The API Hub: Jeff Bezos-Backed Mashape Launches To The Public With 430 APIs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/mashape-public-launch/

<comment><USER2> I found Mashape via google as I was looking for a simple way to monetize our API (and get some exposure) about a year ago. We posted our Whois API (<http://www.mashape.com/nametoolkit/name-toolkit>) on Mashape.

In the early days it was quiet but I liked the auto-generated clients. It's really been picking up in the last few months and the hassle-free billing, documentation is great. Augusto is great, he is still personally answering mails when there are issues.

What could be improved on: Better stats for the admin interface, .NET support (I'm aware this has been on their roadmap but customers have repeatedly asked me for this), more payout options like bank transfer would be awesome too.

<comment><USER3> Not to rain on your parade, but to anyone looking to try this I just wasted 30 minutes getting setup and trying it to find out that Godaddy, for example, returns next to no results through this service so it's no solution to WHOIS woes.

<comment><USER2> Firstly, yes our whois parser needs work, whois is a dirty protocol with lots of inconsistency and we haven't spent enough time dealing with parsing ALL the data out. Oddly enough it has already proved useful to some customers and some fields are consistently parsed well. What's your use case and which fields are you interested in that we failed to parse?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the open source equivalent to this is well worth a mention: <http://apis.io/> It's not quite the same feature set but was never designed to be and all the code is on github so you deploy your own if you so wished, <https://github.com/apisio/apisio> (pull requests welcome)

</comment><comment><USER5> I spend a lot of time trying to convert the heckyesmarkdown.com service to an API in mashape. It was time consuming and kept on returning me incomprehensible errors. The documentation is unclear on _how the APIs are supposed to be documented_.

For a purely REST API, this might work, but for something like free-to-find services for which I need a quick-api solution to use, it just does not work. The API documentation editor (seriously, stop calling it documentation and call it specs instead) needs an advanced mode so I can use it better. Another thing I found missing was user help text on the apis themselves.

This might take off to become something like programmableweb, but developers won't rush to it with open-arms unless (a few) major api providers start using this.

<comment><USER6> Hi, CTO of Mashape here. I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience when writing the docs, we'll definitely improve the workflow and make it easier to understand.

In the meanwhile, I documented your API with my account, and I would be happy to transfer it to yours if you like. Here it is: <http://www.mashape.com/thefosk/heck-yes-markdown>

The documentation it is really a documentation, not all the fields are mandatory by the system, except the endpoint URL, and the parameter's name (we need them to auto-generate the client libraries). All the other fields are optional and provided just for the sake of understandability when a third party needs to consume your API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey there, just adding my two pence here.

I'm Stuart, co-founder of chatterbox.co. We've been using Mashape from the early days when they were back in beta, distributing our Sentiment Analysis API (<http://www.mashape.com/chatterbox-co/sentiment-analysis-free>). For a startup, getting to market as quickly as possible is great.. what you don't want though is a half baked product. Mashape allowed us to focus on building awesome sentiment analysis, so that we didn't have to bother about billing, rate limiting, etc and all the DB infrastructure that runs behind it. Certainly worth checking out, especially if all your stuff uses JSON anyway (which it should!).

</comment><comment><USER8> I was fortunate enough to spend a couple days with these guys when I was first getting my feet wet a few months back. Although my chops weren't built enough yet for what they needed, I enjoyed doing a little problem solving with them and getting to see my first glimpse of startup life. They were super nice and they really had a passion and dedication for Mashape. It's cool to seen them finally launch.

</comment><comment><USER9> Craigslist isn't participating? That's surprising!

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the idea of putting APIs into a store is a great way for smaller devs to really get their products noticed, and even monetize their hard work easier. And as a developer I totally see the need for this kind of product. I'm tired of searching for an api on google/github/etc and not being totally sure of its quality, and I would love to see if Mashape will grow and perhaps allow people to review APIs, and host examples as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> >> When you're a marketplace, you always fight the chicken/egg problem and the last thing you want to do is open up a marketplace when you don't have enough supply yet

What's are your views here?

This is a really interesting question for me. I keep putting off a side project that I'd love to do because it suffers this exact problem.

I want to believe there's another way to handle this situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems the solution is to really market to the creators of quality and useful API creators and build that with the promise of the users coming latter.

They app is really well designed and useful without the users there to the API creator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know how useful the clients in different languages are when all the client code returns is a JSON object.

I would have thought that the whole point of a custom client would be that it would expose objects and methods that had represented the request and response data for the API.

If I have to interpret and parse the JSON myself then the client code they provide isn't very useful IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think central API registries are the the long term future of APIs (despite the fact that I bought apinest.com with half a mind to setting one up :).

At some point we are going to move to self-describing APIs, documented at source. Check out the <http://restfulobjects.org/> spec for ideas on how this will work.

<comment><USER6> Which would be great. We strongly believe that self-describing hypermedia APIs are the future, hopefully sooner or later we'll be able to focus more on the experience (buying/tracking/monitoring/bug tracking) and less on supporting thousands different formats/descriptions. Unfortunately it's still a super- fragmented market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Standardizing APIs is a Good Thing. Unfortunately, standards alone don't seem to be enough. (oAuth2 anyone?)

Therefore, offering a proxy that has enough benefits to developers to make them switch to it's standard seems like a more realistic approach.

So, I truly hope Mashape takes off.

<comment><USER15> Mashape doesn't standardise anything - it "just" provides API billing and management tools.

Saying APIs should be standardized is very naive anyway - APIs often need to offer specific platform-specific features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a minor nit, but please get your main page to play nice. I opened the Mashape page in a tab to look at later. When the fan sped up I went hunting, and your page was eating 20% CPU.

<comment><USER17> Thx for the tip. We're on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Too much load on launch day? I get a "Oops, an error occured :S" screen

Edit: back now

</comment><comment><USER19> Some of these APIs aren't very well developed...the Airbnb API, for example, is just an unofficial one, and so far supports only a "Hello World" endpoint

<http://www.mashape.com/john-matt/airbnb>

<comment><AUTHOR> You need to take any community driven site with a grain of salt, there will always be API's that aren't great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> looks kinda like APIgee

<comment><AUTHOR> Works in a similar nature except I don't think APIgee has Auto Documentation</comment></comment>


Why SLAs are redundant, but Zencoder offers one anyway. - <AUTHOR> http://zencoder.com/encoder-blog/2010/08/23/why-slas-are-redundant-but-zencoder-offers-one-anyway/

<comment><USER2> SLAs seem to have the effect of dramatically changing the culture of the team that is now measured by the SLA.

I remember two times when my managers announced an SLA. First time was "Every priority 1 ticket has to be answered within 24 hours". Before the SLA we were a cheerful and overworked IT team, doing our best to handle all tickets within reasonable times and with our best quality responses. Afterwards - We started negotiating priorities, replying "investigating" within 24 hours to make sure management doesn't get on our case, and we had lots of not-so-funny jokes about announcing "love every 38 hours" SLAs to our spouses.

The second time they actually went as far as saying "This SLA is between marketing, sales and the customer. You don't need to worry about it. Just keep on doing what you always did."

They had to say that, because with our current equipment and processes, offering 99.9% availability to our customers was impossible. Our real availability was an average of 99.5% with some services as low as 97%. Not because we were horrible IT - but because of trade-off decisions we reached in the past together with our management.

It didn't help much. Because we didn't trust management not to start holding us to those SLAs at a random moment. Which they did.

Again, from a team that did their best to keep servers up, we became expert negotiators of which downtimes "count" and which don't. Also, we because very defensive: "We can't risk upgrading this month, we were already down 13 minutes."

I understand the need to sell to corporates, but I would be very very careful communicating SLAs to my team.

<comment><USER3> The problem there is not with SLAs at all, but with how they are set. It is sadly common for SLAs to be dictated by marketing/bidding/sales, with no regard for reality.

Similarly, if you can't reply to every priority 1 ticket within 24 hours, that suggests that not every one is priority 1, rather than simply an issue with SLAs as a concept.

</comment></comment><comment> DifE-Q While the many points of this article are true...I would like to point out that an SLA provides a means to punish the service provider...in hopes of better behavior.

I run an IT department with a massive MPLS network from ATT. When a circuit goes down - it is true that I don't regain MY costs by enforcing the terms of the SLA and collecting the remuneration that is due. However, I do many times collect a significant amount of credits at times...and that causes regional managers at ATT to take notice and start making infrastructure improvements to improve actual up time...which is what I want - and then that allows me to actually pay them for their circuit - which is what they want.

<comment><AUTHOR> From my perspective as a service provider, I feel major pain whenever our service hiccups. If something goes down, the fear of unhappy customers (or losing customers) looms much larger than the fear of having to issue a service credit. For us at least, the latter is a tiny motivator compared to the former.

But a small startup is probably motivated by different things than a large, vaguely monopolistic company (like an ISP).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reason for refunds in the hosting business is not to compensate the buyer for any loss of business they might suffer if their site goes down (this will probably be many times what the service provider would make from the account); it's to tie the failure of the buyer's systems to something the service provider would self-evidently prefer to avoid.

Service providers could also signal their reliability by offering "loss of business" insurance at low premiums. If a service provider will pay you $10,000/day in the event that your site is unavailable, and the premium on this insurance is $5/month, it's pretty likely that they're not expecting to have to pay this out very often.

