should sort them according to importance or categorize them. Otherwise seeing a too long list may lead to outrage fatigue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why does the culture that becomes outraged by offending people's identity also become outraged by China being offended?

</comment><comment><USER37> Why is this such a big deal? If companies can buy product placements in TV shows, I don't see why China can't buy censorship.

Apple, the NBA, Google, and Blizzard are all trying to make money. Somehow shilling for Pepsi is widely accepted, but shilling for China is too far?

<comment><USER38> >Somehow shilling for Pepsi is widely accepted, but shilling for China is too far?

Uhh yes? That's a completely valid line of acceptance for people to have. One of those things harvests organs out of people in concentration camps. How is this confusing?

<comment><USER39> They're not harvesting organs. Criminals who are executed have their organs not go to waste in a coffin.

It's not like they're taking everyone's second kidney.

<comment><USER40> I think it's problematic because it creates perverse incentives to make more criminals. And there are religious / moral concerns about taking parts of your body after you die without consent.

But I also understand that the biggest objections are the religious / moral ones, and I don't know maybe that doesn't bother people as much in China?

<comment><USER41> > I think it's problematic because it creates perverse incentives to make more > criminals.

We have this issue all over the US. Private prison contracts often have a "minimum filled cell" clause that causes penalties to the city/county/state if there are too _few_ people incarcerated.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Makemove – Tinder meets LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://www.makemove.se/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Thanks for your feedback! Our main target group is people who still are in school or just finished. So when the schools open again we are going to get in contact with them. Again, thanks for the feedback kalleeee and if you think of something more please let me know /Sam Englund, Co-Founder Makemove

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice concept. If you get a big user base in the future this will be really valuable for the startup community. How are you planning to attract people?

</comment><comment><USER3> I like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Merci fisenfisen!</comment></comment>


How to linkify Markdown headers in node - <AUTHOR> http://twolfson.com/2013-11-02-how-to-linkify-markdown-headers

<comment><USER2> OP should publish a patch instead of telling people to modify the code by hand, and/or submit a pull request to the repo [1].

[1]: [https://github.com/chjj/marked](https://github.com/chjj/marked)

<comment><AUTHOR> Done and done. [https://github.com/chjj/marked/issues/277](https://github.com/chjj/marked/issues/277)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Octotrack – automatic dependency and security manager for Ruby apps - <AUTHOR> http://octotrack.com <comment><USER2> Was willing to give it a look, but the whole "Sign up and give us full access to your GitHub account" is a real downer and deal breaker.

It's a big ask, and a lot of trust for some Show HN. I'd like to be able to get info on pricing, poke around, and test stuff, before I give away the keys to the castle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Cameron, thank you for your feedback.

Octotrack is not requesting full access to Github, only to the public information and inherently public repos. But nothing concerning private information, that was one of the main objectives.

It would be great if you could try it out. Thank you :)

<comment><USER3> _write access_ to public repos. That's not inherently public.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right. I've just removed all access to public repositories, including reading.

Now the only information shared is the user's public information.

Thank you

<comment><USER4> You also get write access to private profile information:

"This application will be able to read and write all user data. This includes the following:

Private email addresses Private profile information Followers"

<comment><AUTHOR> Changed it again to only read access to user email. Thank you for reporting that issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I vaguely remember another service like that from the days I was still doing rails.

The pain is definitely real. We had a 6-year-old rails app that got upgraded from Rails 2.3 and keeping track of dependency decay was painful.

Looking at your landing page, I could not understand how are you solving the problem exactly. The screenshots don't expand so I don't really get the solution.

One very nice feature that you can add and will help a lot is to support comment parsing in the Gemfile and Gemfile.lock. Something like email: firstname.lastname@example.com. When you parse the file, send me the report and don't make me actively visit the page.

Also offer a sample report on your page by submitting a public repo perhaps.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback avitzurel!

I'll provide a sample report on the landing page, add a way to expand the screenshots and provide more information on the sign up process. Octotrack does not access the repositories directly, that was one of the main objectives. Only your email and github public information. Once you create a project, you'll have the option to upload a Gemfile.lock or add a git post- commit hook to your project. From then on, you'll have access to the security vulnerabilities that exist and what dependencies need to be updated as well as other information (such as release notes, etc).

