I Used DuckDuckGo for a Week and Had to Switch Back. Here's why. - <AUTHOR> http://notes.brianmayer.com/i-used-duckduckgo-for-a-week-and-had-to-switch-back

<comment><USER2> You can keep DDG as your default search engine, and use the !g bang command to redirect the most difficult queries to Google. You get the best of both worlds (except for some cognitive load when deciding which engine to use).

<comment><USER3> I just type !sp + searchterm into my search bar and it searches via startpage.com, which uses googles search results without my IP address or searches being recorded, no identifying or tracking cookies are used and SSL encryption is set by default.

<comment><USER4> But this would foil what OP expects from google, a.k.a. to be geolocalized and tracked to be served personalized results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Call it extra cognitive load if you like but I find that DDG makes me think more about my searches and direct them using !bangs. I feel better about this than blindly letting Google take me where it wants.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's really about preference. A lot of people still use emacs even though it takes more effort than other options.

<comment><USER6> You'd be hard-pressed to find an emacs user who agreed that it took more effort than other options. Which is a good illustration of why we have more than one editor: different people have different affinities to various editors and IDEs.

In theory that sort of thing ought to be true for search, too. For example, blekko (new UI as of 3 weeks ago) focuses on clustering results. Here's what it does for pride: [https://blekko.com/#?q=pride](https://blekko.com/#?q=pride) That gives you the answer you wanted, without personalization, and gives other people the answer they wanted, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Google Keeps Up with Timely Search Queries_

...by tracking you.

you can't win every time.

<comment><USER8> you can by using this: [https://github.com/broncowdd/googol](https://github.com/broncowdd/googol)

it parses google results on the server it is hosted on, and generate a page you can use without being tracked.

test it here: [http://googlof.com/](http://googlof.com/)

<comment><USER7> Why bother with the hoop jumping?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My wife and me tried it as well; same thing. Two things make DDG unusable for me; much slower than Google and doesn't understand context. I think that sums up the article as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> DDG doesn't actually have their own search engine though right? They are using Yahoo/Bing on the backend?

<comment><USER11> DDG does have its own search engine, but it also takes advantage of the dataset Yahoo/Bing collected.

<comment><USER12> They also have a custom blacklist of spam sites that will not show up in search results, even if they are indexed in the Bing dataset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've used StartPage for years, and it doesn't seem to have been affected by the recent NSA leaks. It is also as powerful as Google without the ads, since it's based on Google (I'm surprised Google hasn't successfully blocked it). I had seen DDG, but never took it as seriously as StartPage, whose PR director Katherine Albrecht is a privacy expert and long-time advocate against loyalty cards and RFIDs.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for mentioning this. I may switch to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Living in Turkey, I can tell that Google returns way better search results to my queries about local stuff. DuckDuckGo in the other hand, has a lot of search tooling (goodies) and returns more relevant stuff when I search something more general or technical. My search engine defaults to DuckDuckGo, with the exception of local queries, which I dispatch to Google.

<comment><USER4> I concur that duckduckgo has still room for improvement in the local search area. It has already improved since I switched but I still find myself having trouble finding some local relevant results.

To me this is still an improvement over google always directing me to a localized version of their search and forcing me to tricks to get the global google web search.

And if ddg fails short, I can bang to another search engine or use the address bar to try my search elsewhere.

<comment><USER15> Personally, I have a whole lot of search engines I use with the Chrom(e|ium) omnibar: tra\t for google translate, !m\t for linux.die.net/man/ !g for google, !w\t for wikipedia and !d for duckduckgo. If I do not use any 'bangs', the search is dispatched to DDG. (\t for tab)

Even though I do not consider google harmful or hostile, centralizing all my access to info in one search provider sounds like a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google does not offer a Tor Hidden Service, but DDG does [1]. Not only can google not see my search query (unless I use !g instead of !sp), but not even my ISP knows what I'm looking for. There is a bit of lag for searches (5 whole seconds maybe), but those of us used to the way Tor works, this is not much of a problem at all.

There's also a Firefox Search Add-on [2], for those interested. I combine it with Foobar [3] for a more seamless and chrome-like interface.

[1] [http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/](http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/)

[2] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo- to...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-tor/)

[3] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/foobar/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/foobar/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I tried DuckDuckGo but didn't like the search results either. I'have had the exact same problems with the coding error searches the author had. The results were mostly useless. Then I tried startpage.com and never went back.

