Let's challenge Google while we still can - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/16/challenge-google-while-we-can-eu-anti-trust

<comment><USER2> I'm all for the EU lawsuit if they can prove that Google was self-promoting and not simply showing their users what the users have decided is what they like best.

I can hardly fault a company for being better than the competition. If people didn't like Google's offerings, they can take their business elsewhere.

Which is exactly what I do. I prefer to use Dropbox over Google Drive. I use Mozilla Firefox over Google Chrome. I use a Mumble server over Hangouts. There are alternatives. But guess what?

Lot's of people prefer Google Drive over Dropbox. Lot's of people prefer Chrome over Firefox. Lot's of people prefer Hangouts over other VOIP's. Why? Because the products and services are _good_. There's a reason Google+ has a small, niche community while Facebook is thriving. Hint: Google+ released as a flop with a bunch of failure points, confusing to use, and the only real benefit being "circles". Google has pushed and shoved Google+ into user's faces for years. Users _chose_ not to adopt it. Staying instead where they were. Why? They made a choice. They stuck with a better product.

This isn't like physical goods where a monopoly means there are no better products to turn and use. This is a service/software issue. Things that, if given a better option, people will adopt swiftly.

Anyone remember the exodus from Myspace to Facebook?

Build a better product and users will come. Yes - that mean's you can beat Google.</comment>


Asynchronous Scraping with Python - <AUTHOR> https://blog.datahut.co/asynchronous-web-scraping-using-python/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing! Async methods is something that is usually quite overlooked in python.</comment>


Where was the most plausible spot in 1550 for the Industrial Revolution to come - <AUTHOR> https://www.antonhowes.com/blog/the-crucial-century <comment><USER2> if it wasn't for the ruinous wars, mid 1500s Italy (esp Venice and Florence) were exactly in the right place, including powerful banks with lots of capital, a large skilled populace, advanced science & math.

<comment><USER3> What would they use for power? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Coal_mines_in_Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Coal_mines_in_Italy) compares rather poorly to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_King...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_Kingdom).

Also, where would they get iron? [https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy/Resources-and- power](https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy/Resources-and-power):

 _"The Italian peninsula is a geologically young land formation and therefore contains few mineral resources, especially metalliferous ones. What few exist are poor in quality, scant in quantity, and widely dispersed. The meagreness of its natural resources partially explains Italy's slow transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy, which began only in the late 19th century. The lack of iron ore and coal especially hindered industrial progress, impeding the production of steel necessary for building machines, railways, and other essential elements of an industrial infrastructure."_

<comment><USER2> they would have imported it. venice was the transshipping capital of the western world at the time and had unbelievable economic power.</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Visitors May Have to Hand Over Social Media Passwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-visitors-may-have-hand-over-social-media-passwords-kelly-n718216 <comment><USER2> Why stop with social media? Why not email and other accounts as well, just to be safe?

It's one thing to ask for social media user IDs (which still bothers me), but this is taking it to another level.

I already have to submit my financial details, history of past travel..At some point, you will come to a place where there's enough 'data' for anyone to conclude anything they want. Sort of like, if all you have is a hammer, everything will look like a nail.

Sad.

<comment><USER3> It is time for everyone to start building fictional aliases of themselves to hand over.

<comment><USER4> You might be interested to listen to this talk at DEF CON. Chris Rock (the speaker) tells you how to one could forge new identities, SSN, etc.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1lhGqNCZlA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1lhGqNCZlA)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12528544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12528544)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My female Canadian friend was interrogated in a Canadian airport by an American border agent because she made the unfortunate mistake of having a connecting flight in the States on the way to visit me in Mexico.

The agent asked her if she was a "good girl" and then demanded access to her phone's Facebook Messenger to see if she'd been offering or planning sex services.

She of course complied. What else are you going to do? Cancel your plans and stay home during your vacation leave?

It's a great job to have if you're a creep and/or resent women.

<comment><USER6> Please report this incident to US Customs and Border Patrol, as well as DHS.

[https://www.cbp.gov/contact](https://www.cbp.gov/contact)

[https://www.dhs.gov/department-white-pages](https://www.dhs.gov/department- white-pages)

EDIT: Sorry to piggyback.

For your own security/privacy when traveling (I'm sorry, as a US citizen), bring a dumb phone just for calling, and wipe your iPhone (if its an iPhone) before transiting a customs checkpoint. Restore from iCloud when you're safely out of the airport. If asked what the dumb phone is for, "I break my iPhone all the time."

<comment><USER7> > Restore from iCloud when you're safely out of the airport.

"Sir, your phone appears to have been reset. Please connect it to iCloud and sync now".

If they can compel access to apps and social media why would iCloud et al be any different?

<comment><USER6> Keep a separate sparse iCloud account if you don't think you have the soft skills to work around that unlikely scenario.

<comment><USER8> Will it stay unlikely in the long term?

<comment><USER6> Who knows. You won't like my advice though: leave the country if the surveillance state reaches a crescendo.

As a tech worker, I'm employable anywhere in the world, and can have my family and all of our belongings out of the country in 12 hours. My heart goes out to everyone who doesn't have such flexibility. It's not fair to those impacted that these are the times we live in.

That's not to say we give up. We try to fix this fuckery until the very end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We should actually hope that they 'take it too far' and apply it broadly - because the first day it went into force the blowback would be mesmerizingly big.

There was some blowback from immigration and that affected relatively few.

But this will hit millions of people _every day_ with a huge WTF? It'll go to every CEO and media person in America very quickly as a 'very material issue', unlike some policies which companies support/resist for populist or political reasons.

If they just do it to 'select people' ... then it would be something on blogs, sometimes in the press yada yada but maybe not so mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of a question on the US visa waiver form asking whether you are or ever have been a Nazi. Because everybody knows that Nazis cannot lie, and international terror organizations cannot create dummy social media accounts.

<comment><USER11> Green card application includes a form that has that and more. Are you a communist, have you been convicted of genocide, have you ever used a prostitute ...

I really wish I had taken a picture of that form, the majority of questions were idiotic.

<comment><USER12> Its not idiotic, its procedural. In the future, if they want to get you, they can find something in that form.. like using a prostitute and throw the book at you.

<comment><USER13> Doesn't make it any less idiotic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think anyone who really wanted to get into the US would have a problem handing over _A_ social media password. Whether that's a password for an account specifically created to be reviewed by immigration authorities is another matter entirely.

What makes DHS think they would be reviewing a real social media account?

I think this is not about reviewing social media accounts. This is about giving DHS and CBP a pretense to deny entry to anyone they feel like, based on gut feelings, prejudices, whatever.

<comment><USER15> I would have a problem with it. And I would really want to get into US, possibly, because I work for an American company. But it's not my job to create fake social media accounts, sorry.

<comment><USER14> I don't think filling out visa applications, in general, is anyone's _job_ (unless maybe you're a personal assistant for someone who travels internationally a lot). It's not about what is and is not your job. If that's what a country requires to allow you entry, and you want to enter, that's what you do.

<comment><USER15> I am just a normal programmer, not a spy. Visa application is acceptable (I have done that in the past), forging social media accounts is not (I in fact I do have FB account but God knows where the password is).

<comment><USER16> I think the point they were making was that regardless of how you feel emotionally about giving up specific information, it has no effect on whether a country allows you to enter. So go ahead and do only what you feel is "acceptable", just don't be surprised when you are turned away at the border for not filling out all of the required documents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Welp, time for Facebook, Twitter, et al. to intentionally make themselves inaccessible from locations/networks coincident with US ports of entry.

"To protect our produ^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers' privacy, we have decided to block access to all accounts that we can ascertain within reasonable certainty to be temporarily crossing an international border. We apologize for the inconvenience, and service will be restored once you get further away from the port of entry, or as soon as those in charge of US customs decide to stop being asshats."

</comment><comment><USER18> Finally, a real Catch-22: give the password, you violate the Facebook ToS and potentially the CFAA as a result. Don't give the password, you get held by DHS (and possibly sexually assaulted in a "strip search") as punishment before being sent back at your expense.

America, I think our relationship is over.

</comment><comment><USER4> Give them something which resembles a password? How will they know?

Give them the password, then change it afterwards?

Have an alternative account used just for immigrations?

Claim you have no social media accounts, or deactivate them before entering the country (we know FB doesn't delete, only deactivates)?

Change the name on the social media accounts?

<comment><USER19> Or do the right thing and tell them to go f __* themselves because it 's a huge invasion of privacy and none of their business. It's unfortunate most people won't have this option.

I've been trying to give the Trump administration a chance, but this is getting more ridiculous and more embarrassing every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> 2 Factor Authentication (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (through Facebook), Google) really puts a damper on this and helps you remember that the U.S. government (and esp leadership) is sorely behind when it comes to security

<comment><USER21> In which way would that help? It's access what is wanted, not the password. If you have 2FA, other ways will be found.

I don't believe that there is a technical solution. This is a purely political thing. If this becomes policy the US becomes entirely off-limits for me although I don't have any social media account.

<comment><USER20> The problem I see is that I'll be able to share my password, but somebody won't be able to log in. They'd come back and be confused. If I give them the 2 factor, the computer needs to be there, or they need to say it over radio, and even if they say it over radio, it would be a race before it expires.