(Royal Mail offers fairly cheap loss/damage insurance, which is a good sign their service is reliable. Not sure about DHL/Fedex.)

</comment><comment><USER5> "Emergency Maintenance" seems to be a pretty broad get out of jail free card to me. I trust the Zencoder guys aren't going to try and weasel out of their commitments (and this SLA is probably better than most), but if you're having downtime for almost any reason, wont you be doing "Emergency Maintenance" to bring the site back up?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point. We'll reconsider the wording of that one. The expected use case is something like a critical security patch - we might have to bring a service down for a security update - but that is pretty broad.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could it be Microsoft that actually made the supposed Beats deal? - <AUTHOR>

Given the history, Microsoft is the type of company which would make acquisitions for a brand name rather than the technology.
Looking at the past, Microsoft has quite a bit to gain from such a deal than Apple, which already has a successful streaming and music distribution network alongside great hardware with the brand name.
Microsoft kept their Nokia deal silent for quite some time as well.
Also, to note that this acquisition news has not received any comments from Apple.
What do you think? <comment><USER2> It could be anyone, if we go by that logic. It could be Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon or Apple. The deal might fail. There's no limit to possibilities.</comment>


The Daring Life of a Forgotten Female War Photographer - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture-exploration/2018/08/world-photography-day-dickey-chapelle-female-war-photographer-combat-vietnam/ <comment><USER2> What's amazing to me is just how many World War 2 were used in Vietnam. If you look at those pics: M1 Carbines in abundance (heck, I have my dads), a couple BARs, Thompson SMGs, a Grease Gun, M1919 MGs (probably converted to 7.62mm NATO), and the M1 Garand. All ceased production after WW2.

It boggles the mind to think we made SO MANY small arms for WW2 the leftovers could be shipped halfway around the world to fight another war.

<comment><USER3> Weapons from ww2 are still being used in warfare to this day.[0] You fight with what you can get your hands on, I guess.

Edit: Also military logistics are not following the same pressures for upheaval and progress as civilian organizations. During my compulsory military service I remember getting handed a bedsheet with the year 1933 embroidered on it. Looked liked it had never been used. We were also trained in usage of out- phased rifles on top of our normal weapon training. Somewhere they had a huge pile of old weapons, should they ever be needed. It would not sunrise me if they still have the Garands on store.

[https://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/whats-inside-a- ta...](https://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/whats-inside-a-taliban-gun- locker/)

<comment><USER4> They might still have a big pile of Garands, but many were sold to civilians.

<comment><USER3> My anecdote is not about the US. I thought the compulsory military service part would make that clear.

We got some of those Garands to rebuild our military after ww2.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, when I initially read your comment I simply interpreted that to be referencing the draft, e.g. conscription.

<comment><USER3> I could have been more precise. The Garands were a mislead. I served in 08.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you look at the picture in the header, you can see that she's using a VISOFLEX in a warzone (a Visoflex is a very bulky and finnicky accessory for a Leica that turns it into a reflex camera), I wonder how that came to look like a good idea.

<comment><USER6> My experience with artists and craftsmen of all stripes is that, once they find a tool or combination of tools that resonate with them, and that with which they feel they can do better work than with alternatives, they will go to great lengths to continue using the platform regardless of inconvenience or other drawbacks.

I have known, for example, .NET developers that worked in emacs instead of Visual Studio, which is something I have a hard time understanding, but there was no arguing with his results even if his toolchain was odd and finicky.

In any case, it's a damn shame she's not around to ask. Photography was VERY different in the 60s.

<comment><USER7> After doing more photography I have developed a lot of respect for that attitude. Their focus is on the results whereas I (and I believe a lot of developers) am often more focused on cool tools and always need new stuff to stay interested. A lot of the best photographers I know have pretty old cameras because they think about taking pictures and not reading equipment reviews.

<comment><USER6> The recent (~ 10 years) era has also made lots of folks think of photography as fast-moving, because pro-level digital happened and then improved SO FAST that there was an upgrade treadmill where none really existed before.

We're back at a stasis point, though. My 6- or 7-year-old Olympus still takes great pix; I'm not leaving a lot on the table with it. Any full-frame DSLR is even better, and they've been around for even longer.

Today's high-tech cameras are definitely more susceptible to life-ending obsolescence than the mechanical cameras of yore, but I think we'll see folks use a given body much longer now than we did 5 years ago.

<comment><USER8> Especially for photographs that are mostly about getting an image rather than wringing the last piece of technical quality out of a scene, DSLRs have pretty much approached good enough. Sensitivity is still improving a bit, as is autofocus, but I'm at the point now where the gear I have is at the point where a new camera isn't going to really improve on my enjoyment, quality of photograph, etc.

There's still miniaturization going on. My Fujifilm X-E3 was a big improvement over the X-E1. But as long as I'm willing to lug a full-frame DSLR around, there isn't a lot I feel I'm lacking even though it's 4+ years old at this point.

<comment><USER7> "My Fujifilm X-E3 was a big improvement over the X-E1."

There is definitely still a lot of movement in mirrorless but judging from the latest releases they will plateau in a few years too. It looks like mirrorless will soon reach the point where their AF is as good or better as the best DSLRs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anyone is interested in another great war photographer at the time, Robert Capa is another great one. His book 'Slightly out of focus' is one of my favourite books. Highly recommended and is only 2-300 pages long.

</comment><comment><USER10> According to wikipedia, she killed in 1965 by a booby trap explosion triggered by the marine in front of her while on a patrol. She was 47.

<comment> saiya-jin well, it is stated in the article itself too

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> These days it seems to be wrong [1] to use the word "female", thus I suggest changing the title to "The Daring Life of a Forgotten Woman War Photographer". Yes, it is ambiguous because it seems that we are talking about a certain "woman war", but we'll get used to it over time.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17891710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17891710)

<comment><USER3> So we should stop using a word with an etymologically going back thousands of years, because some lowlifes are misogynistic? It feels very wrong to let them turn such a fundamental word in to a hate slur.

<comment><USER11> Of course I was parodying that position :)

<comment><USER12> No you weren't. People get annoyed when it's used as a noun, not a verb.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who is a software architect? What is software architecture? - <AUTHOR> https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2019/09/12/who-is-a-software-architect-what-is-software-architecture/ <comment><USER2> I would like to add that a good software architect (type 2 of course ;->) also needs a good deal of domain knowlege. Designing for the most probable future changes is the hardest but most effective part of that role.

<comment><USER3> I would like to nuance that by saying it's nice if you have a good deal of domain knowledge, but my article focuses more on the case where you venture into new territory, and the architect is the person who needs to obtain the required domain knowledge.

In my 20+ years of work experience, I rarely worked on projects where I had all the relevant knowledge beforehand. Most of the time, it was 'learning on the job'. For example, I once worked on the software for an automated orchid greenhouse. Now how many software architects would have domain knowledge of growing, categorizing and shipping orchids? It's the client who had the domain knowledge, and as an architect I had to extract the relevant information from them, and translate it to a software context.

I never did anything with flowers since, so that domain knowledge was never used again. It was like that for most of my projects.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Khanpedia, integrating Khan Academy content into Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://dylanv.org/2012/07/08/introducing-khanpedia/

<comment><AUTHOR> Chrome Web Store link: <http://bit.ly/khanpedia> GitHub repository: <http://github.com/dylanvee/Khanpedia>

KA intern here. I made this extension during Khan Academy's first ever Healthy Hackathon. It's an unofficial project, but it's a fun way to discover new videos and exercises.</comment>


Running wxPython on top of PyPy - <AUTHOR> http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2010/05/running-wxpython-on-top-of-pypy.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The PyPy developers seem to be pivoting from research mode to creating an actual usable Python implementation.

I'm speculating that this has to do with the fact they're now receiving funding from Google. Google has invested in Unladen Swallow, but that project seems to have fallen pretty far short of its goals, which were less ambitious than PyPy's anyways.

I can imagine Google asking the PyPy developers to focus on creating a real- world usable Python implementation for the short/medium term.

<comment><USER2> Last time PyPy got money from google was spring 2009. They can still ask PyPy developers to do stuff :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, I guess you're right--I saw the Google code blog post and assumed it was ongoing. Mea culpa.

What's the road map for PyPy, as far as the developers are concerned?

<comment><USER3> As an on and off PyPy contributor here's my impression: the goals for the next release are going to be a) cpyext support a wide variety of real world extensions, b) keep making the JIT faster for as many apps and benchmarks as possible, c) fix a pathological condition in the GC. And in the medium term adding support for x86-64 to the JIT.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Akira Kurosawa's Record of a Living Being - <AUTHOR> https://cinemasojourns.com/2020/03/29/akira-kurosawas-record-of-a-living-being/ <comment><USER2> One of the sections of this article that struck me as particularly relevant right now was this passage:

"Kurosawa later claimed that I Live in Fear was inspired by conversations he had with his longtime film composer Fumio Hayasaka, who had become seriously ill during the making of Seven Samurai. Hayasaka had said to him, "The world has come to such a state that we don't really know what is in store for us tomorrow. I wouldn't even know how to go on living – I'm that uncertain. Uncertainties, nothing but uncertainties. Every day there are fewer and fewer places that are safe. Soon there will be no place at all."

Hayasaka died during the filming, and "Kurosawa was devastated by his friend's death", which affected the direction the film took.