</comment><comment><USER18> I switched to DDG recently, have noticed no lag, enjoy the !g and !yt shortcuts (one less thing I have to set my browser up to do), and I really like how it puts Wikipedia at the top. But that's not why I switched: I don't want my web search queries to change my Suggested YouTube Videos. I noticed this recently with Google (since I'm always signed in). Sometimes a search is just a search, though, and it's almost like Google's slowly erasing that memory from reality.

<comment><USER19> DDG has !sp too for StartPage to get Google sans tracking

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reading this my first reaction is to ask how much OP has been paid by google to write this piece of stupid, to me this looks like a mix of infomercial and fanboyism.

The title is misleading makes us think he had no other choice but to go back to google but when reading the article the reasons invoked are personal preferences preferences and comfort sprinkled with laziness.

Google feels faster by a small fraction of a second to OP, he asks to be geolocalized and profiled so he can skip a couple keywords in his query and his unreasonable expectations be met by google.

Here's an advice try searching for "pride weekend san francisco" instead of "pride" when you're looking for info about the pride weekend in san francisco. Try searching stackoverflow when you want stackoverflow results (though in my experience ddg almost always features a relevant stackoverflow result and link in ddg instant answer)

And this supposedly is worth renouncing privacy and being profiled and tracked across the internet and mined to oblivion ?

I'm not saying duckduckgo is perfect and will fulfill your every need but what telling the world you _had to_ switch back to google because ddg didn't fulfill personal expectation of it being google is dumb, really.

</comment><comment><USER20> For me the results were simply not as good.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think google search > duckduckgo, but the request "pride" seems to be a pretty weak point to compare, I would expect definition even if there is someting going on in my city. I would never google "pride" but more "pride weekend in Sfo" or something.

</comment><comment><USER22> Author is allowed his opinion and choices. I am staying with DDG because I value privacy more.

<comment><USER23> You're allowed to state the obvious. I will still write this comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Given how non-trival search is and the relative resources and histories of the two providers in question, it's sort of amazing these are the worst comparison points the author could come up with.

<comment><USER25> Microsoft (the source of most of the results in the case of DDG) is not exactly poor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The past tense of verbification of DuckDuckGo should probably be 'DuckDuckWent', right?

</comment><comment><USER27> I personally value my privacy and liberty over a few additional nanoseconds of waiting, or what might be not as refined results.

This article isn't insightful or original, only pathetic. The attitude shows you how many in the US are unwilling to make even the tiniest sacrifice to preserve a human right like not having all you information surveyed, recorded and stored for Big Brother to use against you.

Sad.

<comment><USER28> You seem to be overly focusing on certain parts of the article to make your point. The fact that DDG is terrible at searching for error messages (showing sites experiencing the errors rather than explanations of the errors) is a pretty non-trivial minus for developers.

<comment><USER4> One guy making a point in a blog post doesn't make a fact.

In my own experience, google is now offering poorer results to the point of being useless. I've been using it to search for error message for about 15 years now. While on the other hand duckduckgo very often nails it with a relevant stackoverflow result in instant answer.

I guess ymmv according to how much you're inside the bubble.

I'd like to see something more factual to show how much ddg sucks at fulfilling queries for info to fix error message vs unfiltered google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Earlier this week, I searched for "Pride," expecting to find out more about > Pride Weekend in San Francisco. DuckDuckGo seemed to have no understanding > of that context, whereas Google's first results were exactly what I was > looking for.

In the meantime, everyone studying philosophy or psychology in the San Francisco area is probably bashing their head against the wall, because they want to find starting points about the moral implications of pride or its psychological cues.

The Google bubble is a good thing in about, what, 1% of the cases. Don't fall in love with it.

> It must be no more than 200-300 ms, but it really makes a difference.

At the risk of being impolite, this has to be the most retarded claim I have ever heard from someone who is doing programming, ever since I heard a colleague of mine revolutionizing virtual memory by thinking how the MMU could instantiate another MMU to avoid stack overflows.

You can literally compensate for the time you need to make 100 queries by getting to your office 30 seconds earlier.

<comment><USER30> The article is titled "I used ... and switched back" not, "why you shouldn't use DDG". It's by definition subjective, and if this person found better results 99% of the time, then that's a good reason to switch back. Those students studying philosophy might like DDG better, and that's perfectly fine.