And yes, presumably, they could work with facebook or the NSA for a portal that bypasses 2 factor, but then they don't need my password.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Facebook, Twitter, etc. should shut down DHS' and other TLAs' Facebook and Twitter pages if those organizations are purposefully violating the companies' TOS, including the accounts of the leadership who presumably know about and authorize these rules. Up to and including the official POTUS Twitter account as well as @realdonaldtrump.

Just because the government can "legally" get access to anything they want doesn't mean they get to live consequence-free.

</comment><comment><USER23> Now out of diplomatic reciprocity other countries can do it to us

<comment><USER2> Brazil already conducts enhanced scrutiny of Americans..

" American citizens are both photographed and fingerprinted as part of their immigration clearance process. This is because Brazil practices diplomatic reciprocity and processes American citizens entering Brazil the same way the U.S. processes Brazilian citizens entering the United States. This is most assuredly NOT the place to demonstrate any displeasure with this process. More that a few Americans (including at least one airline pilot) have been arrested, fined (thousands of dollars) and ejected from the country forever for making an obscene gesture during this process."

[http://www.brazil-help.com/brazil_travel_tips.htm](http://www.brazil- help.com/brazil_travel_tips.htm)

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/02/tourist- visa...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/02/tourist-visas)

<comment><USER24> Note that this predates the Trump administration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Soon: People leaving the US will have to hand over social media credentials, too.

Do you think they'll stop at "foreigners"?

</comment><comment><USER26> Will not having a social media presence be considered a red flag?

<comment><USER27> This is one of my worries. I had a rarely-used FB account for a few years, but deleted it when I realized the privacy concerns.

No FB, twitter, IG, Gmail, LinkedIn, etc. Nothing. You can't find me through a Google search except for my public-facing professional certifications (which are required to be public-facing).

I wonder if one day this will get me on a list as some kind of "lone wolf" even though I'm quite social (in the in-person sense).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Perhaps all new policies should have to be applied first to legislators.

Want a password requirement? Fine, submit yours first, Congressman; we won't abuse it, "promise".

Want inane questions and forms with high fees? Fine, Congressman, first you must fill out every last form yourself (don't forget to have a new picture taken, and thumbprints!). If you still think it's reasonable after all that, we can talk.

<comment><USER8> While phrases like these might sound nice on the surface, they are entirely unenforceable. How do you intend to make this happen?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I had to renew my ESTA[1] recently and was somewhat surprised to find that the form is now 6 pages instead of 6 fields, and asks for all sorts of weird stuff like the name, address and phone number of someone on the United States who can verify your identity.

[1] [https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/](https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/)

</comment><comment><USER8> What would happen if Twitter or Facebook implemented a "Crossing the Border" mode. When you set it up you get a fake password that logs into a fake version of your account with plausible looking but innocuous content.

Then after some time, perhaps 72 hours this an all traces of it are erased. That ought to last until some new legislation specifically prohibits it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Before going to the US change your keyboard to Tibetan, change the password and give them your password in dzongkha notation written on a paper form. Make sure it is at least 16 symbols long. འགོ་དང་པ་བཅའ་མར་གཏོགས་དོ་ཡོདཔ།

<comment><USER31> At which point they may just ask you to type in your password yourself.

<comment><USER30> The only have instruction to ask for password. They cannot force you to do something. You do not have to give them access to your password manager.

<comment><USER31> Sure, they can't force you to do something, but they can make your entry dependent on your doing something, as long as you're not a citizen.

<comment><USER30> But they cannot go against the instruction they have. I.e. they cannot force you to defecate into your pants just to be sure you are not holding USB flash drive there. Same applies here. They can ask for password, but they cannot force you to actually enter it. Its illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> give them a stage account?</comment>


Ask HN: Conspiracy theory – What motivation is behind Let's Encrypt? - <AUTHOR> Some (e.g. https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec) concluded that DNSSEC/DANE's real role would be the replacement of the TLS CA system, granting DNS-controlling entities (i.e. governments) the same cryptographic authority as CAs. Let me initiate a discussion about something that may sound absolutely ridiculous: what if Let's Encrypt was founded for the exact same long-run purpose?<p>The Internet Security Research Group maintaining Let's Encrypt seems quite independent. But Let's Encrypt is free. It already has 0.1% market share (https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/ssl_certificate/all) despite being on the market for only 5 years. Isn't this simply too good to be true & trusted? <comment><USER2> I don't personally think there's a conspiracy, but I'd definitely like to see an LE 'competitor' \- one that is equally as free and open, but not in any way related to the ISRG.

LE is currently a big single point of failure, and I want to be able to point my ACME client somewhere else if I need to.

<comment><USER3> Have you checked out Buypass? [https://www.buypass.com/ssl/products/acme](https://www.buypass.com/ssl/products/acme)

<comment><USER4> Not the person you're replying to, but I'm a huge fan of Let's Encrypt and ACME.

I wasn't aware of Buypass and it looks awesome, unfortunately however it doesn't appear to support SAN or wildcard certificates which could be a dealbreaker for a few (that said, it could also be considered a feature).

But thanks for bringing it up and raising awareness of alternative ACME providers, I'm probably going to spend some time playing around with Buypass Go this week.

Edit: It also appears that Buypass Go certificates are valid for 180 days as opposed to Let's Encrypt's 90 days (haven't verified this yet), which is interesting. I've simply become accustomed to the 90 day LE validity, I'm curious why they went with 180 days.</comment></comment></comment>


Walmart threatens to cut ties with truckers that also haul for Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.livetrucking.com/walmart-tells-their-drivers-that-they-cant-also-haul-for-amazon/ <comment><USER2> I've posted before about Walmart and I'll post here again. They routinely would pay us late and underpay invoices on delivered products. Sometimes racking up to $50-$100,000. The worst part for us is it would be an average of one year before they would pay it in full. You'd have to submit a claim and fill out endless paperwork to get paid. It was so hard on us as a company. You also had to pay them a per package fee that added up to a lot per year. No other company was doing this.

With Walmart trucking things were worse. If we delivered a product and it arrived not well, you had limited options on checking the reasons why. Several times we wanted to pull the temp recorder and just by doing that Walmart charged us around $1000 if we lost. On several occasions our own temp recorders were taken off of our product and were lost when we challenged their rejection of product, and in this case we lost. Even though the product shipped pristine. When our temp recorders were found on the product it showed that it did not ship under the terms of the agreement. In this case we won.

Again, to challenge this with Walmart I had to call or email more times then I could count. I always felt they purposely made it difficult.

<comment><USER3> Does current economic theory include this common malfeasance among successful dominant businesses as efficient?

<comment><USER4> I don't think current economic theory even takes these common malfeasances into account. This is against the law, and so no widely accepted theory would even acknowledge this.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, at best the theory will assume this kind of behavior will be sorted out by competition. At worst it is just blankly ignored completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a bit different than their similar threat to suppliers that use AWS. The venn diagram of truckers that carry for each is likely just one circle. This would create a weird industry split since Amazon and Walmart are so dominant in volume of shipments.

I wonder if this might be illegal even if it's not antitrust worthy.

<comment><USER7> That was my first thought: restraint of trade, or whatever someone who knows what they're talking about would call it.

Besides, what is Walmart going to do when AmazonTrucking is the only trucking company left?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess the cold war started.

I hope it isn't true. Amazon is not walmarts enemy: they should focus on low prices and growth using new technology. Their ceo said they reached employment peak [1]

Truckers and delivery people dont hate each other or have any competitive spirit among each other. Pay me to make a delivery. End of story.

The ups and FedEx guy(s) and i all bitch about the same thing: why cant these healthy lazy people go to the store. Day after day the same people get packages. What do they do all day, shop$!! Its so funny it could make a screenplay.

Truckers dont care either.

[1] [http://abcnews.go.com/amp/Business/wireStory/walmart- traditi...](http://abcnews.go.com/amp/Business/wireStory/walmart-traditional- retailing-roots-competitive-advantage-47794226)

<comment><USER9> i order almost everything off amazon. i admit that i feel strange about this for many reasons, but laziness doesn't really come into play. time is the most valuable thing i have and stress is a major health issue. by ordering off of amazon i completely sidestep having to deal with traffic, lines, driving, miserable employees, poor service, not finding what i want, terrible products, etc. that's a lot of stress and time that i save by having packages delivered directly to me. whether that is a net gain or loss for society, i am not for sure, but it certainly is a net win for myself.

<comment><USER8> I am a hypocrite. I order too

My point was that delivery people dont give each other the finger - we could care less. We talk shop amd know each other by name. I really doubt a trucker hauling today to a Amazon site and tomorrow to a walmart site cares.

After years of delivering stuff people can buy we get jaded- and that is what we all complain about. (to ourselves)

One example. Woman gets Fresh. Weekly. As carrier is lugging 4 green totes her adult son watches. The carrier is a 59 year old woman. After the last tote, the carrier says to the woman, "i know now why you order online- your son won't help you with the groceries."

<comment><USER10> I'm sure it would be preferable for the son to pick up the groceries, and the 59-year old carrier to be unemployed.

<comment><USER8> Delivery people are on the front lines of society's clear delineation of the "served" and the "hired" or "servers"

People with money buy convenience through delivery. This was not available pre-Prime. Cumulatively the richer "served" are served by the poorer "servers" in this case delivery people.