<comment><USER3> Wow. The film is iconic, of course, but I've always really liked the score. It's fitting, but also I always imagined that I could hear the circumstances of the filming (post-war Japan) in it as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently watched Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice which also deals with the threat of nuclear destruction. The main character is having a birthday dinner when the news informs everybody about the nuclear threat. The simplicity in which this information is revealed and the transition from the mundane to abject fear connected really well to modern times.

It's interesting seeing film ideas repeat and be interpreted by multiple directors. It's almost like some ideas need to bounce from director to director before they find the right outlet. I Live In Fear begets Dr Strangelove begets The Sacrifice.

<comment><USER5> have you read (or seen) _on the beach_ [0] by nevil shute? slow-moving, impending, nuclear winter and the heartrending choices the characters make in the face of it. really left its mark when i read it in high school (haven't seen the films though).

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_\(novel\))

<comment><USER6> I feel like that book was required HS reading in the 80s. The movie is also good.

I'll add the film _Miracle Mile_ to the suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have not seen "I Live in Fear" yet. That being said, Ikiru is my favorite movie.

Thanks for sharing this.

<comment><USER8> Glad to see I am not the only one. You should check out a spanish movie called "El Sur".

<comment><USER9> It had a limited theatrical re-release in the UK last year, so I got to see it in the cinema, fantastic film.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For the first time I watched Akira Kurosawa's films (mostly all of them in few weeks, but not yet "I Live in Fear") ten years ago.

"Yume", "Hachi-gatsu no rapusodi" and "Madadayo" are those which impressed me too much.

<comment><USER11> I am eternally grateful that 'Dreams' hit me at 16.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a great site. Does anyone know if there's a good online resource to stream this Kurosawa movie? And actually to stream any of the types of movies on cinemasojourns? Back in the day most major cities has a handful of cinephile type video rental places and now that those are long gone the only options have been the independent arthouse theater which of course are all closed on account of the pandemic. I looked into the Criterion streaming service at one point but was disappointed by how many of their titles weren't available on the service.

<comment><USER13> Criterion or Kanopy according to JustWatch (in the US) [https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/i-live-in- fear?utm_source...](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/i-live-in- fear?utm_source=letterboxd&utm_medium=iOS)

Kanopy is awesome - you get streaming free credits through being signed up to the local library.

<comment><USER14> Every time I read about them I go look, but seems like my library isn't big enough for Kanopy. They have Hoopla and Libby, but not Kanopy yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This site is a great resource. Do people have recommendations for other similar cinephile sites like this?

<comment><USER8> Go to imdb's page for a movie you like, say, this one. Then look at the critic reviews links. Tons of cinephile sites can be discovered this way.

[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0048198/externalreviews?ref_=m_tt...](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0048198/externalreviews?ref_=m_tt_ov_rt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another film that deals with Nuclear Holocaust, albeit more of the direct aftermath is BBC's Threads[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_\(1984_film\))

<comment><USER16> That movie is harsh! Highly recommended

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Any new Kurosawa movie is a treasure for me to discover. Dreams also had themes of nuclear holocaust. Quite topical today as the spectre of nuclear armageddon still hovers above.

</comment><comment><USER18> Am I the only one in awe for those beautiful posters?

</comment><comment><USER19> I've practiced fighting with knives/swords for a long time, this is of my all- time favorites:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Ypt67TQyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Ypt67TQyI)

<comment><USER10> JFTR, Actual thread mostly about post nuclear war world.

<comment><USER19> That's cool, it's still one of his best.

<comment><USER20> Define "his"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Domain Name Dilemma - <AUTHOR>

I am confused b/w choosing a country specific TLD (ccTLD) or the Dot Com TLD (gTLD) for my domain.My website/blog will only cater to a specific country.What would be better from SEO and "end user perception" perspective. Also, ccTLD for the Domain Name I like is available and gTLD is not. <comment><USER2> Easy. Do both. Domain names are cheap and you can have multiple pointing to the same site. Definitely you want your ccTLD because it fits your market, but if you can also find a good .com, take that too, particularly if you are doing international sales.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks but don't you think that having 2 domain names point to same site would lead to confusing brand? What name will I put on the site?

<comment><USER3> Usually, if I have multiple domain names for a single site, I pick my favorite and just 301 redirect the rest. This avoids confusion and also avoids any potential "duplicate content penalty" from search engines.</comment></comment></comment>


Double Down - <AUTHOR> http://blog.maburyroad.com/2012/05/01/double-down/

<comment><AUTHOR> I changed my domain to a personal one. This post is now at <http://eileenandjeremy.com/2012/05/01/double-down/></comment>


Why Google is bad for the newspaper business - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2010/02/03/why-google-is-bad-for-the-newspaper-business/

<comment><USER2> I have a new article entitled, "Why electricity is bad for the candle business."

<comment><USER3> And that article would be very easy to write, but not at all analogous to this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is not surprising this comes from Mark Cuban, he has had it in for Google since they bought Youtube.

But I have to give Cuban some credit here. He actually provides plausible, logically consistent, well reasoned arguments. I am not sure he is correct, but at least his arguments are well reasoned. He does not go into hysterics about how Google is stealing like some other billionaires you may have heard of.

There is however one counter argument that Cuban did not mention. If a well known newspaper leaves Google News, then they are opening the door for competitors. If a person goes to Google news, and sees a story by their trusted paper, they will click on that story even if it is one of 2000. But if he does not see their trusted newspaper, will they go to the trusted newspaper's webpage or would they simply say "well lets try this new site I have not heard of before" and then discover that the new site is just as good or maybe even better than their trusted newspaper.

</comment><comment><USER3> The link here should probably read: "Why Google News is bad for the newspaper business."

Finally, we are starting to see some of these media companies and investors start to be a little more precise in their attacks against Google! I don't care if you agree with the attacks or not, at least now we know that what Mark Cuban is really mad about is Google News, not Google Search results. For awhile there I was legitimately confused as to why Murdoch and the bunch were threatening to remove themselves from Google's index, when I thought what they should really be mad about is Google News.

</comment><comment><USER5> Whether Google News is good or bad for a newspaper's online business is also partly a function of how big the newspaper is. Google News seems to frequently promote the biggest sources (NY Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, LA Times) with the main headline for a story and lump in the smaller players among the "2,000 plus sources". If you're a big player, it's probably fine to be part of Google News.

If you're a smaller player, maybe you needn't be covering stories that the big players are covering. Your readers are probably already only coming to you for local news anyway (part of the reason AP and Reuters content so often supplements a site). Reporting on more local stories could make you more likely to become the de facto source for your Local News section within Google News.

I've heard anecdotally that Yahoo's front door (which shows headlines from 3rd party sources) and Drudge are the biggest drivers of traffic to newspaper sites. Note that neither of those referrers tries to point out a dozen other sources for the story.

</comment><comment><USER6> If your offering news that is being reported by 2000 other sources and your not a big player then you are really asking for problems.

The problem I see with Google news is that a long thoughtful, drawn out opinion/ investigation piece gets lumped into the same pile as paragraph summaries in the 2000 sources. What needs to happen, and I think the best way to approach this is a combination of software and community, is that the straight news piece i split from the further investigation and opinion pieces and the best quality piece rises to the top.

I've also though about the possibility of making money from ads on a news aggregation site and then passing part of the profit onto sources based on the clickthroughs they generate, so basically it would be another incentive for content producers to produce better content.

</comment><comment><USER7> Are news stands that sell dozens of publications also bad for the newspaper business? I don't goto the New York Times store to buy the paper -- I goto the new stand where the New York Times is just one of many choices. The news stand may only offer a couple dozen choices and not 2,000 but there's a diminishing return at some point. I'm most likely going to pick one of the first 5-10 stories on Google News and that's almost always linking to a popular mainstream publication.

</comment><comment><USER8> >When that consumer goes to Google News, it lists the

> number of sources. You immediately become one of 2,172

> articles. It is never good for a brand to be considered

> one of 2,000 plus sources. Ever. That makes you a

> commodity. All that promotion you did saying how good

> your reporters are ? On its way to becoming worthless.

TL;DR = You've been trying to pretend you matter, but Google is revealing this as lies.

</comment><comment><USER9> _Newspapers_ are bad for the newspaper business.

They're as panicky as all the other media companies, though at least most newspaper companies have functional websites. They fight change _so hard_ they end up being left in the dust by it.

Quit complaining about how you find it hard to be unique. Everyone has that problem. Try doing what used to work, and still does: _stand out in the crowd by doing it better than the crowd._

</comment><comment><USER10> Newspapers are burdened by their failure to break out of the convolution of the idea of their identity with their historical form. Newspapers are still stuck on the model of providing a "full" news experience to its readers much in the same way that many failed big dot-coms (Excite comes to mind) held too long to the "portal" model of the web during the first dot-com boom/bust.

In an era where communication is difficult there is value in aggregating that communication (local news, national news, international news, business news, sports, weather, broadcast advertisements, etc.) into one coherent source. There's a great network effect in that model. However, that model is broken by modern technology which has dramatically lowered the cost of communication. There no longer is any value to regurgitating the same AP wire report in the local paper since the cost to distribute such reports to the entire world are practically nil in the modern age.