200-300ms is a difference that you can feel. This is not about losing that time, this is about waiting for your results a little bit longer which adds friction and annoyance. If you can't understand that then I hope you're not in charge of any user-facing interfaces. It's the reason sites use CDN's and cache pregenerated pages, it's the reason why DNS systems have edges distributed all over the world, it's the reason why Github improved reaction time from 1 sec down to 300ms in their latest update, etc...

<comment><USER4> It is usually more about perceived speed and feels than actual speed. And giving the user a quicker feel is a user experience improvement.

But feeling quick to display results is worthless if you have to make 5 queries to find your results, if you actually find it, and in my experience google rarely offers what I'm looking for in the first few searches.

It was not that way until they removed some and modified others search operators from their engine.</comment></comment></comment>


Now THIS is a rant - <AUTHOR> http://ashleyfuckingahn.tumblr.com/post/23584771762/the-update

<comment><USER2> Ashley scalds two guys calling them unprofessional and yet stoops to the same level of unprofessionalism by having a cry over the internet. I couldn't care less if they messed up the show, Ashley sounds like a pretentious cry-baby who needs to harden up, I seriously hope it damages her reputation far more than it does the two guys she hired, because Ashley sounds like a spoilt brat crying because her daddy didn't get her the pony and sports car she wanted. Definitely not a person you want organising anything, reading through her other posts reads like a diary of a person with some deep troubling emotional and potentially mental issues.

</comment><comment><USER3> What a great display of professionalism.

You've probably damaged your own public image far further than theirs.</comment>


Amazon Prime delivery delays are now as long as a month - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/22/21190372/amazon-prime-delivery-delays-april-21-coronavirus-covid-19 <comment><USER2> I've gotten all of my prime orders in 3 or 4 days recently instead of 2. They've all been health or personal product related orders. This is perfectly acceptable given the circumstances.

In my opinion, Amazon is doing an incredible job of adapting to a radical increase in demand. I don't know what their volume spike is, but it must be huge and the only effect is slow shipping in some non-essential items.

They've really built an incredible infrastructure. (I don't work for them, I don't own any of their stock.)

<comment><USER3> Keep in mind though that this resilience is at the expense of thousands of workers who have to forego their own social distancing and risk their own healths so that we can get our next prime delivery in 3-4 days.

Amazon isn't run by robots. There are real humans who are going through hell to support this increase in demand.

<comment><USER4> Theoretically a company like Amazon should be able to provide masks, goggles and health monitoring to its workers to minimize the possibility of a COVID19 outbreak among them. It's in Amazon's business interests to do so (or risk business disruption due to outbreak among their workforce).

It's also better for society that the congregations of people shift from many geographically scattered and difficult-to-monitor locations to a few single operations like Amazon warehouses that can be very closely monitored and screened for COVID19. Amazon's warehouses can be more cheaply monitored and supplied with PPE than all of society can.

This should probably be part of SOP for responding to outbreaks like this.

<comment><USER5> > Theoretically a company like Amazon should be able to provide masks, goggles > and health monitoring to its workers

Theoretically yeah, but practically Amazon is driven by people with short-term profits in mind, so you don't see this happening. In the ideal world, capitalists realizes that if their customers / workforce goes out of jobs because of sickness, they won't earn as much. But seems that's too much future thinking, so business are trying to extract as much value they can before they'll be forced to shut down.

<comment><USER6> Amazon is actually defined by long-term thinking, which was heavily criticized for over a decade while their stock remained flat. It's hard to imagine now, but people didn't really believe in the company until about 2009.

Jeff Bezos' letter to shareholders, 1997:

 _It 's All About the Long Term

Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh tradeoffs differently than some companies... We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions._

[https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons- original-1...](https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons- original-1997-letter-to-shareholders)

<comment><USER5> This seems pretty standard when you ask executives at any company. Of course no executive is gonna go straight out and say they don't care about the long- term, only about short-term profitability.

> Hey Joe, does your company emphasis on the long term or short-term > profitability?

> Joe: What a good question! We at ACME AB of course favor long-term > sustainability rather than short-term profitability

> How about letting your warehouse workers go to the bathroom whenever they > want?

> Joe: well, our long-term plan depends on short-term profitability so of > course people can't go to the bathroom whenever they want, they should have > a allocated slot for that.

