Why Are Lego Sets Expensive?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/why-are-lego-sets-expensive/ <comment><USER3> What's more expensive, a toy that gets used once on Christmas day and then gets discarded that costs $10, or a lego set that costs $50 and that gets passed down three generations or more?

Some of the lego my kids are playing with went through this route: my uncle, me, my brother, my son, my brothers kids. The oldest pieces I've got are from the early 60's, they have a different formulation and didn't keep their shape as good, but anything produced after roughly 1965 is as good as new today.

<comment><USER4> My son is playing with the bigger Lego pieces at the moment (Duplo), and I have the impression that they wear out a bit. What I mean is that they won't stick together as tightly as in the beginning. For example we bought a used set from ebay that includes a crane, and the crane is very prone to toppling over because it doesn't stick to the base very much anymore.

Anyway: what is the best way to clean LEGO? I've been wondering about that for a while :-)

<comment><USER3> The best way to clean lego is as far as I know to stick it in a pillowcasing, tie it shut and run it through the washing machine!

<comment><USER5> [http://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/124/lego- cleaning-...](http://bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/124/lego-cleaning- techniques-and-tools)

There seem to be some pro tips on the Lego StackExchange.

<comment><USER6> And I now know that there is a Lego StackExchange. Simply amazing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was a reddit comment the other day answering the exact same question. The person worked in a factory that cast plastic pieces for Lego as well as other companies. He said that Lego had much, much tighter tolerances, that they threw away many more pieces which weren't made to spec, and that they required much more expensive and frequently replaced molds.

I can't find it at the moment, unfortunately...

<comment><USER8> Would it be legal to make compatible bricks which are called differently? If so, why is nobody doing it? If not, there is your answer why LEGO is expensive; to quote the dude from Idiocracy, "ohhh, I _like_ money".

<comment><USER9> Yes, and they are doing it. For example, "Mega bloks" [1]. We have both at home, and in my experience, Mega blocks are interchangeable with Lego.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Brands#Lego_lawsuits>

<comment><USER8> Nice! But note Lego tried their best to fight them.. instead of welcoming friends and competition in this huge undertaking of measuring bricks correctly. Those Lego guys must really have figured out some hi-tech stuff there, so much is obvious; and it must weigh hard on their shoulders to not be able to share that with the world through a medium other than selling colored plastic blocks :(

<comment><USER9> The thing I'd like to know is whether there are third parties producing components that Lego doesn't. For example:

* A Lego compatible case, that can accept an Arduino board.

* A range of Lego compatible sensors and actuators

* Other components following the theme of integrating open-source with Lego.

* and so on...

\---

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER10> I'm working on something very similar. I'm making a 3D-printable LEGO-Technic compatible version called "Bitbeam". <http://bitbeam.org/arduino-mounting- plate>

I started the Bitbeam project because I was prototyping some things in LEGO, but when it came time to figure out how to make many of them, I wasn't too excited about the cost of LEGO... but I was happy with my LEGO design. So I decided to port LEGO dimensions to materials that are easier and cheapier to source myself.

<comment><USER11> Eghads it's like Ardurino meets the Erector set. Genius.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can certainly appreciate the precision of Lego pieces, as I too have mixed and matched incredibly old pieces from my parents's era (1970s) with more recent (2000s) stuff. And I think the OP did a decent job collecting precision data for the article.

However I find the post title to be misleading as surely there's a whole lot more that goes into the actual market valuation of a Lego kit. What about the type and quality of plastic used, the rest of the manufacturing process, quality control, the overhead of having to design new kits regularly, etc? Building Lego kits is more than just shipping cheap generic plastic widgets from China straight to store shelves.

For what it's worth, I've found Lego designs to be consistently excellent, with well thought-out part selection, part placement, structural integrity, and so on, in everything from the small $10 kid sets to the $300 Mindstorms NXT kits, so the price has never really bothered me.

<comment><USER13> There must also be non-trivial cost to licensing certain brands such as Star Wars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Besides the obvious answer that cost is not a first order determent of price?

<comment><USER15> In addition, walk down a toy aisle some time. Lego sets aren't cheap but relative to toys in general "legos are expensive" feels more like truthiness to me than truth.

<comment><USER16> Relative to the cost of manufacturing, all toys are highway robbery. You probably don't want to know what the wholesale costs on di ecast toy cars are, for example (it's effectively zero).

But that's how the economy works, there's a profit margin at every step. If there wasn't people wouldn't sell things or do things.

<comment><USER17> What are the profit margins for toy making companies like? Do they lose out much if the toy doesn't sell well? How is it when the toy sell well?

<comment><USER18> The financials are similar to the food conglomerates (P&G, Kraft, Unilever, Mars etc.). The businesses are hit-based, and each firm usually has one or two very profitable lines and a lot of lines that lose money or break even.

Low manufacturing costs but very high user acquisition costs. Toy companies rank in the top 10 on advertising dollars spent (after automotive, food, pharma, department stores, fast food, telephony, alcohol). Mattel has $0.7B of net income on $6.2B of revenue. But if you took the Barie and Hot Wheels businesses on their own, the margins there may be 40%+, but subsidiaries like The Learning Company are losing hundreds of millions per year.

The Lego Group[0] has 0.55B euro net income on $2.5B euro of revenue. A better margin than Mattel, but a smaller business. Lego also has new release lines that they depend on to continue growth. For eg. the Star Wars tie-up, Lord of the Rings, etc. some of these work, some don't. They need to keep giving buyers a reason to come back and purchase more - which is why Lego has gone from generic buckets of bricks to specific sets with instructions that you assemble once and don't disassemble.

Not mentioned in OP is that until a year ago Lego had a strong world-wide patent. It has only been the last 12 months that competitors have released similar sets of bricks which are forcing more competition on the company. Lego would be happy to hear that when I took my 3 year old niece shopping she only wanted the Lego brand Lego, and in that case only the sets that were cross- branded with characters she recognized (I think it was Dora the Explorer).

If you want to find out more, the largest toy co's are Mattel, Hasbro, Bandai, Lego, Tiger. They are all large co's and the other 4 besides Lego have suites of brand names and subsidiaries.

[0] Lego Group 2012 financials - [http://cache.lego.com/r/aboutus/-/media/About%20Us/Annual%20...](http://cache.lego.com/r/aboutus/-/media/About%20Us/Annual%20Report/ts.20120301T121813.Annual_Report_2011_UK.pdf)

<comment><USER19> According to the wikipedia page, the last Lego patent expired in 1989. There may have been some design patents that expired more recently perhaps (assuming wikipedia is correct) ?

My experience of the Lego knockoff products has been that they use inferior plastic that isn't quite as stiff as the Lego formulation and they don't get the internal moulding right either, so the parts don't lock together in quite the right way: they don't have that secure 'click together' feeling that Lego proper has.

<comment><USER18> Here are some of the stories from last year:

<http://bo-ne.ws/forum/read.php?7,32149,32149>

<https://plus.google.com/+ChrisPirillo/posts/Df3JbGjdNe4>

Apparently they prolonged their IP protection with a trademark, which was dissolved in court last year:

<http://boingboing.net/2005/11/17/judge-to-lego-your-p.html>

<http://boingboing.net/2010/09/15/lego-cannot-be-trade.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting to see how low the standard deviation is. Compare that to K'NEX (I _love_ K'NEX by the way) where a not-so-right angle is commonplace. Sometimes the rods have plastic bulges at the ends which prevent them from making a good connection in a female(?) piece.

LEGOs, however, have always fit perfectly, in my experience.

<comment><USER21> We have a good supply of both Lego and K'Nex here. I agree with your comment on K'Nex manufacturing but add that it doesn't really matter. K'Nex seem designed to connect well and holdtogether well despite this (I'm talking about the rods/joiners, not their stupid Lego-like bits which are just horrid)

K'Nex and Lego are different and my kids play wth both about equally I'd say. They get used to build different stuff and they're both awesome :)

<comment><USER22> K'Nex rock my world. About 6 years back, when I turned 18, I finally ordered the 'back of the catalogue' 3000+ piece Big Ball Factory set on eBay, after spending hours imagining how cool it would be to have it back when I was little.

It was awesome. My mates and I still build it occasionally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I too have a fair bit of Lego from when I was a kid in the 60s/70s that my kids play with today. It's worth noting that it was (relatively) expensive even back then.

My observations on the quality of my old pieces is that they are generally excellent and certainly still usable, but:

\- Some of the white pieces have discoloured quite noticably

\- Some of the white plates (but interestingly no other colours) have deteriorated noticably

\- The fit between pieces seems to be a lot tighter, so that prising pieces apart can be a challenge.