There is still value in unique, original reporting but modern news institutions do so little of that. This is where the conflict comes from. The value of a newspaper was once the sum of the value of the network effect of the readership (e.g. in regards to classified ads) and the transmission of non-local news and the original reporting. Today none of those things have true value except the last. And, unfortunately for most papers, this is the most difficult, most costly, and lowest margin aspect of the entire paper.

There's still value in some of the things newspapers do, but newspapers still insist on defining themselves in forms that are no longer financially sensible in the context of modern technology. Until that changes (maybe via most newspapers dying and being replaced by more modern institutions) newspapers will continue their long slow slide into oblivion.

</comment><comment><USER11> From comments on the page:

 _Mark, you're absolutely right that it "is never good for a brand to be considered one of 2,000 plus sources." Is this Google's fault for creating this perception in the eyes of you and me? Absolutely not. Newspapers have become a cheap "news" provider- in no way consistent with what they stood for years ago – legitimate reporting, digging up facts and stories that actually mattered and were relevant to people, etc. not just the ridiculous garbage they call front-page news nowadays._

Sums up the problem with this article.

The claim that Google is _bad for_ the newspaper business is certain but the question is whether that's bad thing (also, craigslist has actually been _much worse_ for newspapers than Google). If newspapers in general could make claim for consistent quality, for integrity in editorial policy and so-forth, the claim for Google being a bad thing could be justified but they can't. Ruppert Murdoch defending journalism? Please!

The newspaper business have both been hit terribly by the Internet. The problem is, they were fat, greedy monopolies which wilted in the face of open competition. I'd probably feel more for literary journals - but I think these have been hit more by how much people read.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ironic considering he is an investor in Mahalo <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097661>

<comment><USER3> Not that ironic considering Mahalo is not primarily a big-brand news organization. His frustration is with Google News, not with Google Search.</comment></comment>


Princess Pricklepants, Startup Founder Extraordinaire - <AUTHOR> http://princesspricklepants.com/2015/06/22/princess-pricklepants-startup-founder/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, the author here. I assumed this would fizzle into doom. Happy to see the strange gaze of the Internet pass briefly over my odd little blog. If you have any hedgehog-related questions, etc. feel free to ask.

<comment><USER2> What was the inspiration for launching this?

I'm having trouble creating a new site for myself right now because I'm embedded in a career that would likely frown upon a) sharing trade secrets, even though that'd be the only compelling professional content I can think to write and b) sharing my personal views on any number of things (+ I don't want to just write an online diary like it's 2002 and I'm livejournaling all my feelings).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is wonderful and an inspiration and I'd like to know the origin story (really).

edited to add: PLEASE create a LinkedIn profile for Princess Penelope Pricklepants.

<comment><AUTHOR> "PLEASE create a LinkedIn profile for Princess Penelope Pricklepants." That is a brilliant idea and must be done, though it might be a little bit before I get to it.

<comment><USER3> 2 hours later... :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reads alarmingly similar to many techcrunch articles.

Perhaps techcrunch could be improved with the addition of plastic cows and/or hedgehogs.

<comment><USER5> I'm trying really hard to think of internet articles in general that wouldn't be improved, especially with hedgehogs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is their EIR the new CEO? He was VP of Fax Development at TeleCorp and increased ARR by nearly 10% in the early 00's. Also has an MBA, a great haircut, and enjoys wine and golf.

</comment><comment><USER7> This has uncanny resemblance to my own startup. I'm encouraged that Telstar Ettiquettronics were able to raise capital.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think I've worked with their CFO

</comment><comment><USER9> When I'm at a party and random person starts babbling about how they have a "great" idea that makes no sense in any universe - this is exactly what flashes through my mind.

</comment><comment><USER10> Cute photos, it reminded me of the classic Beatrix Potter tale if anyone hasn't read them they are great:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Mrs._Tiggy- Winkle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Mrs._Tiggy-Winkle)

</comment><comment><USER11> How on earth is "telstarettiquettronics.com" still available?

<comment><USER12> It now redirects to [http://smallrooms.co/](http://smallrooms.co/) which seems to be some kind of entrepreneur podcast. Growth hacking!

<comment><AUTHOR> Man, the NXDOMAIN was part of the joke :( The spelling error in etiquette bugged me, but not enough to do anything. SEO-ish behavior, though, that was enough to motivate me to update things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 10/10 - Alarmingly similar to reality.

</comment><comment><USER14> Got two words for you Nemo: this thing definitely needs to be published as a children's book made from real paper and ink.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, though that's seventeen words. A few people have suggested trying to publish a book, I was planning on looking into it next year. While I am dubious that publishers would be too excited, you never know - the world's a really strange place.

<comment><USER15> There's always LeanPub / Gumroad

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bravo! A+ for creativity!

This is exactly like the last start up I worked at and any tech meetup i go to.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the mythology as a service thing is a truly excellent idea. It should be on Y Combinator's list of startup ideas.

YC are just too conservative to see the value in such unconventional ideas.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Also, synergy."</comment>


Jared Diamond: There's a 49% Chance the World as We Know It Will End by 2050 - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/jared-diamond-on-his-new-book-upheaval.html <comment><USER2> I find I have a particular distaste for those who seek to profit from doomsday predictions.

The world as we knew it essentially ended in 1992 with the advent of the internet for the common man. It ended in 1903 with motorized vehicles. For every correct doomsayer there are unfathomably large numbers of people who got it wrong.

The subject of the article might bring up some legitimate issues, but framing it like this isn't going to help anyone. In the small chance they are right, we will all be in apocalypse anyway, so do you really think that something like this is going to scare people into changing how they live and carry out their daily lives?

<comment><USER3> To pile on, predictions like this should round to the nearest nice number within the error bars. Saying "49%" implies you have enough knowledge to distinguish between "49%" and "50%" (in this case, there isn't even any quantitative analysis -- it's just a made up number, so they might as well say "49.44232115%" if they're not going to say "50%").

<comment><USER4> Yeah. Sometimes we use "50/50" as a euphemism when we really have no idea. 49% sounds like "I have no idea but really want everyone to think I've given this a lot of careful thought."

If I had to be charitable, maybe Diamond believes a lone prediction at 50% is actually meaningless, so he always nudges to one side or the other so people can at least score him a little. No idea though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank goodness for the 51% chance it won't happen. Sorry, I re-calculated. 78.45%. sorry, new data coming in. Its back to 15%, er.. hang on, 98%...

Its a microsoft 'time to complete' bar of risk. It's meaningless, and designed to stop you hitting the [cancel] button.

</comment><comment><USER6> The world as I knew it has changed and ended pretty much every decade i've been alive so far. The Berlin wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, the internet became a thing(as another commenter mentioned), nafta happened, the world trade center was destroyed and a large portion of the world became embroiled in perpetual war, smartphones became a thing, television and radio pretty much became obsolete. I could probably keep going on about the monumental world shifts that have occured over the last three decades but this list might go on for a while.

<comment><USER7> > nafta happened

Umm… could you elaborate on how you see NAFTA as having ended the world as you knew it? That seems like an overestimation to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> And he is conjuring this number out of thin air of course. Jared Diamond is a very entertaining writer, but he tends to speculate and make up just-so stories.

</comment><comment><USER9> Let's see ... I'm 55 now, 31 years from now I'd be 86. Consulting an actuarial life table, 49% is personally pretty close to right.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a magnificently unfalsifiable prediction.

<comment><USER11> We constantly have to make unfalsifiable predictions to make decisions in this world. You can't turn back the clock and see how a different decision would have effected the outcome of your life. The best we can do is use our prior knowledge of the way the world works. Since Jared Diamond has researched human history, society collapse, resource management, etc, he seems better equipped to make these estimations than most.

<comment><USER10> It's one thing to say "I think there's a high chance the world will end, for these reasons." It's another to quantify it to two-digit precision.

<comment><USER11> I agree. I was just disagreeing with the idea that we shouldn't make informed predictions because they can't be tested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The 2040 movie presents a positive vision of what the future could look like:

[https://www.madmanfilms.com.au/2040film/](https://www.madmanfilms.com.au/2040film/)

</comment><comment><USER13> There is literally a 100% chance the world, AS YOU KNOW IT will end by the time you go to bed tonight.

Would you want it any other way?

</comment><comment><USER14> Now why won't I be rushing to read his next book?

</comment><comment><USER15> Great title for clicks, but meaningless precision.

</comment><comment><USER16> Thank God it's not 50.

</comment><comment><USER17> My calculations show that the chance is more like 47-48%.</comment>


DuckDuckGo moves beyond search to also protect you while browsing - <AUTHOR> https://spreadprivacy.com/privacy-simplified/ <comment><USER2> Google started this really annoying habit of including results that don't have the words you are searching. You can get around this by including the word in quotes but it's frustrating to spend a few minutes looking items returned by Google to not find what you're looking for to realize they showed it to you even though it didn't have your search terms.

I bet this is great for current events like "when is Star Wars 1 playing" when the person probably meant Star Wars 8. But sucks when researching items or searching for a paper or particular product.

I started using Duck Duck Go and it works great. The privacy is an added bonus.

<comment><USER3> I use DDG all the time now for personal use, but I still use Google at work.

Try this one weird trick to get only what you searched for on Google:

Click on the "Tools" link (under the search box) and change "All results" to "Verbatim" and I _think_ (I dont _know_ for sure) that this will only search for exactly what you typed.

<comment><USER4> Yes. But then you can't filter by time range. In their infinite wisdom, Google has made it either-or. Either I can filter by time, or by verbatim. It drives me nuts!