Point being: look at the actions of a company rather than the words of the owners/workers, and you'll get a much more real picture.

<comment><USER7> How about you start by taking a look at Amazon's 25 year history of long term growth at the expense of negative short term profit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Amazon Seller of non-essentials here. Fulfillment out of Amazon's warehouses has been slow the last week or so (on the order of 2-3 days delayed vs. normal). Sellers started noticing last night / this morning that Prime items which are fulfilled by Amazon are showing delivery date of April 21st. We don't know if that is a real date yet, or if Amazon is just setting expectations super low. Based on the fact that a wide variety of items are all showing that as the Prime delivery date and that shipping has not been _that_ delayed up til now, I think there's reason to think that things will actually be delivered faster than that. Plus, I know at least one seller of non- essential products who is not seeing that delivery date for their products.

So who knows. The April 21st delivery date is crushing our sales, though.

<comment><USER9> Multiple items I've ordered this weekend with April 21 or later delivery dates got their dates moved up by 3+ weeks after order.

<comment><USER10> I wonder if they're giving an artificially long date in an attempt to discourage certain orders so as to relieve the current crush.

<comment><USER11> I can only imagine how such behavior would go at a normal tech company:

"Hey boss, we're getting a ton of orders in. Think we should discourage people from ordering junk so we can prioritize the important stuff?"

"Hell no, keep the orders coming in as fast as possible."

So props to Amazon for doing something in the best interest of their customers and their reputation.

<comment><USER5> > So props to Amazon for doing something in the best interest of their > customers and their reputation

Let's not jump into any conclusions here. For all we know, Amazon is doing just what you wrote in quotes above, but the logistics networks are so overwhelmed that they can't fulfill orders fast enough.

I'm not saying Amazon is good or bad here, just that we can't decide that unless we _actually_ know their reasoning.

<comment><USER12> My guess is that they're giving themselves a ~4 week buffer so they're free to prioritize orders both by necessity and efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you are looking for a 'non-essential', and the item is being sold by "Amazon.com" (as opposed to an Amazon seller like u/toasterlovin), may I suggest ordering from another store? Companies like Guitar Center; Bed, Bath, and Beyond; and the like are still fulfilling online orders, even if the stores themselves are closed. Also, individuals are still selling wares through platforms like eBay and Etsy.

Please consider purchasing things from other stores, where available. Even if you have to pay for the shipping cost.

<comment><USER14> > Please consider purchasing things from other stores, where available. Even > if you have to pay for the shipping cost.

You haven't given a reason for doing so.

<comment><USER15> I think he's saying he doesn't want it to become the only store. Lots of other stores are hurting.

<comment><USER16> That's because they ain't competitive. I'm only using other stores for stuff I can't find on amazon, because I'm trusting amazon to have my back if something goes wrong.

<comment><USER17> And another big online store like Target just won't help in the case of an issue? I don't believe that at all.

My credit card is enough assurance that a seller won't defraud me.

I actually have found a number of products where Amazon is not price competitive with some other US stores like Target, especially considering everyone's blind assumption that it makes sense to pay $12.99 a month to be in the Amazon club without even doing the math on how much that increases the price of each item you buy.

I always have people ask me "don't you have Prime?" as if it's assumed that the deal is a no-brainer. It's totally not. You don't need Prime to buy stuff on Amazon and people are just conditioned.

<comment><USER16> I don't have Prime, what I meant was that things with amazon are frictionless if stuff goes wrong. Also, I'm from Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A few years back Amazon.com got hit with a pretty massive DDoS attack. Because of their reliance upon AWS and the massive resources available through their cloud, they simply out-scaled the attack.

Now Amazon is getting he with a new kind of DDoS that requires them to scale-- this time from legit customers wanting their orders delivered in a reasonable amount of time. Pretty crazy to watch all the supply chain disruption happening at the moment.

<comment><USER19> A month _is_ a reasonable amount of time for non-essentials during a global crisis.

<comment><USER20> That very much depends on what one can consider an essential item. Here in Germany, grocery and drug stores as well as pharmacies are still open. So I can go shopping for the immediate essential items. But all other stores are closed, so online shopping is the only way to these products. That starts with shoes and any kind of clothing. Which is pretty essential in my eyes too.

Also, there are a lot of things which might not be considered "essential" but quite important. Working in home office, I might need cables, a headset, a power supply. Also, if you consider that people are restricted to their homes for weeks to come, even entertainment/toys can quickly be considered essential.