But really it would be churlish to overstate these issues - for this stuff to still be usable after 40 years is a testament to the quality of engineering that has gone into it. We have acquired bits of the various "knock off" Lego- esque brands and the inferior quality of these is immediately apparent.

<comment><USER24> I passed down the same older Space set that was mentioned in the article, along with a few others, to my son, and now it's mixed in with mostly newer Legos. The pieces are indistinguishable except for the unique pieces like the amber windshield. Maybe something changed from the 60s/70s to the early 80s when I was playing with Legos, but I don't see any degradation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Taken from [http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/14ccan/lego_super_star...](http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/14ccan/lego_super_star_destroyer_now_available_at_target/c7buwv0?context=1)

"Every single lego brick made has to fit together perfectly with every other lego brick EVER MADE. So the piece you get in your new super star destroyer has to snap together perfectly with a piece from a model house made in 1970. To achieve this, they run size tolerances on the order of .0005" "

</comment><comment><USER26> I've built lots and lots of lego over the years and tried several competitors as well. In fact I built a megablocks porsche last night for my son. The difference between lego and the rest is quite big. First the bricks are perfect on lego, perfect colour and no scratches or flaws. Next the instructions for lego are clear and easy to follow. Then you've got the parts bagged up in sensible sized packs which allow you to complete the steps required without having too much lego about you.

The megablocks kits was cheap, but the instructions were truly terrible. There was even a small addendum sheet thrown in with corrections one of the corrections was wrong itself!!

Add to this the blocks were not of great quality and the colours weren't consistent.

I almost never pay full price for Lego as there are always offers to be had, but the extra is well worth paying. I have kits from the 80's mixed in with todays stuff and it all fits perfectly.

Not to mention that Lego's support is great.

</comment><comment><USER27> You have no idea about expensive Lego. In Brazil, a simple firefighter airplane in Walmart will cost you more than US$130,00! The list price in the USA is US$60,00. See for yourself: [http://www.walmart.com.br/produto/Brinquedos/Lego/Lego/34301...](http://www.walmart.com.br/produto/Brinquedos/Lego/Lego/343016-LEGO- Aviao-de-combate-ao-fogo-4209)

</comment><comment><USER28> My brother and about half of all people in my area in Austria work for a company called ENGEL. This company produces Injection Molding Machines (EN- Wiki: <http://goo.gl/2fxjB>, DE-Wiki: <http://goo.gl/NS9F8>). This company is also main provider for Tupperware and LEGO. One machine cost around 1Mio. Euro and the mold has always more or less the same price than the machine. That means that every product created with Injection Molding should have a very high quality because of the price and the effort you have to put in to create a mold. The only reason, my bother says, why some products have a bad quality is, the plastic material is not as good as the one from LEGO.

This is the location of their headquarter <http://goo.gl/maps/9EOIk> <http://www.engelglobal.com/>

</comment><comment><USER29> Coming from Billund (where LEGO is made and invented) ... having friends and parents who worked +25 years at LEGO. My dad having worked both with construction and design of the plastic molds for all those years. I can say that the only reason LEGO is more expensive, is because its a high quality product made in Europe (mostly Denmark) and not in China.

<comment><USER30> I just wanted to point out that while this was true in the past, a number of the lower volume Lego parts (minifigs, animals, etc) are actually now manufactured in China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So... the article... Hypothesizing that it's primarily due to tight tolerances. Shows that they're indeed tight, and have remained similar to legos made 40 years ago. However, similar to what appear to be "random cheap dollar store building blocks." Best sentence "Honestly, I don't know much about plastic manufacturing – but the LEGO blocks appear to be created from harder plastic." - This is why they made interviews. Really wasn't so interesting and didn't answer the question.

<comment><USER21> Lego is ABS which is relitively expensive while most competing bricks are made from polystyrene.

The tolerence is the key thing though - we've got a reasonable selection of lego here as well as a few sets of Mega Blocks, Kreo and the odd chinese brand, and there's a _huge_ difference in fit between brands with none coming close to Lego. Try watching your kid build something only to be unable to play with it because it keeps falling apart because the brick fit is sloppy

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can I print open source lego-compat pieces from my 3D printer yet? Basically, my dream at age 6.

<comment><USER33> The secret about Lego is that the parts that don't make it through their quality-control, are all recycled.

You can melt a Lego, use it as a paste, and form something else. If you know the right way to cook it, of course .. and Lego do.

So, there's that.

Looks like the 6-year old you is going to get a robot, finally, to do all the assembly. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't know about the current market for building blocks. But my guess is that Lego is benefiting from monopolist pricing. This is just a guess; I don't really have good knowledge of pricing and products that exist in this category.

If there are less well-known brands, with possibly lower quality, that sell for lower prices, Lego's continued success would argue that these competing products aren't perfect substitutes. In other words, Lego extracts a premium for its unique attributes: Quality, the prestige of the brand name, exclusive licenses for movie-themed sets, or patented brick designs might be some of the fences that could be protecting their market share.

Economics 101: If it's easy to build businesses that replicate your goods and services, then competitors will enter the market and bid each other down until prices reach levels that make profits disappear. (If someone's making a profit, then someone else can and will bid a little lower and gain market share in exchange for a smaller per-unit profit.)

If Lego has a unique success formula that other companies can't duplicate for whatever reason, then they can act as a monopoly and charge a price that maximizes unit profit times volume.

</comment><comment><USER35> Impressive: an article about price without the word "demand" or "supply". Or about the standard for "expensive". This could have been interesting, but didn't quite get there.

As a consolation prize, I offer: [http://gizmodo.com/5019797/everything-you- always-wanted-to-k...](http://gizmodo.com/5019797/everything-you-always- wanted-to-know-about-lego) Also light on analysis, but full of fun trivia.

</comment><comment><USER36> Comparing the deviation of wooden planks to Lego is meaningless. Planks have a heterogeneous internal structure, the structure of each plank is unique - <USER2> can even see the grain in the photograph - and wood is more dimensionally sensitive to changes in environmental conditions than Lego.

</comment><comment><USER37> Would be interresting to check if the cheaper Lego clones (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_clone>) have the same qualities.

</comment><comment><USER38> How many karma points do I need to vote down something?

<comment><USER39> Presently 500, but you can't downvote stories.

<comment><USER22> I have had an account for 4 years and have never managed to hit the magic number. I swear it always goes up just as I get close.

Not that it matters, it just always feels just out of reach.

<comment><USER40> 4 years? I would suggest being more involved in articles...

<comment><USER22> I prefer only to comment when I have something useful to add, which given my non-programmer background isn't always that often.

<comment><USER39> If an article on HN was interesting enough for you to click on it, I would bet that you have a comment that would contribute to the story.

Your non-programmer background is most likely an asset on HN, simply because you can offer a point of view that most others here can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This might sound fairly stupid, but I always thought longevity had something to do with price. It's plastic, and will last many, generations.

This might also be why they keep coming up with new shapes for blocks.

ps.: longevity assumes one doesn't use ones teeth to pry apart blocks.

<comment><USER42> Or that one is a dog owner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Try buying them in Australia where the RRP is almost exactly 2x the US RRP for most models :(

<comment><USER43> The nerd in me read this hours ago. When I got home I had to do some data mining of the Lego site and put the numbers together.

Average Brick Price

        Australia:18.3c
        UK: 14.9c
        USA: 10.8c

So yes, the price is almost double in Australia what it is in the US.

Average Licenced Brick Price

        Australia: 22.0c
        UK: 17.5c
        US: 11.5c

If the link works, you can see all my numbers on my Facebook page: <http://rick.ph/lego_price_analysis>

<comment><USER44> Remember that Australian prices include 10% GST which the US prices won't have. Similarly, the UK will probably have 17.5% (I think) VAT. Still much pricier, but a shade less so.

At least there's the pseudo-excuse for the increased price of actually shipping physical goods, as opposed to the argument for digital downloads which is "Hey, look over there! _scamper_ "

<comment><USER45> Just to note, UK VAT has been at 17.5% previously but is now at 20%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It won't be long till everyone is making their own legos at home with 3d printers.

</comment><comment><USER47> Surely the price of Lego will plummet if 3D printing ever lives up to its promise.

<comment><USER39> How so? I can't imagine printing your own bricks will ever be cheaper that mass production.

<comment><USER48> However, the market for rare pieces will first see counterfeits, and when the counterfeits get good enough, collapse back to the marginal cost of ABS + production.

<comment><USER49> It would collapse back to the cost of 3D printing the parts, which is still significantly more than the cost of molding ABS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Interesting article, but did nothing to explain the cost, it merely assumed that tight measurements means they would be that expensive or why they wouldn't keep getting better and better at making them such that the cost would go down over time.</comment>


A Meeting Prevention and Survival Guide - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XbG9276ox5HylzkXZ-Pspf0hCOT6rnOJ/view?usp=sharing <comment><AUTHOR> This is a long form document I wrote to help engineers and information technology professionals deal with meeting load.