<comment><USER5> Seriously? This would be a deal breaker for me. It would also be nice to be able to save preferences so that I only ever get results from the past year unless I specify otherwise. It just takes additional clicks and is a big pain from the search engine that's supposed to be user friendly.

<comment><USER6> Google is a sitting duck for innovation, why does it not suggest scopes for search (paris = person / place), or show me a graph of results over time, or let me exclude pages with X% similarity and show me the most likely original source, there is so much room for improvement, exciting times...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great! I have been waiting for an extension such as this which: (1) is seamless, (2) doesn't break the web, (3) doesn't require too much tweaking, and (4) is offered by a company I trust. Mainly in order to install on friends' and family's devices who aren't tech savvy – this appears to be exactly that. Thank you. Love the UX (sans below), nice touch integrating with ToS;DR.

Feedback: The "enhanced from X to Y" is not perfectly clear to me. I'm guessing you're saying "we were able to upgrade the rating to Y from X". Correct? The badge seems to be showing the upgraded rating rather than the "actual" rating – this is not what I expected. I expected to see the privacy grade of said website, not the grade received by blocking scripts and/or redirecting to https.

Question: Will the extension for Safari be available from the Safari Extensions Gallery[1]? This would be even better, avoiding (said friends and family) having to "Trust" the safariextz and get the disclaimer that it isn't from the gallery. (I currently only see your old search extension in the gallery, will they, perhaps, be merged?)

[1]: [https://safari-extensions.apple.com/?q=duckduckgo](https://safari- extensions.apple.com/?q=duckduckgo)

<comment><USER8> Not only will putting it in the gallery avoid having to "trust" it but it will also allow the extension to auto-update.

<comment><USER9> Yes, we are trying to update the extensions gallery as we speak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Use DuckDuckGo every day, but wish it had a date range of one year as a search filter like google, needed for programming searches where the landscape changes rapidly...

<comment><USER9> This has been a long-term struggle to get right, though I really see the light at the end of the tunnel and think it may come sometime this year, hopefully sooner than later.

For others who may not know though, we do have last month -- drop down above results.

<comment><USER11> I just wanted to take a moment and write my appreciation for your fantastic work. Services such as duckduckgo are needed now more than ever. The fact that it is stable and responsive enough for me to depend on it 100% every work day is amazing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I applaud the initiative, but how does the Firefox extension differ from Privacy Badger or Disconnect?

Does the extension learn trackers as it goes, like Privacy Badger? What does it offer over something like uBlock Origin with the appropriate tracking blocklists?

Also in Firefox, I now have two "Search DuckDuckGo" entries in the right click menu, one from being the default search engine, and one (with an icon) from the extension. They do the exact same thing, so why have them both?

<comment><USER9> We're trying to put all the privacy essentials we can make seamless -- tracker blocking, upgraded encryption, private search and more to come -- all in one package, across all major browsers and platforms. In this respect, on any major mobile device or desktop browser, you should be able to look up DuckDuckGo and with one download get seamless privacy protection as you search and browse the web.

With regards to other extensions, we found that they generally lack some combination of all the essentials (e.g. missing encryption, private search), aren't totally seamless (i.e. break some of the web), or aren't available across all major browsers and platforms.

With regards to tracker blocking in particular, we would like to be as comprehensive as possible while not breaking the Web, and are close to that with this initial launch, utilizing some open source lists including Disconnect and Easylist. We are not currently using the machine learning aspects of Privacy Badger, however.

There are more nuanced UX differences, however. In the UI we're trying to move away from 'x trackers blocked' and instead group trackers from networks together, trying to identify the umbrella company and purposes.

Second, we're grading each site based on its privacy measures (including privacy policies with help from TOSDR), and telling you at a glance how protected you are on an A-F scale, based on what we could do (e.g. block trackers and upgrade encryption).

Thank you for the feedback on the right-click menu. We will look into that.

<comment><USER13> One privacy essential is a built-in vpn/proxy like Opera has done with its browser, this makes it slightly harder for some fingerprinting ad trackers to follow a user around.

<comment><USER14> Proxies can be useful, but I'm not comfortable with sending all my traffic over a centralized proxy operated by a single entity. Just like Cloudflare, the entity that runs the proxy gets a free pass to MITM everyone!

A decentralized solution that can be easily configured to send traffic over any third-party VPN service, HTTP proxy, or ssh tunnel would be much cleaner. Bonus points if the proxy seamlessly kicks in only when visiting a site with a low privacy score or when browsing on public Wi-Fi.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h In fairness, with https it's less of a mitm opportunity... Still an issue, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Let me use this thread to lazily look for simple advice.

For privacy, I'm now using: DuckDuckGo Plus, First Party Isolation, Smart Referer, HTTPS Everywhere, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Canvas Defender and Decentraleyes. There's also NoScript installed, but disabled (waiting for its clickjacking protection to return in WebExt version, although I might switch back to whitelisting JS sometime). Plus there's also Firefox's Tracking Protection enabled all the time.

Anything worth adding? Anything that can be removed for sure, cause it just duplicates something else from this list? Anything should be replaced? (if yes, then why?)

<comment><USER12> Instead of Noscript, use uBlock Origin in dynamic mode: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic- filtering](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering)

<comment><USER15> ClearClick is what I'm interested in, not script blocking, at least right now. WebExt version doesn't have it now, but I'm keeping it installed, so it just upgrades when it's added back.

<comment><USER16> Firefox bypasses right-click blocking when you press shift.

What it doesn't bypass is websites placing transparent things on top of what you wish to right-click on (for example images on Twitter). For that I use Stylus to add CSS and move things away.

<comment><USER15> It's not about right-click bypassing, it's exactly about transparent things. ClearClick checks whether the image of what you click matches the image of element that's being clicked, shows you the preview and asks if you really want to click it. The best pre-WebExt feature of NoScript.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you're interested in this, I suggest the new web browser Brave. It does a great job of cleaning up all the ads & protecting your privacy. I also haven't ran into sites that block me yet like I do when using an ad blocker on Chrome. You can choose the search engine you want to use unlike this extension. It's also built on top of the same code as Chrome so you get all those benefits as well. Brendan Eich (JavaScript & Mozilla) is the CEO.

Slightly off topic, Brave also has an interesting feature as well to help support content creators. Since a lot of content creators rely on ads, you have the ability to add a small amount of funds to a crypto wallet that Brave can use which get distributed to the websites you visit the most over the month. You can enable or disable this for specific websites as well. I think this is a great idea but it may have a hard time catching on. I think people will have a hard time adding money to a virtual wallet to pay for something they "think" they are already getting for free. At the same time I love the concept as it is a way for you to reward people for good content & create a disincentive for bad content.

<comment><USER18> How about a simply browser extension that let's you donate to page / site X? This would also be great on GitHub and GitLab.

You could buy credits in bulk so the credit card transaction fee only happens once. And then, if the page has an account, dole out those credits as you surf.

Probably not massive amounts of money but better than the ads based model. At least there would be a option.

<comment><USER19> There have been attempts to do this. Flattr and Patreon come to mind. I currently actively support a few people on Patreon.

<comment><USER18> Both are close, but not what I'm looking for. I want...a browser extension...that recognizes (via code on that page) a site/page that's registered within the network...the extension icon turns green to let me know...I click the icon...the dropdown shows me my current number of credits...and let's me donate to the current site...

The site doesn't pay anything to be in the network (sans maybe a low sign up fee to mitigate spam). The members pay, tho' I'd have to think about that model.

What I want is semi similar to an old school PayPal button but more micropay friendly (low cost) and is more (social) network-centric.

No can do?

p.s. FWIW this is something I imagine say GitHub doing for starters and then branching out from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> DDG as a search engine is just good. Its been my default for a long time. I wish Mozilla would make it the default so more users could be introduced to it. Why hasn't this happened yet?

<comment><USER21> I tend to agree, but at least a few times a day have to resort to using !g to actually find a decent result. It's usually Angular/Symfony related but just last week I couldn't find the website of my local tennis club at all, not even by exact name. On google it was the first result...

<comment><USER22> The answer I suppose is almost always found on stackoverflow.com anyway, so why not go to SO search directly? Because SO search isn't up to it of course.

Why don't they improve their search system? I think they're really leaving money on the table, or maybe it's a job for a third-party SO search app for a fellow HNer (not that there aren't already enough SO scrapers showing up in searches).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm using DuckDuckGo every day, but I wish DuckDuckHack was easier to contribute to. Maybe something like letting users load their own modules for local use, and public repositories? I'd like to help improve instant answers and widgets (like json pretty print).

<comment><USER24> It wasn't really difficult to contribute to them about a year or two ago. I've contributed a couple of cheatsheets (for example, clicking on the info icon when searching for "nmap cheatsheet" will reveal my GitHub username), which were, at the time, considered a low-hanging fruit way of contributing instant answers.

Later on, I was later on added to the DuckDuckHack Contributors team[0], which was border-line spamming, up to the point where I had to redirect email notifications from the DuckDuckGo organization to my non-primary email address. Occasional email is fine, a dozen or two dozens of emails in my inbox almost every single day was not.

And finally, I am aware that there was some grand change about how people contribute to DuckDuckGo introduced relatively recently, which makes my experience a bit outdated.