Same for drivers.

Although your statement is true the son should have helped...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> First AWS, now this.

At what point does the DOJ step in? Isn't this anticompetitive behavior? I've heard that Reagan-era deregulation changed a lot of the relevant law, but I'm not clear on how. Is Walmart doing this with the expectation of impunity because there's no longer a crime to charge them with, or because they see themselves as immune to prosecution?

<comment><USER12> Hard to make the case that walmart is a monopoly. For what its worth amazon has pulled similar stunts like not selling the chromecast.

<comment><USER13> I can see the argument* to say "we can't invest the work to support chromecast". Whereas it's harder to say "we won't talk to these other truckers who work with our competitor".

*A argument, not one that would hold in court. IANAL.

EDIT: It seems I misunderstood Amazon's lack of Chromecast support. I hadn't thought of trying to buy Chromecast through Amazon before. I own three of them and bought all through the Google store.

<comment><USER14> I don't think this is about supporting chromecast for Amazon Video, it's about actually selling the google chromecast itself on amazon.com.

I don't think there is any argument that passes the sniff test for them not to be able to sell a physical device like chromecast from amazon.com. The level of incremental work is basically zero to add an item into the store.

<comment><USER15> Even better, when you search for chromecast on amazon.com, the first listing is for Amazon's competing product, the 'Fire Stick'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The comments on the original story are fascinating. Hundreds of truckers sharing personal stories. Their spelling is dodgy but many bring detailed personal data. From my read, it sounds as if Amazon has two business issues to fix (staggered scheduling and last-minute cancellations). Walmart seems to have infuriated truckers for more reasons than I can count. Not sure Walmart is going to like the outcome of this war.

</comment><comment><USER17> Jeez.

Walmart seem really damned insecure about themselves. This isn't the first petty BS they've come out with regarding Amazon.

<comment><USER18> They aren't insecure, they are their predatory self. It's just that we normally don't hear about their underhanded tactics because it mostly directly affects blue collar workers and retail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How is this not _restraint of trade_?

> _Restraint of trade means any activity which tends to limit trade, sales and > transportation in interstate commerce or has a substantial impact on > interstate commerce._

[https://definitions.uslegal.com/r/restraint-of- trade/](https://definitions.uslegal.com/r/restraint-of-trade/)

</comment><comment><USER20> "Amazon offers $0.10 more per mile, leaving Walmart with no truckers"

But really, Wal-mart needs to get over themselves and do what they need to do to adapt, rather than being the bully they've always been.

It isn't like they refuse technology, they have a pretty decent technology team as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER21> Except they don't anymore. They laid off ~1,000 employees in the HQ, many of them in their tech department. (Source: [http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/20/wal-mart- begin...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/20/wal-mart-begins- layoffs-at-headquarters.html))

Disclaimer: Some of the workers that got laid off in that department were friends of mine.

<comment><USER22> Even then, they still have an extremely competent technology division.

And I can say that the number of persons laid off in that even were <500.

Disclaimer: My mum was laid off in the event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Walmart is lashing out like it already knows Amazon is going to win. The only play it has left is to bully partners.

<comment><USER24> This isn't really new for Walmart. Their thing has long been to use their market position as something of a monopsonist to extract concessions from suppliers. Give us these things packaged differently, and for 7% less, and make some of them Walmart exclusives (you're not selling _Target_ the same thing, are you??), or we won't sell your stuff anymore.

<comment><USER25> The stories of the hoops that suppliers have to go through in Bentonville are legendary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If this is true (keeping in mind the source is an analyst who is relating conversation between other parties for which they were not involved), it might not necessarily be a negative for the freight market. If the contractors become territorial about which freight companies they will hire it will effectively reduce the supply available for both (once a freight company commits to one or the other) meaning Walmart/Amazon will each have to pay more essentially for "exclusivity".

<comment><USER27> But higher prices would also encourage Amazon to invest more in automating their fleet, at which point the market will collapse.

<comment><USER28> Money isn't the thing that prevents self-driving trucks from becoming a reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Will they include USPS, UPS, and FedEx in this?

<comment><USER30> USPS is barred by law from signing an exclusive contract like this, to Walmart would just have to refuse to use them.

UPS and Fedex, I highly doubt either would agree to it, but it is not impossible to see one of them go with Walmart and One go with Amazon but highly unlikely

<comment><USER31> Wouldn't matter, Amazon is already singling out all three with LaserShip and its own Logistics firm.

Did I mention how terrible AMZL is at their job? I spend the better part of a day tracking down a package marked as "delivered."

<comment><USER32> The last three packages I got from Amazon were late, even though they were Prime guaranteed. Only one of those was the fault of the carrier, the other two sat in the Amazon distribution center for the two guaranteed days, only making it to the carrier long after they should have been in my mailbox.

While I was able to get an extension on my Prime membership all three times, I'm starting to wonder if I should just drop it altogether. Yes, the shipping is "free" even if it's late, but it's damned annoying when I try to plan around a guaranteed date that ends up anything but guaranteed.

<comment><USER33> Amazon prime started taking 5 days. I canceled. Orders now spend 3 days in waiting to ship, and then arrive 2 days after being marked as shipped.

<comment><USER29> Very odd. I've seen nothing of the sort, so I wonder if it's regional. Here in upstate NY I get things when promised, and Amazon explicitly states "get it by today+2" when ordering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When you are desperate, you are acting irrationally and, definitely, absolutely, not thinking long-term, but counting on potential short-gains to survive, and looks like that's Whalmart is doing.

They are doomed, of course, just a matter of how long it will take until they become irrelevant. And it's not like they couldn't study history or didn't have time or money to invest in whatever would have been required to mount a better defence, but in the end, hubris and misplaced confidence is going to claim another foolish company.

<comment><USER35> _They are doomed, of course, just a matter of how long it will take until they become irrelevant. And it 's not like they couldn't study history or didn't have time or money to invest in whatever would have been required to mount a better defence, but in the end, hubris and misplaced confidence is going to claim another foolish company._

+1. Not much you can say about Sears that you can't also say about WalMart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is sttarting to read as a Thucydides Trap. Established power threatened by an upstart rival.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/un...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/united- states-china-war-thucydides-trap/406756/)

</comment><comment><USER37> fuck Walmart. You don't hear anything about Amazon workers being on public assistance because they are payed enough and get enough hours to survive on their own. Around the holidays Walmart takes food and toy donations for their workers inside their break rooms. It's a bad company and I hope it gets killed off.

<comment><USER38> Amazon is notorious for their awful treatment of workers. Just recently a local NPR station had a re-run of a story where (1) even when the AC broke inside the warehouse, Amazon wouldn't give them a break or let them open the door or windows to cool things off. A person eventually passed out. (2) They tempt and fake promise temp workers with good future outlook like better pay and benefits after they work for X amount of time. But then Amazon lets them go right before X amount of time is done. (3) Overall they overwork and are brutal with some warehouse workers.

I'll try and find the NPR link. But like someone else has already linked to 3 article, this isn't a special one off case.

If you're going to upset at how Walmart treats blue collar workers, a similar amount of anger should be aimed at Amazon.

<comment><USER39> I'm not really trying to defend Amazon Fulfillment nor do I doubt the veracity of the NPR article. However, I want to throw some anecdata into the conversation.

My ex-wife has worked for Amazon Fulfillment for almost 5 years (in Texas - not exactly known as a "worker friendly" place when it comes to having laws protecting the working class from abuse) in multiple facilities (both replenishment and fulfillment) and hasn't witnessed workers being systematically mistreated, obvious safety issues going unreported and unaddressed, etc. She makes almost twice minimum wage with medical benefits, stock, 401k matching, 1.5x + 8 hours holiday pay compensation during crunch time, etc. All of that paid to someone that has only a high-school equivalence certificate.

She used to work at Walmart and would unequivocally tell you that Amazon Fulfillment has been the better of the two companies to work for.

<comment><USER38> The NPR report was specifically about 2 or 3 locations if I recall. So anecdote does work the.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Both may be reaching scales which strain the limits of the shipping industry. To retain needed capacity, each has to elbow the other out of the way, while they ramp up alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER41> How is this not tortious interference? Walmart seems to be making this threat in order to undermine the contract between these truckers and Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is a misguided, myopic decision done out of sheer desperation. It's a symptom, not the disease.

<comment><USER43> It's not desperation, it's using your leverage to your advantage. Isn't that the smart business decision? How is that any different then Amazon, Uber, or anyone else deciding to raise prices once they're the dominant participant in their respective marketplace?

"Competition is for losers." \- Peter Thiel

<comment><USER44> You misattributed the quote:

""Competition is for losers." \- Peter Thiel." -Michael Scott.

More seriously, I hate this quote, for so many reasons. Sure, it's great if you can do something no one else is doing and do it so well that no one can really compete with you. But there are plenty of people who compete with others and the world is often a better place as a result. It feels like people lose sight of the goals: not just becoming really wealthy, but perhaps serving the public?

<comment><USER43> I agree with you entirely though. That's the problem: the delta between the way capitalism is current running and how it should.