</comment><comment><USER2> Strong plus one. Should be required reading.</comment>


Any startups with "splash pages" announcing a future launch date? - <AUTHOR>

I wanted to know if anybody is willing to share strategies for their "coming soon..." pages for their startups.  I have read Tony Wright's awesome blog entry regarding this subject here
http://blog.rescuetime.com/2007/07/05/web-biz-how-to-have-4000-users-waiting-when-you-launch/
I wanted to know if anybody else here has other strategies that they are willing to share.
Btw, I will also add that this place is awesome.  Thank you all in advance! <comment><USER2> This company doesn't have a product yet: smoothstart.com

You can check out their strategy, which is very similar to tony's for getting users before having a product.

Welcome to News.yc, I think you'll gain alot of valuable insight here.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have gained more within the last 2 days than I could have imagined!! Thanks for the insight.</comment></comment>


Planet Labs Set to Launch Largest Satellite Fleet in History - <AUTHOR> http://www.planet.com/assets/themes/planet/press-releases/2014-03-17-pr.pdf

<comment><USER2> This is good, but I wonder what the plan B is Russian launch windows suddenly become unavailable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, well, I'm sure NASA is already wondering the same thing with the ISS, seeing how Russia is currently the only method they have of bringing people to and from the station. At this point though, at least the science community has been able to keep peace.

<comment><USER2> SpaceX & cohorts look like a good bet right now.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: LogSentinel, blockchain-inspired secure audit trail service - <AUTHOR> https://logsentinel.com/ <comment><USER2> have you all heard of Guardtime?

[https://guardtime.com/cybersecurity- platform](https://guardtime.com/cybersecurity-platform) [https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/834.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/834.pdf)

They seem to be used by the GE predix platform and it looks very similar to the concepts in this thread.

[https://www.predix.io/services/service.html?id=1881](https://www.predix.io/services/service.html?id=1881)

that looks licensed from Ericsson which licensed Guardtime.. haha

they even go so far as to provide a specialized and hardened hardware device to signing operations at scale.

too bad its proprietary!!

[https://guardtime.com/cybersecurity- platform](https://guardtime.com/cybersecurity-platform)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Guaranteed integrity

The log cannot be tampered with without detection

Log integrity has been explored in computer science for years. We employ methods recommended by the crypto community, such as hash chaining and timestamping in order to guarantee the integrity of the logs"

so they just borrowed one aspect of bitcoin's innovation.

<comment><USER4> What else does Bitcoin have that is "innovative"? It's simply document timestamping service, and about the only thing that was new about it was decentralization.

<comment><USER3> yes, irrevocable timestamped database using proof of work algorithms

<comment><USER4> Irrevocability is implied by how cryptographic timestamping works in general, database is an implementation detail, and proof of work is not a benefit, but a (high) price to pay for lack of central coordination. I think you should tone down your admiration for blockchain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://github.com/paragonie/chronicle](https://github.com/paragonie/chronicle)

> Chronicle allows trusted clients to send data to be included in an > immutable, auditable, cryptographic permanent record.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool idea. Perhaps you could even push the logs into a real block chain...I think a few alt coins could facilitate that.

<comment><USER7> The website says that: Not only LogSentinel uses an approach and data structures similar to those of the blockchain, but we are also working on storing data in the Ethereum blockchain

<comment><USER8> How does that realistically work? Imagine hundreds of thousands of servers publishing their logs to a block chain, which has to be synced around the world and stored on the many thousands of participating computers.

Sounds like the very definition of a DDOS, or a new category of virus.

<comment><AUTHOR> It only pushes the top of the chain every X hours, just creating "safe points". Not all data is pushed to the blockchain of course, it will be too expensive to begin with

<comment><USER8> I guess I don't understand. I thought the idea of a distributed ledger was everyone could confirm everything. Maybe my mistake is thinking distributed ledger and blockchain are the same thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is practically the same thing, yes. But the use-case here is different - you don't need everyone to be able to confirm everything. You need to be sure that your data was not tampered with.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What are the ethics of alien contact? - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/what-are-the-ethics-of-alien-contact/

<comment><USER2> Ethics applied to long-dead microorganisms? Study, sure. Record, absolutely. Restore? Wha? Do you restore bacteria on your kitchen counter? You wipe those suckers out with chlorine. Not sure what ethics the OPs talking about.</comment>


Help your Slack team reach herd immunity against the flu, with FluBot - <AUTHOR> www.flubot.io
Hi there, I'm looking for some early feedback on FluBot. If you're interested in trying it out and don't mind that it isn't Slack-approved yet, feel free to install it.
I'm interested in any and all feedback, but am particularly curious what people think about
1) FluBot's pricing, and
2) whether the permissions it requires are acceptable or likely to prevent people from using it? <comment><USER2> Hi Cameron,

I think this is a solid product. However as I business owner, I have a hard time justifying $300 / year, which is $25 per month for a bot that may be substituted with a simple reminder or spreadsheet.

I suggest for you to meet with other business owner to make flubot more irreplacable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your herd immunity will be limited to the three strains included in that year's shot... and the chosen strains haven't been great choices in the past few years.</comment>


Ask HN: How close are we to westworld type humanoid robots? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I see you are asking the important questions.

Fun fact: if you pause west world while they are looking at code it kind of looks like JavaScript, which explains a lot

</comment><comment><USER3> 50/100 years</comment>


Show HN: MacroPy - bringing Macros to Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lihaoyi/macropy

<comment><USER2> This is a very interesting project, even if the Python crowd is unlikely to appreciate macros.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's a pity they won't. Even so, many of the macros (e.g. log/trace) are the sort of thing that will be super useful even if they never get checked into Version Contrl. I know I spend a lot of time peppering `print "A"` `print "B"` statements throughout code when debugging, and being able to automate that would be awesome.</comment></comment>


Chaos Engineering for People Systems – Dave Rensin (Google) - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/chaosconf/keynote-chaos-engineering-for-people-systems <comment><AUTHOR> Dave explains that companies are a system of human microservices. D

ave suggested four experiments to run in a company, to test the company's resiliency. The experiments were to simulate an employee being unexpectedly out of the office, to simulate latency in communications, to simulate people getting information that may be inaccurate, and to simulate an existential emergency for the company.

These ideas were a lot of fun, and it was interesting to see the kinds of experiments we perform on computing systems applied to people.

"Companies are distributed systems. Most of the complexity comes from the humans, not the machines." - Dave Rensin

Dave even encouraged the idea of giving out unreliable and incorrect information to people on your team... " "constructively devious" : )</comment>


Smartphones,tablets causing mental health issues in kids as young as two - <AUTHOR> https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12154228 <comment><USER2> This is an article that refers to a Daily Mail article that refers to a study. The study in question [0].

There's an article in Nature about this topic that was discussed recently on HN. That one found that the association between screen time and negative well- being exists, but is low. [1]

[0] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328371592_Associati...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328371592_Associations_between_screen_time_and_lower_psychological_well- being_among_children_and_adolescents_Evidence_from_a_population-based_study)

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00137-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00137-6)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is watching TV the same as using a smartphone and tablet? Do the effects they note transfer or is there something inherent about a smartphone and/or tablet?

<comment><USER4> This is just an opinion but using a tablet makes my kid more anxious and addicted to constantly being stimulated. with a click, she can keep changing what she is watching. often, she doesnt even watch a video for more than a few seconds without changing it.

With a TV, she usually has to focus on what is in front of her right there.

<comment><USER3> Interesting! What age did you allow your daughter to use a tablet? Would you recommend another age in hindsight?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best way to show off job skills (How to build my resume online?) - <AUTHOR>

Throwaway due to coworkers being on here.
I've been realizing for awhile, that my current job situation is coming to an end, and I'm trying to think of ways to pursue my next opportunity. I've heard a lot about things like GitHub (but have no experience with it), building examples/demos of tech you know (but can't think of what to build). The other downside, is that my resume looks unspectacular on paper (php/mysql developer, no degree, two years programming/one year as a job). But every job I've been at, whether it was a web job or not, I've always exceeded expectations and gone from an entry level type job, to leading a team of people in a fairly short time. I'm a fast learner and strive hard for the company I'm at, so  I guess I'm just trying to think of better ways to show people this.
`
Skill set (in case you have ideas for demos I can build):
PHP (Object oriented, design patterns, PDO library)
--Kohana (Built a few apps in it, but am by no means dependent on it. Frequently read through the source)
MySQL
Javascript (the actual language, not just frameworks)
--jQuery
--Dojo (as well as Dijit widgets and such)
Objective-C (limited, just started learning and building basic apps like calculators and physics games)
Python (even more limited, just enjoy the language and learning it. No web experience with Python)
`
As an example, here's some stuff I did for  weekend projects to help my wife:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMLflmqMBGc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ9fTSLef4M <comment><USER2> Do you have any problems that aren't solved yet? Write yourself something to do that - and if you're worried about your employer/coworkers finding out, do it under a pseudonym, Chrome's Incognito mode (so that you're always aware when you're logged in under that pseudonym), and whois protection on any domains you set up.