Once again, thank you for the feedback and hope it solves a real pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure how it compares with Octotrack, but we've been using bundler- audit[1] for similar security checks in our dependencies. Here's a sample Dockerfile[2] for running bundler-audit against your Gemfile and Gemfile.lock

1: [https://github.com/rubysec/bundler- audit](https://github.com/rubysec/bundler-audit)

2: [https://gist.github.com/andrewhampton/d78df6952e757fd1038401...](https://gist.github.com/andrewhampton/d78df6952e757fd10384015fdf30a7c4)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Andrew, I was also a bundler-audit user myself. Unfortunately bundler-audit only provides information about security vulnerabilities and does not help you keep your dependencies updated.

With Octotrack you'll receive an email digest every morning informing you of the latest updates of the gems you use as well as possible vulnerabilities recently discovered.

Please let me know if this is valuable information for you.

Thank you very much for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lot of placeholder text on that page : [https://screenshots.firefox.com/hg5ayGsTXpQ2veoT/www.octotra...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/hg5ayGsTXpQ2veoT/www.octotrack.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, just fixed. Did you have a chance to try it out?

<comment><USER8> Is there any way to try it out without giving you access to my full repo? A Gemfile upload or something similar would be great for testing.

<comment><USER8> Ah, it looks like that is how it works. Not obvious until after I signed up...

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right, I'll make it more explicit. Thank you so much for the feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hehe... I was going to say "cool", but now that I've uploaded the Gemfile.lock I realised that I've just added a bunch of hours on the maintenance roadmap to the project... worked like a charm though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Filipe :) I hope that not too many hours were added!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it free, cheap, expensive? Does it have a privacy policy?

</comment><comment><USER11> Not sure how likely they are to be confused, but there's a highly regarded sampler called Octatrack. [https://www.elektron.se/products/octatrack- mkii/](https://www.elektron.se/products/octatrack-mkii/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Google still suggests "Octatrack" when typing "Octotrack", but I hope I can change that in the future :) thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks neat! What's the difference between this and dependabot[0]?

[0] [https://dependabot.com/](https://dependabot.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Dependabot is an awesome app!

Most of the times I just want to know about a new release and not actually have a PR created for it. I'm also not sure if dependabot warns about vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, I believe they can be used in conjunction and not as a replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I couldn't help but notice the wordpress php code on the background image.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. Just changed to simple html not to get everyone distracted :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So they offer to steal your code for free. No thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi raresp, we don't have any access to any of your code, that was the main objective when compared to other similar services.

You have two ways to update your dependencies:

1\. Manually upload your gemfile.lock.

2\. Intall a post-commit hook which only sends the gemfile.lock in case it was changed.

It would be great if you could try it out.

Thank you.

<comment><USER14> I'm gald you detailed the functionality. Now my comment is pointless. Sorry for posting it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How does this compare to Gemnasium?

<comment><AUTHOR> A couple of differences might be:

1\. Shows dependencies relationships

2\. Automatic updates without the need to request access to the whole project (via git post-commit hook)

3\. Analysis of most used dependencies on all your projects

4\. Daily emails divided per project instead of dependency / gem

5\. Cheaper and with 1 free private project

This is a new project so all feedback is more than welcome. I'm looking to develop everything that makes the platform better and helps every developer and tech team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> No https?

<comment><AUTHOR> Now forcing https. Thank you for the feedback!</comment></comment>


Show HN: A strength training Android app for beginners (my first app) - <AUTHOR> http://www.airlocksoftware.com/strength/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there. I'm kinda new to programming, I changed majors and have only been working at it for a couple of years. I've been very inspired by some of the posts I've seen here. They kept me going to finish this project, so I wanted to share it with you.

I made a strength training app because I wasn't really satisfied with the user experience of the few that were already in the market. I started doing strength training about 3 years ago, and as a (previously) skinny nerd, it really changed my life. The confidence, energy, and overall feeling of health I've gained are incredible. I really believe that if you're someone who has let their health go, the biggest thing you can do to improve your programming, your startup, or your life is to get fit.

Now I'm not going to say that it isn't hard. It really is. Doing a set of heavy squats is definitely the hardest part of my day. But it doesn't have to take much time (1 - 1.5 hours, 3 times per week).

What I'm trying to do with Strength is make it simple for someone who's never weightlifted or done a squat before to get started. It helps you set up a program, and then tells you what lifts to do, how long to rest for, reminds you when it's time for a workout, etc.

Any feedback (or feature requests, or bug reports) is appreciated. You can email me: matt (at) airlocksoftware (dot) com

Thanks!</comment>


3D Face Tracking Software for Android: Banuba vs. ARCore Compared - <AUTHOR> https://www.banuba.com/blog/3d-face-tracking-software-for-android-banuba-vs-arcore-compared <comment><AUTHOR> Developing the best face tracking software for Android requires time, efforts and non-stop optimization. That's why it's important to keep an eye on what tech giants like Google do in face tracking and align yourself with them.</comment>


Show HN: Twetestorm - <AUTHOR> http://www.twetestorm.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi. I wasn't happy with the way Twitter's "Moments" aggregates tweets together, so I worked up a different way to place tweets together in a single embed.