#LateStageCapitalismProblems

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I feel like truckers should tell Walmart to shove it. This is getting abusive

<comment><USER46> In the short term, this could benefit the truckers. Rates may go up as each of the larger customers raises rates to attract them.

In the long term, truckers are best served by having competition in the marketplace. If there is only one big customer on the market then they have little chance of getting fair rates.

<comment><USER47> In the long run, there are no truckers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 Hopefully this will backfire on Wal-mart.

</comment><comment><USER48> Seems the FTC should step in here.

Oh, wait. We have a "pro business" Administration and Congress.

So, the big boys get to throw their weight around.

bah

P.S. These "big boys" should have to _compete_ for truckers' services. Just like everyone else. On an ongoing bases... not some one-time commitment extorted solely to their advantage.</comment>


New FCC chairman tells wireless carriers to unlock cell phones - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/new-fcc-chairman-tells-wireless-carriers-to-unlock-cell-phones/ <comment><USER2> I really like the FCC, and I don't like government agencies very often. I've interfaced with them when reporting illegal telemarketing and when getting an amateur radio license. They've always struck me as very accessible, responsive, efficient, and transparent. Although most of their job is regulation, it always seems like they approach the task with a sincere goal of actually serving the citizenry and making communication work well and fairly. General kudos to them.

<comment><USER3> You mean stuff like this? [http://www.fcc.gov/guides/obscenity-indecency-and- profanity](http://www.fcc.gov/guides/obscenity-indecency-and-profanity)

or when the FCC in 2006 declined to investigate whether AT&T et al were breaking the law by sending data to the NSA?

...

The FCC may do some good things, but it's history isn't near as nice as you suggest.

<comment><USER4> ah, what choice do they have? The NSA has the goods on them too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Under Wheeler's proposal, carriers would have to unlock phones only after the consumer's contract is up."

Why? If they're locked into a contract anyways, why does it matter if their phone is unlocked?

<comment><USER6> Because locking the phone to their SIM card means that the carriers can charge international travelers enormous rates for minutes and data rather than just putting a local sim card into the phone in each country.

<comment><USER7> It is interesting that T-mobile U.S. has decided to provide free international roaming (with a data cap). That certainly removes one problem with traveling with your phone.

I also believe that carriers shouldn't be allow to lock phones. I don't think carriers should be in the business of selling phones in the first place.

<comment><USER6> T-mobile has been doing a lot of interesting things. They don't default to 2 year contracts anymore, they offer 200 mb free data per month for tablets, and their phones are SIM unlocked.

It appears that most of these things aren't actually necessary and T-mobile is pulling back the curtain to show what ATT/Verizon are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That referenced bill there is pretty weak and shouldn't be used as an excuse that "something was done". What happened to the bill by Rep. Zoe Lofgren that was supposed to break the teeth of DMCA 1201 by allowing circumventing DRM for non infringing purposes? That was the real thing.

UPDATE: It doesn't seem to move anywhere: [https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr1892](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr1892)

</comment><comment><USER9> I think that this is important, but what about locked bootloaders and restrictive user privileges (rooting)? I truly do not understand how it appropriate to sell consumers a computing device that they don't have the right to run arbitrary software on. If I worked at [big box store] and tried to sell anyone here a desktop that was locked down harder than a high school computer lab from hell, someone would punch me...

<comment><USER10> I've bought plenty of locked-down hardware. What manufacturers haven't yet capitalized upon is that I'll pay more for unlocked hardware.

<comment><USER11> One instance of this would be the Linksys WRT54GL wireless router which Linksys specifically sold as unlocked so users could install OpenWRT and other alternatives.

Worked on me, I've bought a few of that model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This falls short. Phones should never be locked, even if there is an open contract.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems kind of ho-hum in that it reads a lot like AT&T's current policy for unlocking. Perhaps other carriers are different, and hence the reason this would be a big deal. But read it, it's not saying the carriers would have to unlock two days into a two year contract. No, the contract must be fulfilled or the ETF paid. They wouldn't have to unlock just because you say so.

As always, if you want an unlocked phone, then buy an unlocked phone. Plenty of places sell them.

</comment><comment><USER14> Remove the subsidies for the phones and long term contract lock in-s, enforce the ability for carrier switch while keeping the phone numbers - that is the best a person could do to protect the consumers. No one loses anything.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was amused to find discover that Steve Largent (CEO of the CTIA) is the former Seattle Seahawks wide receiver. Apparently, he was a U.S. congressional representative for Oklahoma before losing a race for governor in 2002.</comment>


What's the Deepest Hole Ever Dug? - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-whats-deepest-hole-ever-dug-180954349/

<comment><USER2> Coolest technique for going deep? The self-sinking probe. A big ball of tungsten filled with radioactive elements that just melts its way down to the mantle.

[http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/refael/league/radioactive-core- ea...](http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/refael/league/radioactive-core-earth.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Sounds like that would be a breeze for melting through ice, like on Europa.

<comment><USER4> It's one of the designs being discussed by NASA for a Europa probe, called a cyrobot: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryobot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryobot)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a moment I thought this was about healthcare.gov version 1.</comment>


25 Effective Ways to Use Twitter Search for Marketing, Sales and Support - <AUTHOR> http://twits.co/25-ways-twitter-advanced-search

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's some of the best ways you can put Twitter search to use for your business, along with some tools that'll help you learn more from Tweets, identify trends, see how your Tweets are impacting your business, and more.</comment>


A search engine for US trademarks - <AUTHOR> http://www.trademarkia.com

<comment><USER2> Seems like it is primarily scraping content from the USPTO search ([http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang=engli...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang=english&p_d=trmk)) and being monetized by trying to sell their own legal services? Maybe I am missing something.

<comment><USER3> That's what I gather, too. Looks like an added service is that they will notify you when similar marks to yours are filed. (found here: <http://www.trademarkia.com/press-release.aspx>)

I am interested in seeing how (if?) they implement that. A mark is more than words; It is also the colors and shapes that comprise the mark. I wonder how they will determine whether a mark is similar when someone picks a logo that looks like yours.

It doesn't seem like their claim of "Search all U.S. trademarks filed since 1870..." is correct. Trademarkia doesn't have the mark that I filed in August, but it is on the USPTO website.

<comment><USER4> Hello, you are correct. We havent indexed 2009 USPTO data yet on Trademarkia. Will be indexed in about 1 month, we are in the process of doing this now. Once 2009 data is indexed, we'll be updating the site daily. I wrote a detailed post below. Raj

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like data is out of date. We were granted a trademark on "Bootstrappers Breakfast" that was granted June 23. [http://www.bootstrappersbreakfast.com/blog/2009/06/24/bootst...](http://www.bootstrappersbreakfast.com/blog/2009/06/24/bootstrappers- breakfast-is-now-a-registered-trademark/) A search here finds 11/12/2008 as the last action, so they are between three months and almost a year out of date. A more accurate search is available from <http://www.uspto.gov/>

<comment><USER4> We haven't indexed the 2009 data yet. We will be doing so in the coming month. After that time, we'll be updating the site daily with the latest USPTO data. Trademarkia will soon be just as accurate as the USPTO, with much more deeper/interesting search capabilities. Stay tuned. Raj Abhyanker CEO of Trademarkia

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, great to be able to search so easy for trademarked names!

A couple of days ago I've received my first DMCA notice by Hasbro for my free Android Game "Connect Four Online". Reason was that the name "Connect Four" is trademarked.

Too bad, it was already in the top-30's and now it is suspended. I hope for google to accept a new version with a changed name and update it.

<comment><USER7> wait a second - the Digital Millennium _Copyright_ Act is enforceable for issues with the US Patent and Trademark office?

All the same, your story is simultaneously cool and a shame. Good luck getting it back online!

<comment><USER4> In case you are interested, here are all U.S. trademarks of Hasbro. They have more than 4000 trademarks :

[http://www.trademarkia.com/company-hasbro- inc-544799-page-1-...](http://www.trademarkia.com/company-hasbro- inc-544799-page-1-2)

      Also, here is the details for the Connect Four mark referenced above.

[http://www.trademarkia.com/trademark- details.aspx?tid=730199...](http://www.trademarkia.com/trademark- details.aspx?tid=73019915)

Raj Abhyanker CEO of Trademarkia

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A search engine for _US_ trademarks.

<comment><USER4> Hello,

Thank you for starting this thread on Trademarkia! I am Raj Abhyanker, and the CEO of Trademarkia (www.trademarkia.com), a 2 person startup here in Palo Alto, CA. We just launched this Monday September 14, 2009 the TechCrunch50 Demo Pit.

We have only indexed USPTO trademark data from 1870 till December 31, 2008. We have not yet indexed the 2009 data, and that is why the mark recently filed in August 2009 is not showing up. The 2009 data will be indexed, and the site will be refreshed daily in about 1 month.

You are correct, our revenue model will be in the filing services for new marks (state, federal and international), and the re-filing of expired and abandoned trademarks by new owners. Because we automate and simplify the process, we are able to offer a lower cost, highly reliable method for these services.

In addition, we will provide infringement monitoring against new trademark filings. With regards to logo marks, we have developed a unique search engine for things inside of logos based on never before indexed legacy USPTO classification codes. For example, you can see inside logos here: <http://www.trademarkia.com/trademark-logo-design>

After we are funded, we plan to indexing all 50 state U.S. trademark filings, as well as those in as many international countries as possible. We are currently looking for partners (domain name registrars, logo design companies, etc.) that might want to create interesting and cool APIs between our site and theirs.