If you want to show someone you learn quickly, start a blog - and chronicle your progress. "How I built [your app here] in a weekend - lessons learned, things I didn't like". Write a lot, especially about things you've learned while building all of your cool side projects.

Have a lot of side projects (or just one big one, if you can't think of many). Most of the jobs I've gotten that don't involve an arduous interviewing process have been because I met someone and said "this is [my cool project] - can you help me solve [problem x]?". I know it sounds weird, but asking someone who knows more than you do to help you out pays off - you end up with mentors, or coworkers, or even friends sometimes.

I guess at the core of it, my advice is: work on some side projects, and try to show them to people who you might want to work with (especially when you're applying for work - I can show you a private example, just send me an email).

<comment><AUTHOR> So, would you say that the blogging is more about talking about the process then the end result?

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't say that one or the other is more valuable when it comes to blogging. You want to show process, because that shows that you know your shit - but you also want to show end results, because that shows that you _ship_ your shit (which is almost more important).

Having an active, well-written blog shows that you're passionate about whatever you're blogging about (or at least disciplined enough to write about it frequently), and helps you establish a reputation.

<comment><USER3> Definitely agree with the idea that regularly posting on a blog shows dedication and commitment

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Github is a neat way to host projects. A link to a repository or a hosted application is infinitely more consumable than a video demo. The Github bootcamp has tons of info: <http://help.github.com/>, and would be a great place to start. Don't worry too much about your credentials on paper --- put together code samples that demonstrates your ability to work with the languages and frameworks you mention. There are several startups that would love to hire a motivated, resourceful hacker.

<comment><AUTHOR> For the github route, would you recommend showing new ideas off, or more proof of expertise type things?

<comment><USER5> I think you'd get more cred picking out a semi-popular project(so that your pull request doesn't get lost in the shuffle), and fix bugs and/or implement features. Maybe help with some documentation or translations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Clickable_

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMLflmqMBGc>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ9fTSLef4M></comment>


Bootstrapping my new company - <AUTHOR> http://www.davecheong.com/2008/12/22/bootstrapping-mobiusly/ We have a small and agile team, who can innovate quickly and often. We don't have red-tape to slow us down and we cut through the bureaucracy to get to the underlying problem. We don't have investors, so we can make decisions quickly. We have low overheads, so we can take risks our competitors dare not. <comment><USER2> Gah, I get really annoyed by the "money means that you have to hire lots of people and spend money like a fucking idiot" mentality (popularized by 37Signals). Having money and careful money management are not incompatible (while we're at it, working more than 30 hours a week doesn't mean you spend your time inefficiently, either).

When we raised our Series A, we didn't spontaneously start having long meetings and we didn't start hiring VPs. And we haven't had to appease our investors ONCE (but we have gotten some exceptional-- and optional-- advice from them).

I'd also encourage the author to have a better marketing strategy than "Twitter and blogs". I can't count the number of entrepreneurs (YC companies and others) who realized that this strategy does not work and then started learning about SEO, adwords, and (gasp) sales and marketing. There are plenty of shiny exceptions to this rule, but they are so remarkable exactly because it's so damn rare.

<comment><USER3> It's one thing for you to say you've never had to appease investors "once". It's another for you to imply that this is an irrelevant concern. I have several counter-anecdotes. I imagine I won't need them, though, and that you'll just concede that you have good investors --- for the time being --- and that bumbling or mendacious board members are indeed a real concern.

<comment><USER2> I'm not implying that (or at least, not on purpose). I'm railing against the implication that funded entrepreneurs are constantly appeasing (presumably moronic) investors.

Listen, the money isn't free. It comes with a few protections (for them) and obligations (to them). If you've got good leverage when you set up your terms and go with a good investor, I don't think it has to be that bad. I know plenty of people who like their investors. Many people who take money seek investment for their second effort (even if they're rich and don't need it).

Bumbling board members are a risk in the same way that (as the OP points out) a pile of money creates the danger that you'll hire too fast and build a meeting-heavy company. You need to be smart and disciplined. Desperate (or unlucky) entrepreneurs can end up with crappy investors and undisciplined entrepreneurs can end up with 12 VPs and day long meetings before they even have a product.

Clearly, anecdotes abound and there's no hard data... But I think the only one who was implying that there were any rules was the author.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the follow up. I'll stress again, I'm not implying there are any hard/fast rules as you can see from the comments I've made here. If I have set the wrong impression, my apologies.

We all know here that being an entrepreneur is more like art than science. There is no one true way. Something which worked for someone in one instance may not work for you even if by rationale it makes sense and all the stars are aligned.

<comment><USER3> It's also the case that not wanting to kowtow to investors is a valid reason for bootstrapping. It's why we switched to bootstrapping a few weeks into talking to VC --- the VC pitches were fucking up our product plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It worked for me!

Not having to answer to investors saved a ton of hassle (and having all the equity and control at the end is really spiffy) but (to echo some of the other comments here) there are a few pitfalls:

\- Don't be a tightwad. In my first year, I would avoid spending wherever possible and often made do with free tools rather than spend cash to buy a perfectly good commercial solution. I quickly learned that's almost always stupid: If you can make a problem disappear for good by buying the solution, reach into your wallet and pay the cash.

\- You should be marketing before you've even started development. Marketing isn't just advertising -- it's the social component of design. Where you're 'making something people want', marketing identifies both the 'people' and the 'something' (that is, the market for your product). If you don't have those, you'll end up with a spiffy 'make' that nobody wants.

Erik Sink provides a great summary of the topic under his "Marketing for Geeks" articles (at <http://www.ericsink.com/Marketing_for_Geeks.html> ). I'd call it a 'must read' for any software entrepreneur.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi tom_rath - Thanks for the advice.

This is bang on target for me as I've been a real "tightwad" lately. Instead of focusing on the outcomes, I've been counting the pennies. It's tough when you're leaking your own money and that's before you've even launched anything! I think it is just something I need to adjust to - that in order to make money, one must first spend it.

I've also realised that marketing early is so important. I've been getting more active on Twitter lately and though I have a decent blog (been on Digg front page and Lifehacker), I haven't given it the love it deserve all year. I wish I had ramped these two promotion avenues up 6 months ago. This way I'd have a ready audience on launch day.

I thought I'd echo your reply for the other budding entrepreneurs out there. Don't be afraid to spend money! Start creating your story and marketing your brand early!

<comment><USER5> There should be no such thing as a "launch day". You should start with one user before you wrote a line of code, then write a mockup and show it to the user. Keep adding code, features and users as you go.

Watch this for details: [http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2056...](http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2056#)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I'd like to add though that while there are merits to launching early and often, you only get one shot at delivering the right first impression. This is especially true if you've lined up the "press" to talk about your app, only for it to receive "bad press" because it's not ready or crash under the heavy load.

I think it was Paul Buchheit who said "launch your product if it's better than anything else out there". To me, it means launch when it's ready but not before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations, bootstrapping is both exciting and honorable.

But also remember, some of the best things about bootstrapping are also its biggest challenges. For instance, if you are paying employees in equity instead of salary realize that the long-term benefits of a successful startup may be precluded by more immediate revenue streams.

Additionally, we as bootstrappers tend to be less likely to ask for or buy help when it would truly help our business. We prefer to do things our way but many times we re-invent the wheel in the name of entrepreneurial spirit. Not a bad thing, but worth remembering.

Good luck to you! I've had a great time and learned a ton so far by bootstrapping.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi ardell,

Thanks for the well wishes. :)

I shall remember your advice - I'm sure I'll need them in the years to come! It's pretty exciting and scary at the same time. However, I think that's why so many of us (esp at HN) become Entrepreneurs. The lessons to learn and the fun to be had are truly intoxicating.

Keep the commments coming. Would love to hear from everyone here what your personal experiences have been like so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> First of all congratulations and good luck..

Having read your article and responses here, I feel like this discussion resembles (opengl vs directx) || (c/c++ vs java) || (python vs perl) kind flame wars. And no, there is not a single way for enterpreneurship imho. There are at least two major ways, bootstrapping or having funded. Both have pros and cons. If you are clever and well prepared, you can be successfull either way or unseccessfull whatever you do. There is no recipe, you choose your own way according to your own circumstances and work it out..

good luck again..