The combination of their actions _after_ I've contributed to them made me pretty uninterested in the idea of contributing more instant answers. Nowadays, I only suggest bangs from time to time, which is as easy as filling out a form[1].

[0] [https://github.com/orgs/duckduckgo/teams/duckduckhack- contri...](https://github.com/orgs/duckduckgo/teams/duckduckhack-contributors)

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/newbang](https://duckduckgo.com/newbang)

<comment><USER9> Sorry about the experience you had with the org. DuckDuckHack is indeed in maintenance mode right now as we couldn't figure out the best contribution model that scaled with the search engine, though are still thinking about how to do that.

All of these new apps and extensions are open source though, and we'd welcome any contributions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are the apps and browser extensions 100% open source? I didn't notice anything in the text, but _maybe_ [https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo-privacy- extension](https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo-privacy-extension) [https://github.com/duckduckgo/Android](https://github.com/duckduckgo/Android) [https://github.com/duckduckgo/iOS](https://github.com/duckduckgo/iOS) have the complete source code?

<comment><USER9> Yes they are all completely open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Are people mostly positive about this? I was already using DDG - then I get an unexpected pop up asking for permission to rewrite everything. I think we should develop a reflex to routinely refuse to give popups permission - so now I've lost DDG in the search bar.

I would much rather that it stayed as a non-evil search provider rather than bundling ABP/Ghostery. Maybe I'm in a minority wanting separation of concerns?

Or maybe it really is better than ABP and Ghostery and I've missed it by being put off by the delivery mechanism?

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry for putting you off. The intention is to have all the privacy essentials in one package, and make those essentials each best in class. Over the coming months we will explain more about how we're doing so and why we think that is the case. Right now though know that it is doing more than just tracker blocking and private search: it is also upgrading encryption where possible and exposing poor privacy practices when known.

In any case though, I understand if you feel you are covered with other extensions and just want search. In that case, you don't really need a DuckDuckGo extension and can set the search via these instructions: [https://duckduckgo.com/install](https://duckduckgo.com/install)

<comment><USER27> I'd still be nice if the omnibox search can be changed. That's the reason I've removed the extension after 15 minutes. I have my own search service with a couple of keywords I need all the time. The fallback/default search is ddg anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Edit - Chrome only issue for which the devs don't have good options.

I was very disappointed to discover that the app _forces_ you to use DDG for search. In Chrome there doesn't appear to be a way to use Google as your default search engine while the extension is active. I like its other features but Google search IMO is _much much_ better than DDG and don't want to be forced to switch.

<comment><USER9> This is unfortunately the way Chrome works right now. If you revert search settings they disable the whole extension. We are actively trying to find a way around this behavior.

<comment><USER29> Is there a way to get the website rating functionality without being forced to use DDG as a default search provider?

<comment><USER9> I don't think so in Chrome, no, though we are actively trying to find a way short of forking the extension, and if anyone has any ideas, please feel free to reach out to me.

However, we do suggest generally to switch browsers if privacy is a primary concern. We recommend and use ourselves a number of good browsers: Firefox, Safari, Brave, and Vivaldi among them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Improving privacy is great, but I find the extreme approach to erase all history taken by DuckDuckGo and others make them difficult to adopt.

I often use the history feature to re-find sites I remember visiting before. Bookmarks don't solve this problem because even if I tried to remember to bookmark anything that might be important later, I wouldn't be able to nor would I always be able to make that judgement accurately.

So, what I like to have instead of the nuclear option (erase all history) is a browser that protects my identity but also my history (e.g. behind a locked gate) that I can use always without having to think about so I don't have to choose between privacy or history.

</comment><comment><USER31> I like the grade system. Sometimes I'm amazed to see the number on my uBlock icon skyrocketing.

It's cool to know where not to go if you can avoid it

<comment><USER32> >uBlock icon skyrocketing.

Some sites have 100s of fallback ads and trackers (usually just domains and subdomains), once tracker 1 failed to load, it tries to load 2 which is the same file on a server, but with different URL. They have literally 100s or 1000s of such fallback URLs.

<comment><USER33> I'm just grateful that they still serve ads over separate domains, instead of rigging up the ad tech on the server side and embedding tracking into the "functional" Javascript.

I get more worried that once Wasm hits, the only way to tell if you're being tracked will be to monitor individual HTTP requests, which even then might become impossible if everything is sent to and from opaque CDN domains.

I imagine the only thing currently standing between us and this nightmare is that people don't want to actually work with any tracking on the backend; easier to embed it in the front-end and let the vendor put whatever they want in the script and serve all the requests.

<comment><USER34> Only a matter of time until Cloudflare starts offering ads. They can embed them at the edge with no/minimal JS and links/image files of the host domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I was curious about the "fake" site they used in their example, creepysite.com. I was pretty surprised to find that it redirects to google.com by an HTTP 302 redirect.

Good marketing for duckduckgo.

</comment><comment><USER36> Very interesting.

I wonder how DDG's new privacy tools compare to uBlock and Brave.

The Terms of Service; Didn't Read [0] project is super cool. Looks like their information is a bit dated though. Hopefully teaming with DDG will give them a boost.

[0] [https://tosdr.org/index.html](https://tosdr.org/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> Ukraine region not available any more: while "ua-uk" URL parameter is still mentioned on search params page[1], it's not working. I didn't get the answers on DDG forum (now closed in favor of reddit), neither on /r/duckduckgo. I suspect this could be connected somehow to Yandex block. Anyway, currently can't use DDG for local search, sad :(

[1] [https://duckduckgo.com/params](https://duckduckgo.com/params)

</comment><comment><USER38> Just came here to say that I've been using duckduckgo for the past year and absolutely love it. Keep up the wonderful work.

<comment><USER9> Thank you so much! We really appreciate the support and are glad that you're enjoying the search experience. This announcement should give you more privacy protection when you leave our search results pages.

<comment><USER39> I notice AdNauseam blocks your adds even when I have it set to allow non- tracking ads. What sort precautions does DDG do to protect users who use your ads?

<comment><USER9> Our entire search results page is anonymous at page load, and our ads are non- tracking in the sense that they are just based on that one search page request and have nothing to do with any other personal information (as we don't have any). It's unfortunate that adblockers are blocking our ads, but I understand that our more privacy-aware ads are extremely rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm concerned that I'd be handing over data about my browsing habits to DDG and its partners in order to use some of the features described in the article:

\- The Privacy Grade rating (A-F) when visiting a website.

\- Scoring of websites in terms of service and privacy, by partnering with Terms of Service Didn't Read.

I'm not sure how these services can be provided by DDG and its partners without them knowing which websites I'm browsing to.

IMO, it's none of their business, even if they promise not to keep the data or give/sell it to anyone -- a promise which is not verified by any trusted third party, as far as I know.

<comment><USER9> All of this calculation happens on your device, and is not handed over to us. Additionally, our privacy policy is to not store or collect any personal information at all: [https://duckduckgo.com/privacy](https://duckduckgo.com/privacy)

<comment><USER40> How can I be sure that DDG is actually following its own privacy policies?

<comment><USER9> Our privacy policy is extremely strict, and is the basis for our company. If we are to be found violating it at all, we would be ruined, and would probably be criminally liable.

In addition, a lot of what we do, including this new app and extension is open source so the code can be examined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Installed the iOS app and figured they would offer a content blocker for iOS Safari, just like Firefox Focus do. But their app didn't offer any.

Let's hope they do in the future.

<comment><USER9> We're working on that. Because the content blocking mechanism doesn't offer fine-grained controls, we couldn't make it seamless and still block the things we think should be blocked -- like Google Analytics.

<comment><USER42> > Because the content blocking mechanism doesn't offer fine-grained controls, > we couldn't make it seamless and still block the things we think should be > blocked -- like Google Analytics.

Just curious, what about the Content Blocking API makes this impossible? I was under the impression that you could block JavaScript from the rule list.

<comment><USER9> Some google analytics code is embedded into buttons that are essential for the Web site to operate, so if you block them then the website will cease functioning properly. To get around that, we still block it, but insert some inert code in its place that will make the button function again properly. This nuanced replacement is not available through the API -- it's more all or nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> @yegg, is DuckDuckHack coming back?

That was one of my first forays into open source and was hoping that there is more that I (and the community) can do to help improve DDG further.

<comment><USER9> We are trying to find ways to make that work. Right now though, all of these apps and extensions are open source, and we would welcome contributions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> What is the advantage of this over Firefox Focus? And is the Privacy Essentials extension available for Firefox for Android? Trying to understand why I should use the DDG app over either of those two, since the DDG app seems like it is just a browser without tab functionality.

Also, not really related, but does anybody know how to make the home screen search bar on Nexus/Pixel phones use DDG instead of Google?

<comment><USER9> Tab functionality should be coming shortly, along with other standard browser functionality -- feel free to influence the roadmap with more suggestions :).

It is not available yet for Firefox for Android, though we would like to make it so shortly.

Our app additionally includes a few things:

\--Upgraded encryption, in that if we can determine a site works on an encrypted version, we will also send you there automatically.

\--Privacy grading, in that we show you at a glance how protected you are, which you can tap to dig into the details. We have more to do, though we've spent a long time trying to make this UX intuitive and informative, including an A-F grading scheme, grouping trackers by networks, and showing you over time who we caught trying to track you.

\--Special attention given to blocking while at the same time not breaking the Web.