So Amazon probably does its best to use its available resources in storage and delivery, the categorization of items as essential might not be as clear-cut as it might sound.

And of course, toilet paper is out of stock on Amazon as at the local stores :p

<comment><USER19> _Also, if you consider that people are restricted to their homes for weeks to come, even entertainment /toys can quickly be considered essential._

I don't think you understand what "essential" means. Things to avoid being dead _are_ essential. You can get those things quickly. Things to avoid being bored are _not_ essential. Just be bored until the _global pandemic_ is over.

<comment><USER21> Shoes and clothes are essential if you happen to need new ones during a prolonged pandemic (eg you find that your toddler has outgrown his existing shoes). When you turn off the shopping spigot long enough, things just crop up that you have never thought to be essential before.

<comment><USER19> Having to wait 4 weeks for Amazon to send you a pair of shoes would be tremendously inconvenient, but all it requires is some forward thinking. Buy them before the child needs them so they arrive in time. If you can do that it's obvious they're not really an essential that Amazon need to be pausing shipments of bandages and disinfectant for.

Obviously this raises questions about paying for shoes, but that's a social welfare and government support for poor people issue, and discussions of that nature usually don't fair well on HN.

<comment><USER21> It is really hard to think ahead with a toddler, when are their feet going to grow, when do their shoes become too small. Are we going up one or two sizes?

Anyways, Target and Walmart still being open is a life saver for everything that isn't food.

<comment><USER22> Is your toddler going to be seriously sick or hurt for not having shoes? If not then it'd say not as essential as other things.

<comment><USER21> I don't think you have a toddler, right? They don't know it's the apocalypse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Amazon has also stopped shipping non-essential items in Italy and France.

Their criteria for choosing essential items are kind of hard to grasp for me, and in classic Amazon style they don't tell you that there is something that is not available / you cannot buy, stuff has just disappeared from the shop. This makes it unnecessarily annoying to find out if you can buy something from them or not.

Most of what you can get is still delivered quickly though - they have added one or two days to the expected delivery times in the last weeks, but from then they usually deliver one day sooner than forecasted.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yep noticed this today. Too depressed to work on my personal programming projects. Taking up a cheap musical instrument (yamaha recorder anyone? lol) sounded like a good way to pass time. Amazon says my prime order will be ready on April 21st :/

<comment><USER25> Recorders are underrated (although, the ukulele is IMO the most underrated instrument, probably because they're easy.)

I have a slightly more expensive Yamaha soprano recorder that I absolutely love. My living room is all hardwood and I keep most furniture and anything soft out of it just so I can enjoy the sound.

<comment><USER26> Ukuleles have a bad reputation because many of them are collecting dust in someone's studio apartment. It's the quintessential "I want to learn an instrument but not really" purchase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Since it hasn't been mentioned let's just put it on the table here that Amazon Prime, a service with a fairly steep annual fee, supposedly came with a promise of two-day shipping, in exchange for that fee.

Now if there was some fine print I didn't read, shame on me, but has Amazon explicitly addressed this?

I do understand that the physical items themselves are in short supply and cannot be instantly produced by any kind of magic. (Although as an aside, and it's really not my main point, but I do think Amazon has the buying power to incentivize many suppliers to move mountains).

Just like the physical items, the money to pay the fee for Prime memberships can also correspondingly go into short supply as well, and individual members may have good reasons to stop paying if they aren't getting what they paid for.

Certainly facts on the ground have changed the deal. Maybe we Prime members will just be in the front of the line for frequently hoarded items... sigh. Will be interesting to see how Prime fares through this.

<comment><USER28> I think any given service on this earth is expected to have some degree of delay during a once a century global pandemic. People out there can't even buy basic life necessities in stores. It may be a little unfair, but it's not really the time to think a $120/year membership means someone should be put at the front of the line to order whatever they want and constantly push others trying to get their necessities to the back of the line. It's better to hope everybody is getting their hand sanitizer and toilet paper at an equally expedient time, instead of hoping Prime members and Prime members alone can order a new package daily and have it arrive in a timely fashion.

Yellowstone could potentially blow during our lifetime as well. I doubt most companies have that factored into their contracts, and I wouldn't hold it against them if they didn't.