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi koraybalci - thanks for commenting!

I agree with you totally and echo your sentiments. There is no one absolute right way. There is a bunch of relative right ways - some more appropriate than others. Given enough vigor, perseverance, sweat, tears, luck and timing, the right team can make most things work.

The thing which quantifies how "successful" they are is the equity they walk away with. It doesn't have to be 100% (because 100% of nothing is worthless), but you sure hope it isn't so diluted to no longer be worthwhile.

I subscribe to delaying external financing as long as possible to build up the business and maximise the mileage of the equity (ie trading 10% when you have nothing costs more than 10% when you have a healthy/profitable business).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Best of luck. Remember, when things get terrifying (and I assure you they will) --- you can always consult! Our consulting practice, which I love being a part of, now funds a full-time product team. I'm on hiatus from consulting for a bit with the Dir/Marketing role. There are ways to make it work, no matter what.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! You're totally right that if all things fail, we can simply go back to what we did before (ie contracting), slow the business down but at least continue trading.

I hope though it doesn't get "terrifying" ... (play scary music). Heh.

<comment><USER5> Remember that consulting is when you get paid by the hour, whereas software is where you get paid long after you have written the code. The former should never be the goal, only the means to reach the latter.

<comment><USER3> Contracting is when you get paid by the hour. Consulting means a lot of different things.

Running a company and building and grooming a team is more than just launching a product and hoping. Products come and go. Protect your company --- even if it means (gasp!) consulting for a bit --- and you'll get as many shots as you want at doing products. Pin your hopes to one longshot product, and you'll end up a wage slave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there somewhere that your company's products, genre, or otherwise is explained?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've setup our website, at <http://mobiusly.com> which briefly describes who we are, what we do, our company credo and commitment to the Company/Customer Pact.

You'd have to wait till Jan 2009 for our product launch. I'll try over the xmas break to prepare a blog entry describing it, but that might depend on how much beer I end up consuming.</comment></comment>


Sydney restaurant replaces menus with iPads  - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/ipad/sydney-restaurant-replaces-menus-with-ipads/story-fn5knrwy-1225874904671

<comment><USER2> While it's fun, and a great way to streamline orders using technology, once the newness factor of the iPad wears off won't this just simply be an impersonal dining experience? Even if the guy that delivers the iPads to the table doubles as a waiter, won't it still be difficult to feel pampered and waited on?

After all, when we dine in expensive restaurants, we expect a certain experience, quality and selection of food, but above all a knowlegeable guide who tell us about everything about the food and wine (highly subjective). When we then need to interface with iPads to learn about the menu and place orders, we lose that human interaction that makes visiting places so much fun (for me anyway).

On the flip side, you can place a drink order without needing to wait and flag down your order, and perhaps get your food faster... assuming of course that 15 tables didn't all submit their orders at once.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a restaurant in London that has interactive tables - change your table cloth design, interact with the menu, order your food.

What's the food like? Don't know - the restaurant is more famous for its tables than its food.

To answer your question... yes, to see what interactive menus are like, but not for the food (sorry chef!).

<comment><AUTHOR> yes u r absolutely rite...and may be that is way they use ipad to increase there clients .. :P</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recommendations of best resource to learn Linux - Debian dist. - <AUTHOR>

Since the variety of opinions here is so large, I'd like to ask the community for their opinion on the best resource/guide/reference for learning general topics within the Debian Linux distribution.
I have no specific requests of knowledge such as server, security or media, but just an overall "broad topic" resource to learn commands, OS architecture and configuration.
What resources did you use to gain the knowledge you have? For me, I usually refer to forums, articles or directly to the Ubuntu help site for example.  Is there a better resource for general knowledge than the way I am going about learning now? Do you recommend a book or another resource other than first hand trial and error? <comment><USER2> To _really_ learn about the OS architecture, set aside a partition on your hard drive, and use debootstrap (within a chroot environment) to build a new OS from scratch.

Build up, from kernel to init and the barest of coreutils (busybox is an excellent substitute, with everything you need already built-in). Boot up from this partition, check the console messages, and keep going until you can get to the login prompt without any errors. You'll soon find out how the systems hangs together.

(Of course, there's also Gentoo and Linux-From-Scratch, but you specifically asked about Debian. Gentoo is far better suited to this, but also takes far longer...)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions. I looked at LFS and Gentoo as alternatives and they seem like viable options as well. I'll be giving it a try.</comment></comment>


There's somebody missing from the Hacker News leader list - <AUTHOR>

There's somebody missing from this list: http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
Who? http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg
That's right, according to his karma score PG should be number one, ranking about 2000 points above the current number one. Is there a particular reason for this other than to not seem biased? <comment><USER2> Honestly, I'm amazed that anyone can keep up with Nickb. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> No, I'm pretty sure it's in order to not seem biased.</comment>


Traffic Stats from Obama's IAmA - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/7Ndcn.png

<comment><USER2> As a Brit, I don't have a political axe to grind in the US, so the democracy- loving part of me can go wild over this - nearly a million extra citizens (many US) tuned in to _read_ a half dozen comments from a political candidate.

Yes, read!

that's fantastic news - we always worry about the degeneration of politics into sound bites and mud slinging but I count a million more engaged people, reading and presumably considering comments - which were, whether you are pro or anti Obama, lucid, direct and as far as any politician will be, forthright.

This democracy thing might just make it.

ps kudos to the guy casually mentioning his drug habit to the POTUS.</comment>


Ask YC: What do you think of my new search engine? - <AUTHOR> http://duckduckgo.com/ <comment><USER2> Pretty impressive results for the terms I searched for. Unfortunately, the design made me temporarily go blind.

In all seriousness, the name is pretty horrible and I "feel" as if I am using a website, not a tool. Google feels like a tool - I get in an out quickly, it doesn't invade my flow. Your application (and others, like Mahalo) are so visually invasive I would never use them, no matter the results that we returned.

Not really a design thing - although it stems from the design - more like a workflow thing... I dunno, hard to describe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I would very much like it to be a "tool" as you describe. I've gone through many design iterations, and have tried to keep the "clutter" down to a minimum.

I would be interested to know what specific design elements you think are contributing to this problem. I know you said it isn't really a design problem, but there has to be more to say about it :) Colors? The results on the right?

<comment><USER3> For me, the highlight-and-underline-on-hover effect is very distracting. It would be nice if the search entry field had a stronger visual separation from the search results. There also needs to be a stronger visual separation between each search result. This might just be that I'm so heavily conditioned by Google, but I'm thrown off by the results being so far from the left edge of the screen. Also, the red, it's a little harsh, and the font size, it's a little big.

Otherwise, though, just playing around, this seems like a really nice search engine, the results seem great. If I didn't think it had a lot of promise, I wouldn't have posted a critique.

<comment><USER4> Regarding the "highlight-and-underline-on-hover effect", I liked that. It is really nice that the whole text area works as a link, clicking on a hit is easier. And the highlight, well, highlights that.

Works for me.

<comment><USER5> Works for me too. But I would use a softer highlight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Your engine actually seems superior to Google in some ways, which is fantastic. I've always wondered if a single person could do something technologically novel in search; you seem to have done so. I wouldn't be surprised if your engine opens the doors to real, widespread innovation in search.

Your UI isn't great, though. Some unordered points:

• Your name is bad.

• Your text is too big.

• The whole thing feels too unprofessional.

• You need to show more search results by default. Four results feels claustrophobic. People won't get overwhelmed, they've been living with long results lists for ten years.

• You need to make the traditional ordered list of results distinct from the other pieces of information that your search engine thinks are relevant. Right now it can be hard to distinguish results from extras, and I think that will be an impediment to getting users (if getting users is in fact your goal). In particular, don't put the topic-filtering questions above the results — put them to the side.

• Don't highlight the result that I'm mousing over.

• Get rid of the little arrows next to links.

Actually, I'd suggest going to Google, writing down every difference between their UI and yours, and asking yourself why you did it differently. I don't think the Google UI is necessarily the ultimate way to present search results, but I don't think you've added much, either, and theirs is pretty damn good.

Technology: right now your search engine doesn't seem to understand that recent events are more important, typically, than past ones; a search for "explanation of the economic crisis" didn't produce anything in the top four results (although the fifth one, ironically, was relevant). Google gave me what I was looking for (although it's notable that if I _hadn't_ been looking for stuff about the current crisis, your engine would have been better).

<comment><USER7> The name is good. Memorable.

The text is exactly right for a different way of looking at search results - like a little generated topical page rather than like a list of links.

Unprofessional is good! Professional = boring. Altavista was "professional".

Four _good_ results is enough.

You aren't getting the whole "looks like a topical page" thing. The mixed sources of results are evidently nondistinct for a reason!