<comment><USER45> Hi, thanks for all you guys do at DDG.

I was wondering if the app will get the "Open Link in Browser" option?

I tend to search with DDG and when I find what I want, open it in FF and keep it there. (I noticed the Bookmark bit).

Cheers!

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the suggestion -- duly noted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I've been using DuckDuckGo for a few months since I switched to the new Firefox. It's generally OK but I can tell that the results are just ever so slightly worse than Google. I get irrelevant results and old results. It's just obviously not nearly as smart and that's probably because it doesn't know as much about me as Google does.

<comment><USER47> DDG is usually good enough but I do find myself dropping back to Google for some searches (easy enough with !g).

It does make clear how tailored Google searches are to the user. For example, when I search for programming terms that have non-programming meanings (library names etc) I get a much more diverse list. Google pretty much exclusively only shows me programming-related results. With DDG I need to add my location to the search rather than relying on Google knowing my exact address.

I do find DDG location search very annoying as clicking on a map result always tries to open it in the Maps application, which I don't want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> what i _really_ dislike from Google is how they offer downgraded UI's to non- Chrome browsers like firefox on android.

so no 'tools' to specify filters, and no 'Related images' in image search.

i looked why this was and its apparently intentional. brr.. evil :)

</comment><comment><USER49> This gives my (personal) site a "B", but literally the only thing it "fails" is that it doesn't have a privacy policy listed at the (third party) site "ToS;DR".

My site is a personal site, doesn't have logins, and doesn't even have any Javascript, so I think the "B" is a little misleading.

(Side note: Amusingly, if you go to [https://tosdr.org](https://tosdr.org) with the plugin installed, they also fail for apparently not having a privacy policy listed on their own site. Also it says in a very large font that their ratings are outdated, so I really don't know how useful this is.)

<comment><USER9> We don't feel we can give anything an "A" until TOSDR vets the privacy policy, and unfortunately they don't have a ton of sites vetted yet. However, we are committed to working with them to dramatically increase the number of sites rated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> How does this differ from Disconnect or Ghostery?

<comment><USER51> I came to ask the same question. Have been using 'Blur' [0] extension for the same (After hearing Ghostery is actually by an advertizing company).

[0] : [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/donottrackplu...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/donottrackplus/)

<comment><USER52> It isn't really.

Ghostery makes/made its money selling things like a report on what advertising ends up being on your site, which you as site owner might quite reasonably want to know. (Advertising space is sold and resold at dizzying speed.)

IIRC Ghostery recently sold itself to Cliqz, which in turn is owned by Burda, a publishing conglomerate. Mozilla owns a bit too.

<comment><USER51> Yes, looks like they are now owned by some other company. Previously, one of many references [1] said this, which really smells fishy to me(Now not sure if the article itself is wrong):

 _" Ghostery is owned by Evidon, a company that collects and provides data to advertising companies. It has a feature called GhostRank that you can check to "support" them. The problem is, Ghostery blocks sites from gathering personal information on you—but Ghostrank will take note the ads you encounter and which ones you block, and sends that information back to advertisers so they can better formulate their ads to avoid being blocked. The data is anonymous, and Ghostery still does everything it promises to do to protect your privacy."_

[1] : [https://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery- actual...](https://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actually- sells-data-to-a-514417864)

<comment><USER53> Seems logical - if you're an advertising company or an organized group of advertising companies and you _know_ that people are going to be doing ad- blocking or at least tracker-blocking, if you can provide a tool that's 90% of the way there which also gets you metrics, etc. then at least you get that little bit of data and the existence of a "good enough" option may also delay stronger measures implemented by someone else.

<comment><USER52> That assumes that ghostery users block some ads, not all.

Try this alternative: The reports sold by ghostery tell example.com the link targets and reseller chains for each ad on its site, so it can keep away the ads for herbal viagra or fake gucci clothes. (Ad space is often sold through resellers, I've seen five-reseller chains myself and have heard stories about longer ones.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Generally I am positive about this but I'd have to give some feedback that tag containers/managers are not automatically bad.

At the moment it seems like this tool just flags tag containers (e.g. tagcommander, google tag manager) as a "tracker network" which they are not. Of course, a tag container might contain tracking beacons and tags etc but they might also contain benign other scripts (e.g. for A/B testing).

I would prefer it if these sorts of tools blacklisted the tags _inside_ the container (they are just loaded via ajax like everything else), rather than the containers themselves.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is blocking Google Analytics, Facebook Connect and New Relic on my site. How would DuckDuckGo prefer that startups measure traffic, ad ROI and site performance? What's the "right" way?

<comment><USER55> The "right" way is to accept that privacy-conscious visitors reject your use of third-party tracking, and if you really need to track their visits you must use a first-party tool (Piwik, GoAccess, plain old logfile parsing...). It may not seem fair and it may be frustrating, but blocking third-party tracking is just so easy and anyone who cares about privacy can do it with minimal effort.

As a side benefit, when you start doing your own tracking from server logs, you gain valuable insight into where the gaps in data are from the third-party trackers, and precisely how many visitors are under counted.

<comment><USER54> You're right that third-party trackers aren't that reliable, and I do my own log analytics for the easy/important stuff, but I'm not about to roll my own New Relic.

This also seems bad for early-stage startups, where developer time is severely limited.

<comment><USER56> Early stage startups could simply _skip_ all the analytics and do more qualitative UX research with smaller numbers of people they actually interact with in a human way and use large stats for things that actually matter like sales and revenue etc.

The whole idea that you need all the analytics is at least overblown and suffers from the streetlight effect. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I miss Alta Vista and all the operators you could add to your queries.

</comment><comment><USER58> My biggest frustration with search engines is that certain websites I consider bad are common in results. These include sites that require a login to use properly (Pinterest and Quora) as well as websites that are known to have wrong information (W3Schools).

What I'd like to have is an option in my search engine (ideally that would not require a login) to always exclude certain domains from results.

That would improve my browsing experience more than any other feature. Blocking trackers is something others are already doing well.

</comment><comment><USER59> I see that the DuckDuckGo app is retiring stories. I am sad about this as I really liked the mix of articles it would provide.

@yegg, any chance of a stories-only spin-off app?

<comment><USER9> I actually made that stories feed originally for myself, before DuckDuckGo even existed. As I still rely on it, I ported it personally to [https://twitter.com/watrcoolr](https://twitter.com/watrcoolr)

<comment><USER59> This makes me happy! Watrcoolr.us (linked in the bio) seems to be a parked domain though, just as a heads up.

<comment><USER9> Ahh, I'll delete that -- used to be where it was ages ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> To prevent suffering from tyranny of small decisions[1], I want to support duckduckgo, financially and technically. Do they take donation? Or do they have an open sets of challenge to work on? Would love to help.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_small_decisions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_small_decisions)

</comment><comment><USER61> I don't like the fact that the browser combines the search bar and the address bar.

It means that when I enter a URL character by character, the search engine will know where I am going next even thought I didn't need the assistance of a search engine in the first place.

A "privacy first" browser can do better in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER62> Duckduckgo improved drastically over the last 6-7 years. I have no idea how they did it, but they did a great job.

</comment><comment><USER30> Very cool... Some areas for improvement I noticed off the bat while using the app:

* Scrolling sometimes feels slow.

* Doesn't seem to work with 1 password autofill. Not sure if 1password, DuckDuckGo, or both are needed to address this.

* Would be nice to be able to use Google as a search engine (though I admit I could just go to google.com first).

<comment><USER63> With DDG you should be able to use !bangs.

example: "!g my google query"

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> This isn't really a big deal, but the features they are touting as new "today" have been in the FF version of the extension for at least the month or so I've had it installed. I'm honestly curious if I'm missing something or not.

<comment><USER9> We had to soft-launch early in Firefox because of the change in Firefox 57 of how extensions work, though were still getting out the kinks and preparing it for the rest of the platforms.

</comment></comment><comment> pablo-massa To block trackers I use Brave on my phone and Chrome + uBlock Origin on desktop.

I just checked this extensions and seems that they put a lot of attention on UX, I loved it and is all in one product, I like the vision of DDG.

Someone knows if the blocking part is as good as uBlock and Brave?

</comment><comment><USER65> Kind of interesting seeing some of the ratings. Like Mozilla and HN have a B because of unknown privacy practices. Both these websites are fairly old, and it seems odd to me that the privacy practices of Mozilla are unknown.

</comment><comment><USER66> How does the Safari extension play with the native content blockers like 1blocker? Is this supported? I noticed that with 1blocker enabled, the initial grade is usually higher than what it would be without 1blocker.

</comment><comment><USER67> Maybe it's just a semantic argument because I am a search engine developer, but I wouldn't really call DDG a "search engine". It uses Bing to power results. I would describe it as a "search interface" that gives you advanced search related tools in addition to standard search, some stratified results, and then it takes a privacy angle to differentiate itself. As such, I think the move to browser safety is a natural extension of what they do.

That said, how the heck do they make money? I only very rarely see a single ad, and there isn't much money in NOT tracking people. It's very hard to make money on search if you aren't Google (I would know, I have tried several times).

<comment><USER68> Amazon Associates is one way DDG monetizes. Not sure how much revenue that brings in, but would love to see some stats on this.

<comment><USER67> I didn't think that was kosher as it incentivizes them to prioritize results from Amazon.