If you have any further questions regarding Trademarkia (or want to help), please feel free to call me at 650-965-8731 or email me at email@example.com

Thank you once again for starting this thread. YCombinator is a great resource.

Respectfully yours,

Raj

Raj Abhyanker CEO & IP Attorney Trademarkia.com</comment></comment>


CNN's app was flooded with negative reviews last week - <AUTHOR> http://blog.appfigures.com/cnn-for-ios-gets-hit-with-fake-reviews-pushing-fox-up-the-ranks/ <comment><USER2> It's the same on Android. CNN is garbage propaganda anyway. But yes, they fucked up and are getting brigaded.</comment>


Amazon pays partial refund for PS3 sale due to OtherOS feature removal - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/games/amazon-pays-partial-refund-for-ps3-sale-due-to-otheros-feature-removal-2010049/

<comment><USER2> I'm happy that the refund chain will go all the way back to Sony. If a lot of people start requesting the refund now, it might suddenly be a good business decision for them to reenable otheros.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. In this case, a more "inflammatory" headline to this article might have conveyed the more interesting aspect of the story that you noted: "Amazon agrees PS3 no longer fit for purpose; will bill Sony for chargebacks" or something along those lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm amazed at how consistently tone-deaf Sony is. It seems like they go out of their way to piss off their own customers and shoot themselves in the foot in public relations.

Can anyone (who is a lawyer, please!) comment on whether a similar claim can be made in the US? (I'm really not interested in keyboard lawyering or your opinion on what the law should be.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a corresponding US law, at least CA might have something since it's a fairly consumer friendly state. It might be worthwhile, even for me since I own an original Fat PS3, to check with the state govt.

Anyone knows how to go about it, i.e. who/which office to ping in Sacramento?

</comment><comment><USER6> Amazon's customer service is top-notch, but I'm not so sure that a local computer games / electronics store would act in the same way.

<comment><USER7> Which is part of the reason that it is great Amazon is doing this. They can afford the rebates and more importantly, they can afford to put pressure on Sony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, that's a big refund. I would have expected a token amount, like $25.</comment>


Gitlab Handbook - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see this posted. Happy to answer any questions.

Of note: we require every single new team member, independent of position, to make at least one or two merge requests towards the handbook. This way everyone knows how to contribute to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> _The GitLab team handbook is the central repository for how we run the company. As part of our dedication to being as open and transparent as possible, the handbook is open to the world...._</comment>


Ask HN: Now that Oracle owns Sun, do you think Postgres will take off - <AUTHOR>

Be it based on fact or fiction, unix geeks are a finicky bunch. Do you think the adoption rate of Postgres will skyrocket due to the paranoia of unix geeks around the world and Oracle's potential to meddle? <comment><USER2> Those who already use Postgres are not going to switch to MySQL based on this. MySQL users who can see themselves hitting a substantial size (e.g. those who fear they may be herded in the direction of "upgrade to Oracle to get that particular feature you think MySQL lacks") will probably start giving Postgres a hard look. The website-in-a-box users are unlikely to even know that Oracle will own MySQL and are not going to change.

The big question is how big is that middle category. I don't think it is particularly large now, but this is the time for the Postgres community to start getting aggressive in putting together new features, lowering the initial learning curve, and evangelizing their product.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the installed userbase will be slow to move. In fact, this might strengthen Mysql's position amongst the larger, less technical users, however, I find it quite likely that we may see more activity either in the MySQL forks drizzle or maria, or in PostgreSQL, which may lead to MySQL eventually losing its lead.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't care. I'll keep using Postgres whatever happens because it's the best thing out there as far as I'm concerned.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll switch. I use mysql only by convenience. Postgres seems better anyways.

</comment><comment><USER6> maybe not skyrocket, but it will definitely tip some scales into the postgres side. there's going to be _some_ movement.</comment>


Ted Nelson, coiner of the term 'hypertext', Outs Bitcoin Creator - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/19/ted_nelson_thinks_hes_outed_bitcons_nakamoto/ <comment><USER2> Pretty sure the headline should be:

> Ted Nelson, coiner of the term 'hypertext', speculates about Bitcoin > creator's identity

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure what constitutes an outing, but I'm pretty sure this isn't it:

"I cannot say QED to that because I have not proven it," he adds. However, he says his theory is "consistent, plausible, and I believe, compelling."

</comment><comment><USER4> The discussion and the original video from a few hours ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5729703>

</comment><comment><USER5> This seem completely ridiculous. Each of the 3 prongs outlined in the article seems weak and even when considered together there is little chance that they narrow down the search to a single individual. I would expect there are quite a few that match this description. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER6> I have another theory, in that Satoshi is actually Ted Nelson, based on the fact that only the real Satoshi would be the first to oust someone else as Satoshi.

</comment><comment><USER7> Without more evidence, some of the other theories are more convincing.

<comment><USER8> It's so unconvincing I have to wonder if he's intentionally muddying the waters.

/conspiracy

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has anyone just asked Shinichi Mochizuki if he had anything to do with bitcoin?

I assume he would be honest and deny it if he had no involvement. (but still would be cool to get this amazing guy's opinion about bitcoin tech)

If he was involved with bitcoin, I doubt he would lie about it. Instead he would simply not respond, and thus confirming he really might be "Satoshi".

</comment><comment><USER10> Given his reputation it's not inconceivable. Excellent article on Mochizuki that was recently published: <http://projectwordsworth.com/the-paradox-of-the- proof/>

<comment><USER11> Yet extremely unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this a big deal? Are there possible repercussions (positive or negative) for the author of Bitcoin? Are there possible repercussions for Bitcoin itself?

<comment><USER13> Apparently this guy has almost a million bitcoins [1]. Since there will apparently only ever be 21 million (and that by 2040), he has a disproportionate amount of the currency that will ever exist. Not everybody wants to be outed as having over $100million, but that probably pales in comparison to what could hypothetically happen if somebody/an organisation wanted to destroy the currency. He could probably single handedly do it and would be a very obvious target.

[1][http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/6/4295028/report-satoshi- naka...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/6/4295028/report-satoshi-nakamoto)

EDIT: Added the source I forgot. And whoever downvoted this, could you explain why? I think it's reasonable to assume that certain people may dislike Bitcoin, and that the guy holding 5% of the lifetime supply is an obvious target.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That is sort of sad, really.

</comment><comment><USER15> Isn't satoshi's Bitcoin collection valued at 10 million USD+?

<comment><USER16> I thought it was 100mill

<comment><USER15> Even more reason to keep your identity under wraps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> tldr: Some guy says that he think who the creator of Bitcoin is.

Flag and downvote guys.</comment>


What Is Wrong About NULL in OOP? (webinar Recorded) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3aNJX7AP3M

<comment><USER2> Using non-nullable types aggressively helps a great deal. You don't need to trust that your code doesn't have timebombs; the compiler can verify that those objects are always non-null. You can continue to use nullable types as simple form of "maybe"; no wrapper object is necessary. When most of your objects are non-nullable then the nullable cases are noticeable, and you know when you need to handle the null case and when you don't.

In JavaScript, for example, Closure Compiler and Flow both support non- nullable types.</comment>


Show HN: A Firefox add-on to strip Google search results of 'blacklisted' URLs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidahmed/wiper <comment><USER2> Anybody else here remembers times when Google search supported blocking domains in personal setting? Along with so many advanced search operators? Oh, days of yore…

Anyway, you can still use prevailing `site:` operator with "minus" negation (e.g.[1]) , so you can have bookmarked search with your custom blocklist in query [2]

[1] no SO and no w3schools example, non-personalized ("verabatim"): [https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+merge+arrays+javascri...](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+merge+arrays+javascript+-site:stackoverflow.com+-site:w3schools.com&tbs=li:1) [2] place `%s` into query and set bookmark keyword (Firefox) or chrome://settings/searchEngines - Add: [https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+-site:stackoverflow.com+-...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+-site:stackoverflow.com+-site:w3schools.com&tbs=li:1)

<comment><USER3> I use Tampermonkey[1] with the "Google Hit Hider by Domain"[2] plugin to de- crapify my search results.

In spite of the name, it works on all search engine sites I've tried it on; Google, Startpage, DuckDuckGo, Qwant. It adds a "Block" button beside each search result which allows you to block sites from appearing in that particular search result. Or to 'perma-ban' them from ever showing in future search results.

No affiliation. Just a satisfied customer.

[1] [https://www.tampermonkey.net](https://www.tampermonkey.net)

[2] [https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider- by-d...](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-domain- search-filter-block-sites)

Unfortunately it can't do anything about search results returning precisely the opposite of what you searched for; eg.

SEARCH: "How to completely uninstall XXX from YYY"

RESULT: "How to install XXX on ZZZ"

SEARCH: "How to completely +uninstall -install +XXX +from -on +YYY -ZZZ

RESULT: "Install YYY on ZZZ with this howto"

[Insert sound of computer being thrown across room]

And, while I'm on the subject, my tuppence worth for the list. Fucking You- fucking-Tube being returned as the first dozen search results for some crappy one liner which you've forgotten and need to look up quickly...