Yeah, the highlight is annoying. Breaks the unified flow.

Arrows are hints evidently copied from Wikipedia. It goes with the design and it's a visual hint they link off-site. Makes sense to me! Moreover, it made such immediate visual sense i didn't even see them as distinct elements until you described them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm actually pretty impressed. Searched for "Epigram" first and it came up with the programming language as the first result, along with Conor's homepage. Searched for "Arya Stark" and it came up with the Westeros fan wiki and Wikipedia entry. Searched for Hacker News, and the site was the first hit. Searched for my name (a tough one, since lots of people share it), and came up with my FriendFeed page, Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours, and a support question I left on the webfaction forum.

Couple comments:

What's with the Wink and PeopleFinder links? Partnerships? They're almost never what I want, and putting them up top is distracting.

The AJAX-load-more-results-on-scroll feature is cool, but I found it a little jerky and distracting. This could be because just hold down the down arrow, so I go _really_ fast and often hit the end of the page while it's loading. Any way to make the transition a little smoother, maybe by preloading results and only displaying them as you scroll, maybe by a fade or slide transition?

</comment><comment><USER9> The name consists of three stressed syllables, which is hard to say fluidly. You can't turn it into a verb, like "google". This may cause problems with marketability. I am being totally serious.

<comment><USER10> "just duck duck it" sounds marketable to me. similar to "just google it"

<comment><USER11> Indeed. The "Go" may be the oddball...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really need to see the URLs for hits.

<comment><USER13> So _that's_ what was missing! I knew something was disrupting my normal flow of analyzing search results... and now that you mention it I realize I usually look at the URL's, sometimes even before the article title.

<comment><USER14> If you click "more links" below the first few main links you'll see search results with URLS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> @epi0Bauqu I really like it. I'm most impressed with the result set. You aren't giving me annoying messages like "1 billion matches found", just a handful that are pretty accurate. At first glance, most people will say off- the-cuff that this is bad, you're limiting the results. However, a user doesn't need millions of results. Just the ones that work.

It definitely passed my vanity test. I searched on several things I associate with myself and the results were all accurate. Definitely some things left out, but everything shown was good.

Some of the comments others have made about the visual design are half- correct. The helvetica font hurts readability. I'm on a Mac and Windows XP machines side-by-side and its almost blurry. You can't beat Verdana or Arial for readability. The color scheme is a little odd, mainly for the logo. If you get successful, invest in having a logo professionally designed, but that shouldn't be a focus now.

Keep the ajaxy stuff. Loved it. The "More Topics" bit is perfect.I don't have to click through page after page of pagination to scroll results like on Google. You show me a small set of relevant matches, then if I want more I just click that and there's some more. Very easy to use.

Overall I think you're off to a great start.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was very impressed with the results I got for some queries. The images were spot on. The first results were indeed official sites. I liked the fact that I see web results, images, news in one page.

Cons (sorry!): 1\. I disliked the name 2\. The design was bad. Huge textbox, ugly duck, everything seems scattered around 3\. I think I liked the ajaxy interface and the more links, however I would have liked more results in every category (images, news etc) before I had to press "more"

Overall excellent work.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, I would really appreciate any feedback. Here is some more info: <http://duckduckgo.com/about.html>

<comment><USER17> Good job. You're finding quality stuff in the field I care about, and ignoring some irrelevant junk. Keep it up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Impressed so far, but not impressed with the [load more results]->web2.0 spinner I'd rather just have normal pagination there.

Seems to give some good results back in a useful way.

<comment><USER19> I agree, pagination would be much better because then I wouldn't have to scroll to see all of the new results.

<comment><USER20> I like the ajax loading. Internet marketing types will like the ability to see the first X pages all on one page without having to set some parameter (as in google)

<comment><USER21> Yes, the ajax loading is much less intrusive than loading a new page. It makes it far easier to search through the existing results. It needs one or two UI changes:

1) When you click 'more results' add a divider before the first new result to make it clear which new results just appeared. In most cases the first new link will already be highlighted since the mouse will be hovering overy it but any antsy mouser will not have this benefit.

Also, I notice that I have the tendency (and need) to move the mouse off the first new link so I can read it. This is very inefficient so it would best to append the new results one line below the 'more links' link.

2) Consider adding an auto-scroll to put the first new result at the top or middle of the page to reduce scrolling. This may be disruptive, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, I really like the results, especially the 'see also' section.

(Give a search for "pearl" a go for a good example.)

More focused searches also worked well ("javascript array split" got me the result I wanted).

I also liked the fall back to google domain specific search for "javascript aray split w3schools" although I'm not sure I understand exactly what made it do that.

The result layout needs some work, mostly to make long results easier to scan, but I will probably carry on using this provided I can remember the URL.

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks like one of those fake copycat google co-op search engines you see spammed all over ebay for sale at first.

pretty interesting functionality - i like how vague searches ask for categorization. i searched a band name and got specific info and links.

but most searches produce way too little broad results.

interesting but needs more work i'd say.

<comment><USER24> Ack. Good results but not yet so impressive that it's a Google killer. I gave it a quick spin and it gave better results than most prospective giant killers, but still not notably better than the giant itself.

Unlike most, I'd be prepared to give it another go at some future date though - so this definitely has some potential. I hope the developer keeps on working on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm guessing you are using wikipedia to vet the query and determine the type of things to display, and then have some mappings from that into other data sets.

I'm sure there's more to it than that, but very clever.

The fact that everyone is commenting on the design is a good sign, that stuff is easy to change.

</comment><comment><USER26> What motivated you to create this search engine? Google/other search engines did not come up with _relevant_ results?

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite simply, I looked at the current state of search and saw a path through which I could add something useful to the space.

There are all sorts of issues with current search, most of which have been discussed on this forum elsewhere. Relevancy is certainly one of them, but there are others too, e.g. spam, clutter, discovery, and UI.

<comment><USER27> I did something similar with Yahoo! BOSS APIs but I used terminal-liked console as the UI. Sometimes, I really think that it will be more useful for hackers to use a Terminal-liked search engine - <http://geeky.siong1987.com>. It is a bit slow because the whole application is not well-architectured. I sacrificed too much speed power for the developer feature.

About your application, I think the name of the search engine is really awkward. And, the logo is really too colorful. It seems like a side-project more than a serious project. Anyway, it displayed the results that I expected.

<comment><USER28> Reminds me of Google's command line interface - <http://goosh.org>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's annoying. My train of thought when I got there: _Good, clean simple interface. Funny name._ This text box is huge. I don't know if that's good or bad _Everythings scrunched up at the top. I have plenty of vertical room, use it._ I'll search for something... alright why is there a loading bar for a search engine? _This is frusturating having to wait for my results_ What? Only 4? _This 'load more results' thing is fairly annoying, just load them for me_ I'll try something else... say 'blue wallpaper' *Oh how handy, I'm at Google now.

</comment><comment><USER30> Impressive. I "Ducked" one of my new favorite musicians and found a band he was in that I'd never heard of. Top entry was a Wikipedia blurb. I like it.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is epic. Nice job.

Name suggestion - start the name with "go", something like "GoDuckDuck" or "GoodSearch" or something much better than that. That way, as people start typing "google", your site shows up in the autocomplete list in the browser and would remind people about your site at the moment they are looking to search for something.

</comment><comment><USER32> Kudos to you - I think you've done a fantastic job.

Plus it takes balls to venture into a space that's dominated by the mighty Google :-)

FEEDBACK:

* The name sucks - especially the "go" at the end. "Duck duck" I can live with. "Duck duck go" somehow doesn't feel right.

* Fonts/Colors etc - I really wouldn't worry about it. People get used to almost anything once they get good enough results. The hue and cry at reddit when the new version came out is proof enough of that. A few months on everyone has forgotten completely what the old version looked like and it hasn't hurt them any.

Heck, when Google came out their interface wasn't anything to sing and dance about. But now everyone thinks it the bee's knees and the cat's whiskers :-D. Just get good results and worry about the font/logo/colors some other day.

* For a few searches, the results were impressive and I liked the flow (I searched for "Haskell" and "Dragonfly" (the movie) plus my name etc).

I was really getting into it when my search for "Indian Recipes" returned recipes from Karnataka. The "more links" didn't seem to return very good results either. I had to go back to Google (which returned really good results).

* URL's of results - This is another big one. The way the URL's are currently returned is really bad - it looks like part of the text and is difficult to quickly scan for. It's really important for most users to be able to quickly scan the urls of the results. In your current interface we have to depend on the title, which is not half as useful.

Overall - it's a great job! I'm VERY impressed.

All the best!