<comment><USER9> Here's some more details on how we make money: [https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and- affiliates](https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates)

Short answer is we're profitable since 2014 primarily with non-tracking search ads based on the keyword (type in car and get a car ad). While we don't serve that many ads, these are still lucrative enough to pay all the bills.

The affiliate portion is quite small now, and we do not change any rankings based on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Is it worth the switching costs of going from google to duckduckgo?

<comment><USER70> One of the many nice features of DDG is that you can fall back to Google searches trivially enough by adding a "!g" at the front of your search results. The bang syntax also works for directing searches to YouTube, Wikipedia, etc.

I value my privacy, so the few times I have to redirect a search to Google is a small price to pay. Definitely recommend making the switch.

(Of course, if Google already knows everything about you, you'll probably find their results much better tuned for you, so YMMV. I was quite amused and pleased when all the suggested search completions for—IIRC—"git" in a recent DDG search were completely irrelevant to me.)

<comment><USER71> You can also use "!sp" to get Google search results anonymized by startpage.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I use a pi-hole on my network so I think that achieves most of the things this extension offers (minus the site rating thing)

I use DDG as my main search engine though, and will continue to do so.

</comment><comment><USER73> Choice is good. Big fan of Google and use a lot as super curious person but if does not work for you good there are other choices that work for your needs.

</comment><comment><USER74> Here is a list of G operators [https://goo.gl/jYQk2t](https://goo.gl/jYQk2t)

</comment><comment><USER75> Won't using ToS;DR alienate smaller services that are not listed there? I only see reasonably big sites on their site.

<comment><USER9> The hope is to work with them and their process in such a way that we can dramatically increase the number of sites rated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I really do like the design of the post-install splash page. The vista scene reminds me of the firefox post install page.

</comment><comment><USER77> I installed DuckDuckGo on my android in order to have a DuckDuckGo search widget and now it's replaced with a laggy browser.

smh

</comment><comment><USER78> moving to DDG right now. and it's done

</comment><comment><USER79> creepysite.com

... used in their screenshot as an example, so funny that creepysite.com actually does redirect to google.com :D

</comment><comment><USER80> Very happy to see the improvements. Personally I stopped feeling comfortable on using search engines across the Atlantic since about a decade.

In case you'd be living around Europe, [http://qwant.com](http://qwant.com) is picking up the pace here as a search engine focused on privacy-aware users.

As an engineer, the service is answering quite well to my queries related to software.

</comment><comment><USER81> Is the TOSDR data included with the add-on and referenced offline or is every URL being sent to TOSDR?

</comment><comment><USER82> Was there any truth to the Russia-DDG connection rumor going around the internet a few years back?

<comment><USER19> Well DDG does buy indexes/data from Yandex for search, if that's what you're referring to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> At the moment I use uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, NoScript. Can this addon replace all of these?

<comment><USER84> Don't you worry that your extensions are fighting each other? I only use uBlock Origin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Does the DDG addon replace other addons like HTTPSEverywhere or uBlock?

</comment><comment><USER86> Can't use 1Password on the iOS app. Deal breaker.

</comment><comment><USER87> Whenever I try to put back the search engine that I use as Chrome toolbar search engine it uninstall the app.

Edit: Quick support made me change my wording to a less passive aggressive one.

<comment><USER9> Can you please elaborate as to the issue -- I'm having trouble understanding exactly what is going on. If it is easier, you can email me directly at yegg at duckduckgo.com

<comment><USER87> Problem A:

1) Install App on chrome

2) Do a search using the browser's address bar

3) A dialog with the text "is this the search engine you expected" appears.

4) Click the button to revert to previous settings.

5) App is now uninstalled.

\---

Problem B:

1) Install App on chrome

2) Go to chrome://settings/

3) Scroll to "Search engine used in the address bar"

4) Unable to change the settings as Chrome says "DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials is controlling this setting".

5) Click "Disable" in the hope that the app will still be installed but with a different default search engine.

6) Entire app is disabled.

<comment><USER53> OK, so when the Extension is installed in Chrome it takes over the omnibox search, directs it to DDG, and does not allow it to be changed.

Put differently, to get the features like tracker blocking, privacy policy scoring, etc. you _must_ also be using DDG for search. I'd call that something that probably should be changed, or at least changeable in the options.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, this is currently the way Chrome works. We're looking for a way around it, but it looks like they changed this behavior sometime last year. In other browsers you can easily use another search engine without disabling the entire thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER89> Good. Glad to see DDG keeps moving forward.

</comment><comment><USER90> Please put the install links at the top.

</comment><comment><USER91> Saw you guys on Product Hunt!!

</comment><comment><USER92> Is nobody here aware of/concerned by DDG ownership's previous endeavors?

<comment><USER93> Please elaborate, I'm genuinely not aware of any of their previous endeavours nor who the ownership is.

<comment><USER9> I occasionally get trolled around my previous company, Opobox, an early social networking company that I ran from 2003-2006. As far as I can tell, the trolling theme is that since I ever was associated with any kind of social networking company, that somehow taints me/DuckDuckGo. It's purpose was to help reunite old friends and classmates, and it actually helped develop my privacy views and practices for what became DuckDuckGo.

For example we did what I think were some innovative things:

\--We collected the minimum amount of information possible.

\--Allowed people to automatically remove all their minimal information permanently with one click or email.

\--Actually charged money as a business model instead of using advertising.

\--Never worked with any third-parties in terms of data targeting (and didn't need to since that wasn't our business model).

Of course, these also made the company ultimately not able to compete in the space, which was completely subsumed by Facebook.

I took these privacy ideas to DuckDuckGo, though, and realized in the case of Web search the minimum amount of information needed is actually zero. Hence, our privacy policy.

<comment><USER94> > _\--Actually charged money as a business model instead of using > advertising._

Have you considered charging for premium DDG features? IOW, what's the long- term viability of DDG?

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, like with social networking, there is an established freeness in the market, and so it is hard to charge people en masse. Fortunately for web search though, you can make plenty of money without tracking people, and so we've been profitable since 2014 and have no long-term viability issues.

<comment><USER56> w00t!! Is there some great public link that would be best to use in contacting the rare honorable advertiser who might advertise with DDG?

I'm thinking along the lines of a conversation about why it's unethical to feed Google / FB etc. given their fundamentally invasive business models and someone asks what to do otherwise, so I send them a great intro link that explains both that advertising on DDG is good ROI _and_ more ethical…

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> "Install an arbitrary piece of code on your machine to improve your privacy."

Note that there is no link to the source code, no checksum. There's no indication that DDG isn't doing exactly what they claim to be protecting against. And the question comes up: what do they stand to gain from having users install a mobile app on their phone?

<comment><USER96> Isn't this it? [https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo-privacy- extension](https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo-privacy-extension)

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> I'm not sure I understand what value DDG is providing exactly.

I use Bing with cookies and JS disabled. DDG on the other hand can't be used with JS disabled.

Before you say that privacy is about cookies and JS has no bearing in it, think that Google for example uses all kinds of JS to gather information about your browser. That's extra datapoints that they gather about you.

<comment><USER9> This announcement is more than private search; it's all the privacy essentials to search and browse the web -- tracker blocking, upgraded encryption, and private search (with more to come) -- all in one package, available on all major desktop browsers and mobile platforms.

With regards to the search component, we actually offer two Non-JS sites: [https://duckduckgo.com/html](https://duckduckgo.com/html) & [https://duckduckgo.com/lite](https://duckduckgo.com/lite). Also, turning off JS and cookies still doens't prevent a search engine from tracking you, which they can do simply by your IP address.

<comment><USER97> > With regards to the search component, we actually offer two Non-JS sites: > [https://duckduckgo.com/html](https://duckduckgo.com/html) & > [https://duckduckgo.com/lite](https://duckduckgo.com/lite).

That's quite cool, thank you. For some reason it I can't make it work with Firefox's "search keyword" (the feature of starting a query with a keyword on the smart-bar which forwards that query to the search engine of your choice)

> Also, turning off JS and cookies still doens't prevent a search engine from > tracking you, which they can do simply by your IP address.

Sure. Some datapoints about you are easier to hide than others. So are you saying that DDG doesn't store that?

<comment><USER9> For Firefox, you need to use their plugin system -- there should be an addon just for those e.g. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-ht...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-html/)

On privacy, yes, -- that's our privacy policy in a nutshell: we do not collect or share any personal information -- [https://duckduckgo.com/privacy](https://duckduckgo.com/privacy)

<comment><USER97> Can I give you a suggestion. When someone is using ddg with JS off, I think that dgg shouldn't "redirect to non-JS site". Instead you guys should have the same page being useable without JS using the <noscript> tag. Google and Bing both have achieved that, so it's possible.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robot Turtles: The Board Game for Little Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danshapiro/robot-turtles-the-board-game-for-little-programmer

<comment><USER2> It would be super helpful to see a video of how the game is played. I am very interested in this project though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestion! I have 50 gigs of footage of kids playing - I will put together a video that shows one play session, start to finish, and add it later today. (There are some short clips in the Kickstarter video now FYI).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of how I first learned to program: moving turtles around using the Logo language on a TI99/4A. If it worked for me, I hope it will work for the next generation!

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this basically a simpler version of RoboRally?

</comment><comment><USER5> I think this is a great idea and I am all for it!

</comment><comment><USER6> This is definitely cool.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool project!</comment>