<comment><USER29> Business don't need to survive Black swan events. If they fail that's fine. If they can't fail without irreparable harm, there's a bigger problem. We don't have anything resembling a free market when there are irreplaceable businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Honestly, I think they should quarantine packages after every handling 24 hours. When picked up it stays in pickup truck 1 day to let virus inactivate. Then one guy does the initial sorting and no one handles it for 24 hours. It would make deliveries much much slower, but put the delivery personnel at much less risk.

<comment><USER31> An interesting idea, though doubtful it would get implemented due to the huge backlog of personal items already late. Not a bad idea as a consumer - if you can swing it, just let the packages sit a day before opening them.

Hopefully folks doing deliveries are smart about not touching their face, and are able to wipe down their cars afterward...steering wheel, radio knobs, touchscreens, phone, door handles...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So as a Prime subscriber, I'm curious if they will be offering prorated refunds for this time when most things are not under 2 day shipping policies. Spoiler alert, they won't.

<comment><USER33> I've read of people routinely asking Amazon for compensation when their packages arrive in over 2 days. Some ordered regularly enough the $5 credit they hand out like candy more than paid for the entire membership.

<comment><USER34> They used to give out a month of Prime to extend your subscription, but two- ish years ago they switched to offering $5 Amazon purchase credit (after a short few weeks of trying to offer nothing).

<comment><USER35> Half a month is still a good thing to get, and purchase credit is easier to spend than having infinite months of Prime.

<comment><USER36> 1918 flu pandemic the best we had was a sears catalouge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> There are plenty of other online retailers. The guitar cable example triggered me, because even in the best of times you can get better gear from a smaller business with the same two day shipping. I'm sure there are tons of other examples.

<comment><USER20> Yes, if anything, this might benefit small online retailers. It is also worth noting, that many local stores which have to close during the crisis have turned into online retailers of some sort. You can call them and they will deliver to your house to keep their business afloat. So even if they don't even have a proper web site, it might be worth while to pick up your phone and give them an old-fashioned call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I ordered a DC power cord for an Asthma nebulizer and the expected arrival date is 30-days away.

Seeing that, I rummaged through my garage and found a 12v inverter and tested that with the nebulizer on its AC plug. It worked. I've got a solution but only because I have the inverter.

In Utah we had an earthquake on top of the Pandemic. That threatened power and water for a time.

There's a chance they will not prioritize many items correctly.

</comment><comment><USER39> I am most surprised by _how_ they are scaling shipments in my area. I have only seen Amazon branded vans in my area over the last few months, but my last two orders were delivered by:

1) A plain white van with Laser Ship magnetic signs visible on the inside.

2) A sedan driven by a lady with her kid in the passenger seat.

<comment><USER40> it's always been that way. just not visible due to high level of background noise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I ordered a nonessential item (a set of heat shields for a gas grill) from Amazon Prime today and they offered a $3 digital coupon for the slower delivery option. Normally it's $1. I guess they're trying to encourage slower delivery; makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER42> And exactly which essentials are being delivered instead?

They are prioritizing the hand sanitizer that is always out of stock? How about Clorox wipes? Fine, how about making your own...oh...isopropyl is sold out too.

What exactly is being shipping now?

<comment><USER43> I ordered a replacement toothbrush and a dutch oven to bake my own bread. Not really essentials but I feel like they are serving the purpose of health and isolation.

<comment><USER44> I still have a breadmachine left over from when they were a fad. I need to find the manual for it :-)

<comment><USER45> Yeast, which you won't have if you haven't been making bread, doesn't even show up on Amazon at the moment (and normally it's Just There. Even got one via Amazon Fresh before the apocalypse started scaling). Also, bread flour is best but not absolutely needed. Lastly, if the bread the machine makes just doesn't tickle your fancy, they still are a great way to make pizza dough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is the real boom in online shopping in all sectors.

I wonder if things will ever go back to the "old way" after this crisis, not least because brick and mortar stores are being destroyed on an unprecedented scale.

</comment><comment><USER47> Just 72 hours ago Prime deliveries were still on March 23. About 48 hours that changed to Match 26. Now it's April 21. Could this because of staffing issues in warehouses? I also wonder how AMZN ticker will do tomorrow based this news given many people were betting on it for strong performance.

<comment><USER48> Dow futures are already down, no doubt AMZN tanks.