</comment><comment><USER33> Searched for: "best techno music". I was ready for more results on the initial page and tried to scroll down to them. All I got to see was a screen of whitespace. I don't think it would hurt to increase the number of results that you show. Also, I didn't bother to hit the more links button; I guess I've been trained by existing search engines not to do that, and I expect that other people are the same.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow, the quality of your search results is really impressive -- I went in expecting another Cuil, but now I intend to give it a spin as my default engine in Firefox.

I was wondering... to the extent that Duck Duck Go takes its cues from "human powered" sites e.g. Wikipedia, are you using a pre-defined list of reliable user-generated sites out there, or is your search engine somehow identifying these algorithmically?

</comment><comment><USER35> The organization by relevance is interesting, but through some test searches I did, the more obscure the search, the less this helps. Basically, for something with a Wikipedia/Facebook/Myspace/official site it looks nice. However, for something less known or employing more vague terms, the results page look like I mistyped a url and ended up on a page parked for typosquatting.

</comment><comment><USER36> Bug: When searching for articles that redirect to a different article on Wikipedia, the results for the redirected article are displayed.

My search: "NeoSmart Technologies" On Wikipedia this redirects to our main product, "EasyBCD," which is what DuckDuck returned...

But really, really nice ideas going on there, it's very information-centric verses link-centric, sort of like a powerset that works.

</comment><comment><USER37> I searched for poop (didnt have anything meaningful to look for), and got: Aspect-oriented programming, "Post Object-Oriented Programming"

made me laugh.

</comment><comment><USER38> I like the fact that results are returned by relevance and categorization. However, the lack of visual cues between categories is rather harsh to follow. I think if you were to have a sightly grey background for each category with whitespace between, things would be much easier to look at and comprehend. Otherwise, the results were, for the most part, great.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think you should state more explicitly that results are gouped and contain links to specialiced searches. When I searched for Python i.e. I had no idea that clicking on "Python (genus), a group of snakes" would generate more results - I thought it would bring me directly to wikipedia.

Now that I know it I see that you ask me to choose a topic, but I totally didn't see it the first time. Perhaps you could do s.th to the topic links to make it more clear for first time users that they bring you so to a search for that topic.

some other thoughts:

-Yes the font is too big first, but after using it a bit I actually like it..

-Yes the name is awful first but "duck duck it" is great and I just added it to my firefox searches :)

Congratulations! You took a freakin duck and did the unimaginable and beat google with it!

</comment><comment><USER40> I agree with what several others have said: I don't like the huge text in the search box, and I need to see more results on a page.

Search results were relevant when I tried "how to make a damascus blade". When I tried to find a story I've been looking for (that I haven't been able to find in other search engines either), I wasn't successful, although I didn't try for very long. Things I'd like to be able to search for: it was linked to from a forum but was not, itself on a forum; near the beginning the main character was hit by a truck; he woke up and found that his life had been a simulation.

So if your search engine would let me find that, I'd be sold. As a general purpose search engine, it looks promising but I'll stick to Google for now.

</comment><comment><USER41> I like the concept of it but the layout of the results page is...well... not so good. I, like others, was impressed by the results I got for my search, but it was hard to tell what I was looking at for a minute. I didn't instantly know that what I was looking at was in a certain category and so on and so forth. It looked more like a bunch of random text about X topic thrown up on the page in an unstructured manner with hyperlinks to who knows where. I think with a little bit of work on structuring the results that it will be a pretty decent system. Not that I see it rocking the foundation of Google anytime soon, but that doesn't mean Microsoft ;-) they are only 6% after all.

</comment><comment><USER42> That's quacktastic.

<comment><USER43> You are funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I tried some stuff and the results were good.

Is this a serious attempt to beat google? Do you index the whole web? What technique do you use?

Or is it a proof of concept for some idea of how to improve search?

Do you have funding?

Have you built it from scratch or are you building on top of other stuff?

</comment><comment><USER43> Simply amazing. Really. This is so much better than Cuil or a lot of the other BS search engines out there.

The presentation isn't great. So with some improvements in the design and a marketing machine, this could be big.

</comment><comment><USER45> Pretty impressive. I did a few searches (including my name, and the name of a person I knew about a decade ago, Ruby etc) and am definitely impressed with the resultset.

I do agree with the others that the UI could be done a little better, including the colors (a little too vibrant for me) and the name. I don't really care about the home page, since I dont remember the last time I went to Google's homepage.

Once I like a search engine that consistently gives me good results, using FF's Keyword search is the way to go.

All in all, great work, and I certainly wish you luck.

</comment><comment><USER46> Not bad at all. I guess you're scraping Wikipedia for a lot of the disambiguation descriptions.

The hits in a disambiguated topic after the first page need some work. Many in the wrong topics. But still, not bad for a beginning.

I suggest duckduck.com instead of duckduckgo.com.

The flashy logo page might be the _only_ reason some people use it. They'll like the fact that they can show off that they have found a different tool. But that's just a small set of certain types of people. Me, I'd prefer a simple tool that takes up less space and is less flashy.

</comment><comment><USER47> Cool (i like the fact that when i searched for duckduckgo the first result was "awesome search engine"). I also searched for google (and it gave me cool results such as it's use as a verb). It worked for technical questions such as NullPointerException and sigsegv so overall it's very cool.Congrats! [Perhaps building an add-on for word and office suites would be great for this type of search engine, i would like it(because of things like what i got out of the _google_ query]

</comment><comment><USER48> You score major points with me just for having a duck in the logo.

Also, my search results were quite relevant. I'd reduce the font size a bit, and maybe lose the styling on the search button.

Good for a first try.

</comment><comment><USER49> Pretty impressive search results.I think you should change work more on the domain name and user interface.I think it can be a very useful tool for finding relevant information.

</comment><comment><USER50> My random query for "tears of a clown" worked well. How tied is this to the internet? There might be a market in the Enterprise search world if you are managing the index.

</comment><comment><USER51> I liked it, I think it has very impressive functionality; I think you won't have a problem selling it to some company. The search market is huge and doesn't end at Google.

</comment><comment><USER52> Ummm...at first I thought it was a front using something like Yahoo! BOSS as a back end - until I saw you had a bot.

Would love to know more, like if you do crawl everything yourself... :)

</comment><comment><USER53> Very nice! I like your search results and the image display. However, like other posters here, I think that the text is a bit big and the name could use some work. The one thing I think that you're missing in the UI is some familiarity to ground new users - and most importantly a link to see more links that consistently appears on the first screen without needing to scroll. URLs appearing on all links would be better as well.

Just my 2 cents. Keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER54> Nice start. It looks like a mobile phone interface to me, blown up to desktop size. Maybe a phone-centric focus would be a useful direction?

</comment><comment><USER55> very impressed, tried a variety of search terms and got not only what I was expecting but also other hits that were keyword equivalent. ok fair enough it's a little less responsive than google ;o) but I'm guessing you don't have a spare $50 billion to play with! (jk - the speed is fine btw). The thing that needs most attention (imho) is the design, whilst there are good things (the layout of the search results, especially of 'wide' keywords like 'ruby' or 'augustus') I'm less of a fan of the use of red - in design terms red is an emotive, passionate colour, I would recommend perhaps a blue which usually represents safety, security and trust (look at bank colour schemes). You might alos consider green or grey. The red sets me on edge. Love the use of larger fonts sizes, excellent - should be popular with the age > 25 crowd.

All in all very impressed, I wish you the very best of luck and have bookmarked and will continue to use. (Remember to keep Hacker News updated with any new developments!).

</comment><comment><USER56> I know some people like the duck name. I have the domain "askShare.com" that might work better for you. The top part, ask could be the search input and make a bottom part for share, then have a scrolling list of things people are sharing (feeds, etc). I noticed you have a couple of applications based upon sharing (photos, groups) so you are into sharing.

</comment><comment><USER57> I like it. Sure the design can use some work but the results are pretty impressive and it's quick. I would follow some of the suggestions to not use AJAX for the loading since it's a bit unintuitive. I would also post the URL to the found result.

I'm also a big fan of commands on the line: "define word" should define it, and so forth. That can potentially be a next step.

</comment><comment><USER58> I really like the results. I'd like to invest :)

</comment><comment><USER59> awesome work! would you mind telling us how it works? :)

I got decent results, but for a small number of search terms:

When I searched for: "com surrogate encountered a problem" I got decent results, but when I searched for "com surrogate encountered a problem norton ghost" the results were off completely.

I then tried the second search query with google and got precise results.

</comment><comment><USER60> Good results, could probably do with a few more results per page. You're doing tons better than cuil :) but so far there is nothing that Google does not already do. Which is, I suppose, the point. Why use your search engine and not Google?

We switched to Google from Yahoo, Alta Vista and the rest because Google was better. What do you have?