Here are a few examples!:

[http://www.twetestorm.com/thread/841833971700899841_84183884...](http://www.twetestorm.com/thread/841833971700899841_841838841602400256.html)

[http://www.twetestorm.com/thread/840260007719403520_84026609...](http://www.twetestorm.com/thread/840260007719403520_840266091783847936.html)

[http://www.twetestorm.com/thread/839302764328976385_83930277...](http://www.twetestorm.com/thread/839302764328976385_839302775334850560.html)

I'd be psyched if this could become a useful tool for web producers, feedback is warmly welcomed. ~Jeff

<comment><USER2> ugh! I hate tweetstorms[1] I would love it if you could remove the redundant metadata surrounding each tweet except for the timestamp, so the whole thing reads like one continuous piece of text. You could even do a two-column layout and place the timestamp in the left column so the tweets become simple paragraphs with no metadata polluting it [2].

[1] [https://twitter.com/vjk2005/status/805686306940579841](https://twitter.com/vjk2005/status/805686306940579841)

[2] rough mockup: [https://twitter.com/vjk2005/status/842231336932802560](https://twitter.com/vjk2005/status/842231336932802560)

<comment><USER3> Yes! that's exactly what I though this would be and was excited as I've been tempted to build that myself.</comment></comment></comment>


Why you should, actually, rewrite it in rust - <AUTHOR> https://unhandledexpression.com/2017/07/10/why-you-should-actually-rewrite-it-in-rust/ <comment><USER2> It's a good article detailing the technical reasons one might have to rewrite in Rust. However, it only briefly talks about the non-technical aspects (people spend too much time fixing C/C++, we should start now because it's a lot of effort).

Unfortunately, that is not enough to convince people in general. Technical debt has been historically ignored, for good and bad reasons.

If someone can come up with hard numbers about dollars spent or lost on remediation activities and how Rust would clearly have saved the day, that would be better for convincing businesses to spend resources on rewrites.</comment>


What Airbnb's Knowledge Repo Inspired Us to Build - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-kyso-blog/from-airbnbs-knowledge-repo-to-kyso-for-teams-735ce8c7eec0 <comment><USER2> I'm one of the people made this and I've love to answer any questions. We used the knowledge repo extensively at my last startup and we loved it, this is our attempt to improve upon those idea</comment>


PS3 'jailbreak code' retweeted by Sony's Kevin Butler - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/09/ps3-jailbreak-code-retweeted-by-sonys-kevin-butler-no-punchl/

<comment><USER2> I don't understand any of this. Who's Kevin Butler, why is he fictional, and what does battleship have to do with it?

<comment><USER3> Kevin Butler is a fictional VP who appears in multiple adverts for the PlayStation 3, usually in a different position each time (such as "VP of Add More Awesome"). My favourite is the ad for Modnation Racers, in which he appears alongside the (non-fictional) CEO of Sony, Jack Tretton [1]

The battleships reference is because that code bears a resemblance to a sequence of moves for the guessing game battleships [2], where players take turns to choose squares on a grid to "attack", such as B4. The opposing player will announce either "hit", "miss", or "you sank my X". The most iconic potential phrase from the game is "you sank my battleship" which is referenced in various songs etc.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EinxqwJCK8o> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_(game)>

<comment><USER2> Thank you, initially I thought he was a battleship-playing bot or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A hit, a very palpable hit.</comment>


Ask HN: Good cloud storage solution for user data - <AUTHOR> I am nearing completion of my application. I need cloud storage for my user data. Since I will charge my users for storage + processing, I am looking for a top quality service provider and am not interested in free offers.
The mode of working is: user <--> backend <--> storage.
My main requirements are service uptime and data fidelity (by that I mean data must not get corrupted; what I put I must get back). Backup storage is optional. Encryption is unimportant since my backend anyway encrypts all the data. <comment><USER2> Probably something between AWS S3 and Google Cloud Storage would work for the case you mention. There may be other cheaper options but I can't tell about uptime (assuming you are looking for 99.9%+).</comment>


Facebook again? - <AUTHOR> http://dormnoise.com/

<comment><USER2> LOL

I wish these social sites would just stop that would be awesome.

Facebook and Myspace got it for now</comment>