SEARCH: "cheatsheet keyboard shortcut for function Z in app Y"

WHAT I WANT THE SEARCH TO RETURN: "App Y Keyboard shortcut cheatsheet"

WHAT THE SEARCH ACTUALLY RETURNS: [almost an entire page of] "Take zen ninja mastery of Application Y in minutes by learning this arse-sum keyboard shortcut!" \--a 45 minute unedited epic, filmed by a monosyllabic arsehole on a shaking, continually auto-focussing phone camera, orientated vertically. Featuring 20 minutes of "er... um... well..." mumbling at the beginning, telling the viewer how "arse-sum" this keyboard shortcut is going to be --if the fucker ever gets around to actually showing you it!

Followed by the actual clicking of the shortcut which the narrator manages to do while the camera is pointed at the wrong part of the screen and out of focus.

<comment><USER4> Good suggestion, although I would propose to use FireMonkey instead of Tempermonkey/Violentmonkey as the former is more lightweight and privacy friendly than the latter.

If you are interested, here's an article: [https://www.ghacks.net/2019/09/10/firemonkey-uses- firefoxs-o...](https://www.ghacks.net/2019/09/10/firemonkey-uses-firefoxs- official-api-for-userscripts-and-userstyles/)

<comment><USER3> I use Yandex Browser [Chromium-based] so, unfortunately, FireMonkey isn't an option.

The article you linked to is quite vague as to what the security implications might be. It says that FireMonkey extensions run in a sandbox. But you're still being asked the usual "This extension wants to see and modify your data on all websites.." [or whatever the exact wording is]. So, you're still letting the installed scripts have access to your browsing.

One good thing about <whatever>Monkey and userscripts is that they make it trivially easy to inspect the scripts and see what exactly is being done. Whereas a browser extension is more of a 'black box'. So, there is more potential to spot potentially nefarious code in a userscript.js.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this because I was so annoyed by irrelevant low-quality search results for my queries on Google. For instance if I'm looking up for Python xyz topic, 99% of the times I am not interested in some 'low-quality' content (based on my personal preferences) from website example.com.

The plugin maintains a persistent and customizable list of URLs (keywords) that are used as a 'blacklist' for stripping results.

<comment><USER5> Name and shame: my personal ones are cplusplus.com and w3schools.com.

<comment><USER6> Fucking quora!

For image search, fucking pinterest!

<comment><USER7> When I worked for google as SRE for the web crawler, I low key advocated for de-indexing pinterest, but didn't get anywhere, (this is unsurprising, I was a nobody there.) I have no insight into why they don't de-index pinterest, but I know pinterest was on the radar as a thing of some sort. Meantime, I just add "-site:pinterest.*" to image queries... which I gather is probably more or less the sort of thing this addon does.

<comment><USER8> You don't have to answer this if you don't feel like it, but I always wondered if "-site:food.bar" is a search signal against that web site when Google ranks domains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This used to be built-in to google itself. You could choose to block a site from future results from any results page. But they killed it, along with forum search, code search, usenet search, and so many other useful things.

<comment><USER10> Yes, my first thought upon reading the post was "doesn't Google already offer this?" Didn't realise they'd killed it.

I use DuckDuckGo as my main search engine these days and I'm actually reasonably happy with it. The results used to be laughably bad but they've really improved lately.

Sadly, the _one_ thing where DDG is usually crap is for anything code-related, especially if I'm searching for something very specific like an error message or an obscure library. That's when I have to jump back to Google (well, actually Startpage.)

<comment><USER11> Regarding DDG, I have noticed that recently it has started to suggest a ton of porn, even for totally unrelated searches.

As an experiment I just typed in the first thing that came to my mind: "thorn in cat's paw". One of the results is "Cat porn videos", on the very first page! And this is far from the worst case I've encountered...

<comment><USER12> Did you turn off safe search? I don't get porn with these search terms. Unless I turn off the porn filter.

<comment><USER11> As I do not know, what DDG subsumes under "objectionable material" (apart from it being "mostly adult"), yes. It was never a problem until recently, some sites seem to have stepped up their SEO game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Chrome users: uBlacklist is fantastic. (It also has a Firefox version.) [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe/related?hl=en)

It's also one of the best extensions I've seen in terms of code quality: [https://github.com/iorate/uBlacklist](https://github.com/iorate/uBlacklist)

<comment><USER14> uBlacklist can also filter results on Duck Duck Go and Startpage (it's in settings if you go to chrome://extensions/ find uBlacklist, click on it, scroll to the bottom and click "Extension options"), but I've never tried it.

<comment><USER15> Confirmed working on DDG (text search only) and Startpage (both text and images), tested on Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a great idea! I don't know why I hadn't thought of it beforehand! I looked through your code and it looks like you replace the HTML of the page. Have you considered appending "-site:<blacklisted url> -site:<blacklisted url>...etc" to the end of the search query instead? This way, the user still gets a full page of relevant search results.

I'm not sure how flexible extensions are, but maybe you could intercept all request attempts to google search, append the blacklisted URLs to the search query, then hide them on the loaded page so that the user doesn't have to see the long list of appended, blacklisted URLs.

<comment><USER17> > _" -site:<blacklisted url> -site:<blacklisted url>...etc"_

I actually have a keyworded URL in my Firefox bookmarks for that, IIRC there is a limit (a very low one if you really want to get rid of all the spam options) for how many sites you can block this way

<comment><USER18> only 32 words/parts are allowed in a query.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=test+-site%3Aa1.com+-site%3A...](https://www.google.com/search?q=test+-site%3Aa1.com+-site%3Aa2.com+-site%3Aa3.com+-site%3Aa4.com+-site%3Aa5.com+-site%3Aa6.com+-site%3Aa7.com+-site%3Aa8.com+-site%3Aa9.com+-site%3Aa10.com+-site%3Aa11.com+-site%3Aa12.com+-site%3Aa13.com+-site%3Aa14.com+-site%3Aa15.com+-site%3Aa16.com+-site%3Aa17.com+-site%3Aa18.com+-site%3Aa19.com+-site%3Aa20.com+-site%3Aa21.com+-site%3Aa22.com+-site%3Aa23.com+-site%3Aa24.com+-site%3Aa25.com+-site%3Aa26.com+-site%3Aa27.com+-site%3Aa28.com+-site%3Aa29.com+-site%3Aa30.com+-site%3Aa31.com+-site%3Aa32.com+-site%3Aa33.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Honestly, at this point Google themselves should be offering this.

Not only would it keep people coming back for actually valuable results, but it would feed them with an up-to-the minute listing of sites people don't trust.

<comment><USER20> Even better, let people subscribe to block lists, like ad blockers do. Instead of putting together my own list of shit sites (which will be perpetually out of date), I'd be happy to outsource that to some group I trust.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an enhancement issue I've already added to the repository on Github. Planning to roll it out in the next update :) Honestly, I didn't know how big of a pain it was to a lot of people until now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As someone who just graduated college and found geeksforgeeks, cplusplusreference, and w3schools quite helpful for Algorithms, c++ Syntax, and learning some basic web design stuff (respectively).....what should I be using? I see a lot of people hating on them....but they all seemed alright to me. Is it just because they are too basic? (I used a lot of these things for just learning basic things I either forgot the syntax for or needed a quick introduction).

I'd especially like to know for c++.

<comment><USER22> The complaints about these sites is usually that (a) they're literally wrong just often enough that you don't want to rely on them, which defeats the point of a reference, or (b) they try to "teach" things that are not recommended best practices. With w3schools in particular, there's the added "ick" that they try very hard to make it look like they're an offical W3C source, and sell scammy certifications based on that confusion. They also provided (past tense, because I haven't looked at it in years) some very questionable practices with PHP that would lead to trivially insecure code.

cppreference.com is what I usually use for C++. It's well organized, well cross-linked, and uses exact standards language whenever possible. It's also very good about showing the differences between successive versions of the C++ standard libraries, which is invaluable if you're working with any sort of legacy code and wondering why something looks funny.

For HTML5/JS, MDN (Mozilla) was my default when I did front-end, but it's been a little while. I'm sure Mozilla is still great, but there might also be something easier to traverse.

<comment><USER21> Ahhhh.....you know what, now that I think about it, I remember last semester for a class I had to do a bunch of PHP + SQL for a Backend (my first time really using either). I basically just googled a bunch of stuff and I ended up just writing the queries in as strings basically because that's what I saw on a site (very possibly one of the ones in question).

I felt it was wrong because I was concerned about SQL injection, but my professor really didn't care about security so I wasn't too too concerned. Later on my professor mentioned that pre-compiled statements (I think that's what they are called) and I facepalmed because that would have been way more secure and been 5x easier anyways.

So yea, I guess they still are giving bad advice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Google used to offer this as a feature in search itself ages ago.

It ended up being removed from the core product and replaced by an extension which they abandoned.

It's currently community maintained: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal- blocklist...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklistnot- by/cbbbhelcpfjhdcncigdlkabmjbgokmpg)

</comment><comment><USER24> This should already have been part of Google itself. Some sites come up high far too frequently for certain searches of mine, and it's never the best info.

I like that this doesn't completely blow away the result, but I do kind of wish is was further de-emphasized. Maybe smaller font or faded text.