</comment><comment><USER61> Highly relevant results for the band I entered, but not enough to make me want to switch from Google.

It's not that you aren't good, it's just that you aren't _great_ \- there's nothing here that would make me want to purposefully break a habit formed over the past seven odd years. Namely, using Google.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if search has become a commodity, and the reason why Google dominates isn't because of its search engine, it's because of its brand name. Search actually seems a lot like the food industry in that you can't really judge the quality of the product beyond a certain level, yet you care deeply about that quality. Those industries usually tend to become branding plays, not technology plays.

<comment><USER62> Google's brand does influence its search results. I recall the MSN Live team put the Google logo above their results and people automatically perceived them as more relevant even though the results had not changed.

After much Googling the closest I could come to finding the article was here (at the bottom): <http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3601751>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Very impressive with the relevancy of the results!

Here's one not-so-nice search, however:

<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=jace>

See other searches to get an idea of what you're missing:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=jace>

</comment><comment><USER64> Not bad actually, if you're not just scraping results from other engines (or even if you are), you should keep working on this. When I did searches, I actually found links I was looking for in the first few results. Name is strange but it could grow on me.

duck duck go it!

</comment><comment><USER65> Shouldnt it be Duck Duck Goose?

</comment><comment><USER66> I like it, but if I think for the reasons why I like it, it is probably because this site looks more like an encyclopedia than an actual search engine. It basically brings up the summary of the respective wiki page.

</comment><comment><USER67> Very nice--fewer links, but they were all of extremely high quality. Suggestion: Throw this up on 99designs and get some better graphics. The current ones seem amateurish, and not in that good Google kinda way.

</comment><comment><USER68> A vanity search turns up nothing, therefore my ego won't let me use your search engine. ;)

In all seriousness, I like the way you're going, but I didn't like the way the results are laid out - it just looked sloppy to me.

<comment><USER69> I definitely agree that the results should be more structured. Also the page should be aligned left because that's what people are used to. Maybe something like this: <http://pixtures.s3.amazonaws.com/duck.jpg>

The search button is way too big. The text is too big. Shrink everything and fit more information on one page.

Maybe include some "Web links" on every page. Then right align the "More topics" and "More Web links" to the right so people know they're not ordinary links, but instead offer additional functionality.

Overall, I really like it. It looks like you lift a lot of information and links from wikipedia. I think this is a great idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Works great! It's very impressive that a startup can make a search engine.

<comment><USER16> The really impressive thing is that this is the work of a _1 person_ startup

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I like how it breaks down into categories, eg. 'django' gives the person, web (py framework), etc, but don't like the large fonts, need to scroll down quite a bit to see all results.

</comment><comment><USER72> Good work! Impressive results and good speed. Congrates...

I don't like the name that much. Your project is promising, I suggest to invest into better name while you are not that well know.

Anyway, you are great.

</comment><comment><USER73> you're not catastrophically bad or slow, unlike some others that have shown up lately. good work on avoiding negative points right off the bat.

if the first page doesn't have what i want, i find myself confused as to what my next course of action should be.

my first reaction to all the ajax stuff is "hey, thats kind of cool" my second reaction is "my expections about what should happen when i move my mouse (mostly nothing) are being violated! help!"

in summary: i think you need to do some real usability studies.

</comment><comment><USER74> Your logo and red and yellow colour scheme make me think of fast food.

You should add Javascript to make my browser display the URL in the status bar when my mouse hovers over a result.

</comment><comment><USER75> Ok for some reason this search is not returning the appropriate results

<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck+duck+go>

Good Job anyways!

</comment><comment><USER76> Whoa, I really liked the search results. The name on the other hand could use some work. I think it kinda undermines the good work you obviously did.

</comment><comment><USER77> for me, it was enticing enough to give it a try.

okay, Here's the first thing I tried, because I was actually looking for it:

try to search for: "mashable wordpress theme" ... FAIL! you took me to search the mashable site for "wordpress theme" tags, which returned nothing.

however, when I searched "wordpress theme" ... SUCCESS, kinda. What I was looking for displayed on the right, in recent news.

It's okay. I think something definitely needs to be improved here.

Hope that helps.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER44> I actually used it a few times when Google didn't deliver and ddg delivered better even if not pefect, impressive.

But I am not a fan of the design or the name.

</comment><comment><USER78> Why "Try duck duck Google".

I found that confusing. Just say Google. Also you could use Yahoo BOSS to pull in results when you dont have any (if thats allowed)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am using Yahoo BOSS as fallback. That message comes up when Yahoo BOSS times out (i.e. double fallback), which unfortunately happens more than it should.

Duck Duck Google is a remnant of earlier functionality that is currently not live. You're right, Google' is simpler than 'Duck Duck Google'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> can you define use cases more clearly? I think the problem with up and coming search engines is that they are always generic, coming up hard against google, which works well for 80% of the cases (simple search), but sucks for 20% (when you do not really know what you are looking for).

do email me at email@example.com if you are interested in more thoughts on how use cases can be more clear!

</comment><comment><USER80> I LOVE the keyboard shortcuts. In fact, just because of that (and good results) I might switch to using this as my default search engine.

<comment><USER81> If you're using firefox, every website has keyboard shortcuts. Just press ' (quote) and start typing a unique word from a link you see. When the link you want is selected, press enter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> In addition to working well and presenting results well, the _name_ is _inspired!_ Please don't let anyone here convince you otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER83> It produced pretty nice results for "linux" but was less impressive when I wanted to learn about the "hmmmv" acronym.

</comment><comment><USER84> Incredibly effective and accurate, i can not believe it is all done by one person. It even understands chinese.

</comment><comment><USER85> Wow this is great..its the only search engine that actually returns my website when I type in my name (sam liu)

</comment><comment><USER86> Wonderful, Just wonderful.

On the other hand, Im having the same thoughts as trominos(Scroll down). See what he said about it.

</comment><comment><USER87> aren't these google results spit out here (for obscure searches)..

I don't see any attribution..? (e.g. 'swarmware')

at <http://www.seekng.com> (and my others) I allow explicit selection, and model the SearchProvider (connecting to search results memes in a graph)

<comment><USER87> I see, Yahoo, not google (per links)

I'm just curious myself about the legalities

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> It is very useful for research-type queries. I like it better than hakia. Thanks very much for this.

</comment><comment><USER89> pretty cool, seems to use wikipedia to seem semantic... which works most of the time. I just don't see how its possible to break into google's market share or for that sake, Yahoo's or MSN's ...

\- I think companies like octopart, that are doing segmented search have a better chance.

</comment><comment><USER90> Pretty good results, but some of them seem to be at least a few weeks out of date.

</comment><comment><USER91> Pretty good results; I love the minimal interface (although it is a bit childish

</comment><comment><USER92> Pre-load your images - it's weird how the layout changes as they load.

</comment><comment><USER93> Duck Duck Go to cuill, is like Usane Bolt to me over a 100mts.

</comment><comment><USER94> Don't forget the very useful "search within results" function.

</comment><comment><USER95> Uhm, wow holy shit. The results feel better than Google.

</comment><comment><USER96> You will need a better design and a hell of PR

</comment><comment><USER97> Congratulations.

The hits are dead on for obscure subjects.

</comment><comment><USER98> I liked, pretty impressive. Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER92> Keyboard shortcuts would help a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are keyboard shortcuts!

<comment><USER92> Oooh, thank you! Making them more obvious (an arrow like GMail seems to be the standard now) would have helped, but maybe I'm just stupid :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Props for putting this together.

</comment><comment><USER100> I love the name it's so cute!

</comment><comment><USER101> Looks good. Keep it up.

</comment><comment><USER102> This looks like BOSS.

</comment><comment><USER103> Slow, but seems way ahead than other sites claiming to "google killers".

Nice work

</comment><comment><USER104> Nice.

</comment><comment><USER105> better than cuil. really

</comment><comment><USER106> well its no cuil...

</comment><comment><USER107> Are you scraping wikipedia as a "top priority" node set in your search algorithm? Actually not a bad idea. I typed "Alyssa Milano" in there, since I am a HUGE 'Charmed' fan - anyway - that returned me a wiki article, as well as images, and facebook links, basically everything I really would need to know if I were writing a paper on her, including publicity images and so forth, all right there in one result page.Maybe it is just me, but I thought the colour scheme was kind of fun - different anyway - something for a change - I can definitely see people using this at least as a supplement to google! Good work! :-)

</comment><comment><USER108> I search for something and get a wikipedia page, a website for a book and the FDA's website above the results which actually interest me. Infact, they are in a larger font than the rest.

Are these sponsored links or something? I'm not sure I dig it.

</comment><comment><USER109> it redirects me to pricegrabber? a serious general search engine would never do that! you lost me...</comment>