<comment><USER49> Imagine what it will be when this starts hitting the food supply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I don't understand. Shouldn't these items then no longer be branded "Amazon prime"?

</comment><comment><USER51> I had been using a 42" 4K screen for a while on my desktop, as I haven't used it that much... using it for a week, was kind of neck strain for me... I realized I avoided windows on the edges, so I figured a 32" 1440p would probably be functionally the same...

On Amazon, they were all close to a month or more out for delivery... went out to Best Buy, man, options limited there too. But did get a 32" 1440p display, just not high refresh, ips, freesync like I had wanted.

In the end, not too surprised... will probably be a year or more for everything to really normalize. I do think panic buying is causing most of the issues, and that's the biggest issue effecting everything.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is really going to hurt businesses -- I just went to order a replacement serial programming cable I need for a project and it's saying April 21 (and it shows as in-stock too!).

I can probably hack the cable to get by ... but as soon as I need something I can't hack/fix/cannibalize or get elsewhere, then I'm screwed.

Sadly, any local competition has either gone out of business (Radio Shack, maybe Fry's) or is closed due to the lockdown.

Hopefully, Digikey/Mouser will keep going ...

</comment><comment><USER53> I had PrimeNow (UK) slot to be delivered between 6-8pm but nothing came. It says package is still being prepared. It's getting worrying now as the whole UK is closing down and there is an even bigger rush on online shops. We need to isolate for 14 days at least due to suspected Corona virus infection (looks to be mild). We have enough to power through but it's getting serious. Slots are now available online in April and May.

</comment><comment><USER54> Still delivering next day in the UK, received some coffee beans this morning. Probably helps that the roads are a lot quieter than usual right now.

<comment><USER55> It would depend on where you are from in the UK, and how close you are to a distribution point. In London, it is generally between next day and a week at worst, for some items. I expect this situation to change over the coming weeks. However, grouping things into a single delivery and only ordering essentials is of supreme importance right now, in order to give everyone a chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> To understand how a monopoly is currently being built, please read:

Amazon caused this problem themselves because of hidden pricing policy/behavior that causes artificially low price-fixing. They'll never admit this is what caused the problem.

Amazon punishes 3rd party FBA/prime sellers for raising prices by removing their listings from the "buy box" or removing their prime badge. Amazon brags to customers that they "found a new seller to sell you this item at a lower price" but in reality Amazon forces sellers to stick to their low prices because if they are ever raised to meet demand, Amazon removes prime status, effectively killing sales. (A class action lawsuit was filed last Thursday for exactly this, Amazon got sued a couple years ago for same thing, I'll find link and repost)

So you had an entire swath of consumer goods ("essential" and "non-essential") unable to increase prices in response to demand.

Amazon fulfillment centers are basically the equivalent of toilet paper right now.

I can't imagine how Amazon continues to get away with such blatant price- fixing. They will drive every major online retailer out of business.

Edit: for all the downvoters, if Amazon allowed sellers to raise prices in response to demand on non-essential items, it would have slowed sales volume and not overwhelmed FCs, and my wife and I would not have a 3 week lead time on children's Motrin.

<comment><USER57> Isn't this simply how the buy box works?

If you are not the lowest price (with some consideration given to other factors, like reviews and delivery times), then you will not be in the buy box.

<comment><USER56> No, but that's what Amazon wants everyone to think.

Even if still the lowest price, Prime badge/buy box will be removed if price increases higher than some hidden algorithm allows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Anecdotal account from an alleged Amazon delivery driver, (from Wall Street Bets) [https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fn3irh/im_a...](https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/fn3irh/im_an_amazon_delivery_driver_definitely_no/)

</comment><comment><USER59> I was wondering why I was getting quoted deliveries of May 1 - May 22 on an entire category of items marked as Prime over the weekend. They offered to speed up delivery of my $10 item to April 17 for the low price of $30. I thought some enterprising company had cornered the market and was raking in some sweet delivery fees.

</comment><comment><USER60> Just like commercial flying has never been the same since 9/11, Amazon delivery won't be the same after this pandemic. They will have seen that significantly slowing the delivery doesn't crater the demand, and the fact that the local retail will be further destroyed will help them to maintain this slowed regime

<comment><USER61> I would be surprised if that happens; free two day shipping for members is Amazon's competitive moat against other online retailers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Here in Berlin/DE I have noticed prime delivery has been increasingly limited or removed from certain categories of items e.g. personal hygiene, cleaning. To be expected I guess but would prefer to have prime benefits (free shipping) and a longer delivery period than no benefits at all and the same extended period.