<comment><USER25> This was actually a Google feature maybe about a decade ago. It was removed at some point.

<comment><USER26> Yes, it was a part of Google search. I guess they removed it because not many people were using it. Too bad I was a big fan of this feature.

<comment><USER27> Or because too many people were using it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Goodbye Pinterest!

<comment><USER29> Goodbye Forbes!

<comment><USER30> Goodbye Amazon!

<comment><USER31> Goodbye Quora, experts-exchamge, and a bazillion random string name sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The two issues I have with Google search recent: first, I often get results, when searching for something technical which look like they have huge potential, a sentence with my search terms in, amongst a technical looking paragraph, with a URL, at first glance, that looks good, I click on it and it attempts to take over the browser with spam, redirects etc, I then realize the domain had random characters before the end, but I wonder how such terrible results end up on Google. I want to ban these sites from my searches. Secondly, unrelated to this extension, recently, Google have started popping up a box with other search terms I may be interested in, just after the search loads, within the search results, and the amount of times I have gone to click, only to be last minute intercepted by a link in this box which suddenly appears is unreal. Anyone else get that?

<comment><USER33> To your second point, yes, all the time and it's infuriating. You either need to slow down how you use the search results page, or they appear from nowhere just as you're trying to click the second link.

What's worse is I then berate myself mentally as I know that Google has some metric on how many times these suggestions get clicked, and there's some product owner somewhere saying "wow!, x% of users use these suggestions, let's keep this feature!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This might be useful to blacklist some of the shopping results when you want facts and not shopping results. Sometimes I google "how does X work" type questions, and I get pages of links of things I should buy. The top stuff are obvious ads, but the non-ad results are basically shopping sites, too. That's mean of Google. They're our main source of information ("How does X work") and instead they want to redirect you to shopping because .. they can.

I notice -shopping helps... magically. But not enough.

Maybe the blacklist is the right idea. Can there be a magic incantation to exclude or include groups of blacklisted sites on a whim?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll take this into account too towards my attempt in making it more customizable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Check out also SearchMage - it can filter search results for several search engines and provides some extra functionality as well:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/searchmage- se...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/searchmage-search- enhancer/)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/searchmage/oldjnha...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/searchmage/oldjnhaegfgpfjlpmedeehapghiodglc?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER36> Great work! I actually made something similar 15 years ago with a P2P social networking angle: You could hide/promote results based on your friends' reccomendations.

Check out some old screenshots from Firefox version 1.0: [http://getoutfoxed.com/screenshots](http://getoutfoxed.com/screenshots)

It went viral on del.icio.us and let to me taking venture funding to found www.lijit.com, which lives on now as [http://sovrn.com/](http://sovrn.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very inspirational! Actually I have something similar in mind- 1. to allow subscribing to friend's or network's lists. and/or 2. Make it a 'window' to your search experience. So it's privacy focused personal/social logic that offers you Google or any search engine that way you prefer. I think PageRank is not enough (or may be too much) for me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Good bye corporate news from my search results! I am so fed up with a bunch of news articles always crowding out the top results for nearly every search query. No more having to wade though propaganda soup to find the things i want.

<comment><USER38> This extension comes at a good time. Just a couple of weeks ago I was wondering how search would feel if you'd remove all news sites (mainstream and otherwise).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I would so love to have a search engine setting in which I could remove the top 500 web properties from my search, or have similar parameters to help remove large swaths information that I'm not interested in looking at.

<comment><USER40> [https://millionshort.com/](https://millionshort.com/) can do this

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> We really should bring back OpenSearch which is/was a way for sites to expose a search URL to browsers (like RSS URLs). You'd then directly query those sites rather than going to the middleman (Google or other search engines). Only that sites exposing OpenSearch URLs probably aren't prepared to be queried by meta crawlers and huge query loads will bring them down rather quickly I guess. The quality of search results on both Google and alternatives is shockingly poor; I can't find documents I used to find only three years ago. I, too, wonder if Google has just lost interest in fighting SEO spam. But I find it hard to believe that they aren't all over their cash cow so I have to conclude they send you to the sites with the most AdWords and Google analytics crap on purpose. At which point Google's search results can be used as a pretty good negative filter I guess ;) Interesting times ahead for search engines.

<comment><USER2> Site search provided by author seems like the best option on the first glance, but sadly in my experience those in-house full-text searches are most of the times way inferior than simple `site:` limited google search. If not in relevance then in speed -- I think it is understandable, one could hardly compete with Google in this field.

Two genuine anecdotal experiences: \- MDN search used to be super slow, and to this days its results page is not super nice and still slower than Google:

In-site: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/search?q=mutationObserve...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/search?q=mutationObserver) Google scoped: [https://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_en&q=mutationObserver%...](https://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_en&q=mutationObserver%20site:developer.mozilla.org)

\- jQuery API docs search felt the same: slow and slightly confusing compared to GSERP. (Much better now with Algolia, but still prefer Google:

In-site: [https://api.jquery.com/?s=off](https://api.jquery.com/?s=off) Google scoped: [https://www.google.com/search?q=off%20site:api.jquery.com](https://www.google.com/search?q=off%20site:api.jquery.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I would love this but unfortunately this permissions request is too broad: [https://files.terriblefish.com/2020-05-24_17-27-15.png](https://files.terriblefish.com/2020-05-24_17-27-15.png)

The Firefox UI won't let me see what the other 195 domains are.

<comment><USER43> They are all localized Google domains.

[https://github.com/davidahmed/wiper/blob/master/manifest.jso...](https://github.com/davidahmed/wiper/blob/master/manifest.json)

EDIT: Even better, they're also listed right on the extension's page:

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

Left side, "Permissions" (click to view all)

<comment><USER42> Perfect, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Thank you! I was searching for an add-on like this a few months ago. When I search for tech support issues I get a lot of SEO spam blogs that have no useful information now I can finally filter them out.

</comment><comment><USER45> Please make one for Bing. I gave up on Google search about half a year ago initially for all searches that could yield politically incorrect results, but then for all technical searches as well due to these spammy sites. Bing technical search is definitely higher quality and the general results are more politically neutral, but it still needs your extension. I currently find Firefox/Bing to be the most effective combination.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never personally used Bing much (but memes have told me the same about its search quality). I will take into consideration for the next execution.

I have been also mildly pissed at Youtube results and given how permeated it is into a 'learner's' life, I have been thinking about Youtube too. But in that case I'll have to take more usability into account to allow for right- click>add_to_blacklist kind of thing since there are so many low-quality ad- loaded channels.

<comment><USER46> I think Bing is better than Google when it comes to NSFW stuff (friend told me) and probably Image Search

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It seems kinda ridiculous that such a obvious and extremely useful idea hadn't been made yet, I cant wait to use it!

Bravo! Thanks so much or developing this.

</comment><comment><USER47> Any reason you chose to do this as a Firefox plugin rather than a Greasemonkey (or similar) script? Not judging, just wondering.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. My hatred for Chrome (kind of recent HN influence) led me into Firefox first and foremost hence Firefox. Even though I'll be porting it to Chrom(ium-e) soon. 2\. It could be my attitude but I thought writing ground up vanilla would be much easier than learning a new tool, i.e., I know Greasemonkey only as much as in its name and nothing else about its workflow. 2.1 I guess an addon is easier to distribute/install (?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Google search filter is an alternative that has been around for quite some time and has some additional features: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/g-search-filt...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/g-search-filter/)

<comment><USER49> This does look interesting, but it requires much more permissions and personally I hesitate to grant those for any non-monitored extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> you might as well preload this with Pinterest, that is precisely what I and most people will be using this ext for

</comment><comment><USER51> Wow... that was fast: [https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/gorbw9/featurer...](https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/gorbw9/featurerequest_userspecific_searchresults/)

</comment><comment><USER52> I got sick of seeing links to sites I knew I never wanted to visit (or couldn't due to pay/sign-up walls) and accidentally clicking them, so I made something similar to this for myself, but it applies to all sites.

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

[1] [https://github.com/7w0/ssure](https://github.com/7w0/ssure)

It's terrible to configure because it was only intended for personal use. The only reason it's in the add-on repository at all is the annoying fact you can't reasonably use a locally installed add-on.

</comment><comment><USER53> i use search keywords for everything, but i have the following custom keyword for google image search (this is firefox, though i believe it works for chrome too if you create one and manually edit it):

[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&q=-pinterest.com...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&q=-pinterest.com+-youtube.com+%s)

it strips out all results from pinterest and youtube thumbnails. though with the lack of direct image links i've been leaning more on ddg and bing these days.

</comment><comment><USER54> [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/g-search- filt...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/g-search-filter/)

Similar, but also enables highlighting of certain domains.

Also available on Chrome: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google- search-filt...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-search- filter/eidhkmnbiahhgbgpjpiimdogfidfikgf)

</comment><comment><USER55> Coincidentally, I have been working on a similar Chrome/Opera extension.

It works for Google, Yahoo!, Bing, DuckDuckGo and a few others, but I haven't finished it or packaged it up to submit to Google yet. Some rough edges and lots of TODOs still.

Anyway, it's here if anyone is interested in the code or would like to collaborate: [https://github.com/daverayment/SearchHide](https://github.com/daverayment/SearchHide)

</comment><comment><USER56> Thank you! Just curious, is there any reason why "Wiper blacklisted URL: <URL>" need to be shown instead of a cleaner removal?

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean why not fully remove the URL? That's just in the odd case you really do want to visit the link (after Google think that it's a good result). May be example.com happens to be the ONLY website that does have some good content, I personally wouldn't want to ban it entirely. But in every case, I'd like to strip their results so I won't have to scroll down to get to the good results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> First thing that came to my mind, is this the next-gen ad blocking?

Interesting project and I think I am on board with it. Google search results have declined a lot in the last 2 years, mostly because of oversaturation by brands that have been playing the SEO game for years.

It's getting increasingly harder to land on pages that have been written by someone without a strict interest in search engine traffic.

</comment><comment><USER58> It looks great. I created an extension with a similar purpose. It adds a confirmation step when you click on blacklisted links, and prepends an angry emoji on blocked text links.

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

</comment><comment><USER59> I wonder is there extension that would do exactly opposite, only include google results from sites that i choose in order that i want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ordering is something that I'm not sure about (but I've myself been thinking about it for a future addon- if not the current one) that would 'weigh' the URLs like .edu/wikipedia etc. much higher. Would such a feature be helpful to you? And as a part of the same addon?

As for only results from specific websites, you may use Google Operators (like inurl, site, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> At one point google had this as a chrome extension and as a built in feature to the search itself. Both are now dead for some reason

</comment><comment><USER61> I like the idea, although I personally won't be using it, I really like that it exists.

From a "freedom" perspective, I think individuals are free to impose their own filters but generally the default should be unrestricted access. That would possibly be with the caveat of the provably vulnerable (children, mental disabilities, etc).

Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER62> Been using [https://github.com/wildskyf/personal- blocklist](https://github.com/wildskyf/personal-blocklist) Got tired of most top results being from different pinterest.xzy domains. And when searching motorcycle prices and specs, I'd always get Indian websites.

</comment><comment><USER63> for those who dont know about native search filters, appending "-domain.tld" to a regular search query also works

<comment><USER64> You can also create a custom browser search command with this. Pass it into your search engine of choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> This is absolutely fantastic. Similarly frustrated with sites gaming SEO with near rubbish results or bare minimum content.

</comment><comment><USER66> I created an add-on which replaces !s with inurl:stackoverflow.com to replicate the bangs of duckduckgo in Google.

<comment><USER67> How come not site:stackoverflow.com? Is this just a different way of doing the same thing? I've never heard of the inurl: flag

<comment><USER16> inurl filters so that the result URLs must contain the keyword specified. So inurl:w3 would only show results where w3 is in the URL. It works for this use case but it's better to just use site like you mentioned.

<comment><USER68> You can't even fully rely on those operatorsike site: anymore because Google now happily serves you results from miscreants that tag their scam site urls with valid site names, so instead of getting results from only let's say mozilla.org, you also now get them from their scamsite because they appended the actual mozilla site url into their own.

<comment><USER16> Are you sure that happens with site and not inurl? That's a big bug. Do you have an example?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Would be nice if there was a DDG version.

<comment><USER70> I've been using this userscript since Google dropped the ability to block results years ago. It works across a bunch of search engines.

[https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider- by-d...](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1682-google-hit-hider-by-domain- search-filter-block-sites)

<comment><USER3> Me too. It's been great

I've also cobbled together a Tampermonkey script which I wittily call "HackerChoose" which allows me to similarly block domains from appearing on HN. Unfortunately my JS-foo isn't up to making it interactive, so I have to manually update the list of banned domains. But, if anyone's interested, here it is:

This actual Tampermonkey stub script imports the full userscript from a location elsewhere on my hard drive. This makes it easier to maintain the list of banned domains by editing that imported file directly, rather than having to make edits from within Tampermonkey's clunky interface:

[https://pastebin.com/raMSWMDi](https://pastebin.com/raMSWMDi)

This is the imported userscript. I pretty much lifted it from one someone else had made and then twiddled it a bit. So apologies to whoever the original author was, but I've forgotten where I got it, so can't give you the credit:

[https://pastebin.com/SbtfXEby](https://pastebin.com/SbtfXEby)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> You can also do this with uBlock Origin.

<comment><USER72> I don't believe you can accomplish precisely what this does with uBO. You can blacklist your browser itself from connecting to certain domains with uBO but you can't fully remove them from within a google search results page since the google results page isn't explicitly connecting to the domains, just displaying links to do so.

Even with some advanced cosmetic rules the most you could do is remove the <a> tag fields, not the full title/text of the results.

<comment><USER73> If you can select the <a> tag, then you can likely use a procedural cosmetic filter to go up the DOM like with :upward(n). So this should be possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Google search sucks so hard these days. Absurdly shitty.

Needs to be unfucked via antitrust IMO they have lost their way.

<comment><USER75> Wouldn't it be better for everyone if a legitimate competitor emerged? It's not like antitrust legislation significantly raised the quality of Microsoft's software in the 90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Sorry to hijack this thread but does anyone know of any extension that blocks / strips certain kinds of content.

Use case: I am as guilty of mindless browsing as the next person but seeing news / click-bait headlines about certain celebs like the kardashians makes my blood boil.

<comment><USER77> uBlock Origin has custom filters you can use. I'm guilty of the exact same thing (just not the same sites). Here's a sample of what I use:

      ||youtube.com/|$document,xhr
      ||youtube.com/?pbj*|$document,xhr

The first blocks YT entirely. The second blocks URL loads (if you load the URL directly) AND SPA redirects. I mostly use these to use YT only for content I subscribe to and avoid the algorithms by impulse or accident. Note that not all SPAs work the same, so you'd have to do some digging. For example, 9Gag doesn't redirect from the same API endpoint but instead uses payload data, so it's more difficult to block that. You can still block direct pageloads, but not SPA redirects, so for sites like that you may want to just block the entire domain.

I have a small list of content I try to avoid using this, mostly Reddit subs and "main" pages like r/all or r/popular. With this in mind, my ideal YT & reddit feeds are only content I explicitly want to see.

Else, I'd recommend a feed curator like Feedly. You can set up custom site feeds and so you'll only see those. I started using it after Firefox killed its RSS. This way there's no algorithm except popularity of a given link from a feed, not what is on the feed at all. So the onus of balance is still on you, but way easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Maybe it's just me, but I don't get what this is doing. How did the Google search results get inside some other URL?

I tried to watch the animation to understand, but it's too low resolution for me to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> It basically lets you create a list of blacklisted URLs and then any Google search results that matches against these URLs is stripped to the bare URL alone. The screenshot on the Firefox Addons page is of a much better quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I love this! Semi-related, I was just fiddling with a Firefox extension this morning to flip Python 2 documentation results with those of Python 3 (usually also in the results, but lower on the page)

</comment><comment><USER80> I've been using [https://github.com/pistom/hohser](https://github.com/pistom/hohser) for some time and it works well.

</comment><comment><USER81> Sorry to be a pedant here, but I think a title of "Show HN: A Firefox add-on to strip Google search results _of_ 'blacklisted' URLs" is much more clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks; I fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Don't think I've ever wanted to install an extension so fast. There are so, so many domains that I am content to literally never see in search results...

</comment><comment><USER83> Doesn't work in Google Image Search :(

Anyone here work at Pinterest?

<comment><USER84> Blocking Pinterest results in image search was my first thought with this extension. That's disappointing if it doesn't, will test myself now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> So long, w3schools.

</comment><comment><USER86> Google has a similar built-in feature today, just add "-" before the domain you don't want to see. For example:

html a tag -w3schools.com

<comment><USER87> Why ignore this site in 2020?

<comment><USER88> because mdn exists and is non-scammy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> So basically block 70% of all results from first and second page? Google has turned into a defective product.

</comment><comment><USER90> The number one thing lots of us don't want for general searches are shopping results.

</comment><comment><USER91> Thank you for this addon. Google should have done this 20 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER92> answers.microsoft.com

I'd blacklist that. Rarely if ever has an actual answer to the question asked in my experience and for some reason comments seem to get duplicated.

</comment><comment><USER93> Can it re-add blacklisted URLs? I would pay for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Care to elaborate please?

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> i absolutely cannot stand geeksforgeeks.com

</comment><comment><USER95> good bye w3schools! (MDN is so much better, thanks Mozilla!)

</comment><comment><USER96> Is there something like this for Chrome?

<comment><USER97> Though I haven't used it, this seems to do something similar: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe?hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> So far, goodbye:

pinterest.com

forbes.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

pinterest.co.uk

ebay.com.au

ebay.ca

pinterest.at

ebay.fr

pickclick.co.uk

pickclick.fr

etsy.com

</comment><comment><USER99> would love to have a filter for paywalled articles on google news

</comment><comment><USER100> Geeksforgeeks and tutorialspoint are low quality offshore content farms.

</comment><comment><USER101> or just a search engine that doesn't you know, censor search results.</comment>


How Companies Turn Your Facebook Activity into a Credit Score - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenation.com/article/208441/how-companies-turn-your-facebook-activity-credit-score#

<comment><USER2> Yeah, but, like, you don't have to use Facebook?</comment>