<comment> rv-de the system is collapsing and you demand your "prime benefits" ... do you see the irony here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I've never had a cancelled delivery in all the years of using Prime and Prime Now, but this week had a Prime Now delivery cancelled. It was clear from the map that the driver was closer to the depot than our house, so decided that they 'weren't able to deliver' without trying so they could get back sooner.

</comment><comment><USER64> Who said that, say, laptop or phone replacement is not an essential item?

</comment><comment><USER65> My nespresso coffee capsules went from £22 to £30 so it isn't so much the delivery delays but the increase in price which is annoying.

<comment> rv-de maybe they have been too cheap anyway ... I mean, it's a pretty pathetic and environment-unfriendly way to make a cup of coffee.

<comment><USER65> yeah i prefer civet coffee myself

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Amazon isn't doing a great job with essentials either. I've had 3 amazon Fresh orders cancelled in the last week.

</comment><comment><USER67> I really don't understand why Amazon is getting a spike of demand.

What are people ordering now that they didn't usually order? I don't think stuff like facemasks and gloves can justify the huge difference in volumes, and amazon isn't providing the supplies for emergency rooms and hospitals (is it?).

<comment><USER68> People order everything from Amazon because they don't want to get the virus at the store.

<comment><USER69> Many people are ordering online not because they desperately want to avoid the virus, but simply because shops in their area are closed. Many younger and healty people, looking at coronavirus mortality rates, would have no qualms about shopping in a physical location right now if the only risk would be coming down with relatively mild cold symptoms, but the authorities are shutting those physical locations so that the virus can't spread and affect those demographics that would be concerned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Probably the only company to thrive during the outbreak, unfortunately fortunate.

<comment><USER71> 3M would like a word.

<comment><USER72> Who would need floppy disks and glue in this crisis???

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Stopped ordering for a while. Nothing is that urgent my side so I'll wait a bit

</comment><comment><USER74> Not in Berlin/Germany. Takes 2 days

<comment><USER75> I just checked, non essential items are all planned for april 21st, I'm in berlin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I wonder if this situation will push them even further in the direction of drone delivery.

</comment><comment><USER77> Will Amazon be refunding Prime fees?

</comment><comment><USER78> I guess all e-commerce are affected by it and I understand it due to the pandemic.

</comment><comment><USER79> We're primarily MF and can easily absorb some of the heat AMZ FBA is going through right now. With AMZ recently passing through their negotiated UPS rates, we should be able to ship within 2-5 days on 99% of our listings with reasonable prices. If you're shopping, look deeper into listings for faster MF Shipping!

<comment><USER80> MF? I wonder if you could explain what that means?

<comment><USER79> Merchant Fulfilled - We handle shipping ourselves.</comment></comment></comment>


The Neurologist Who Hacked His Brain – And Almost Lost His Mind - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/01/phil-kennedy-mind-control-computer/ <comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting story. Posted on 01.26.2016. On a related note, if you haven't watched recent Neuralink's presentation, I would definitely recommend: [https://youtu.be/r-vbh3t7WVI](https://youtu.be/r-vbh3t7WVI)</comment>


Amazon's doorbell camera Ring working with police and controlling what they say - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/29/ring-amazon-police-partnership-social-media-neighbor <comment><USER2> I've always thought it would be cool to deck out my house not with Google Home or Alexa, but with my own systems built with Raspberry Pis and software/hardware I built myself. Is there anyone out there trying to build an open-source alternative to all these commercial systems?

</comment><comment><USER3> imho All these devices that are "smart" are really only for spying on you. Gather intelligence, know what you like, dislike and then offer services and goods for you to buy. Nothing more than a opt-in surveillance system when you choose to connect it to your internet.</comment>


Lesser Known Things: /Dev/Full - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//dev/full <comment><USER2> From the linked man page:

"Reads from the /dev/full device will return characters."

Literally two spaces between "return" and "characters". There has to be a specific result, even if it's random/garbage characters.

</comment><comment><USER3> "documented in linux early as 2007, FreeBSD in 2016," ... no wonder its lesser known. Don't think i've had a use case for this since 2007, can't actually think up a situation where i'd want it now.</comment>