Show HN: How Obama's budget proposal affects you (Weekend Hack) - <AUTHOR> http://www.howmuchmorewillmytaxesbe.com/ <comment><USER2> My concern here is that, although you are relating simple facts, you are also making a political statement. To see what I mean, let's say I wrote an app "See how many dollars of debt your elected representative approved" Even though it may all be based on publicly-available data, there would instantly be a conversation around "was this a vote for debt or was the expense offset" and "was it a one-time vote or was it an entitlement" or "Did he vote against it before he voted for it" and so on. That's because you can take the same data and present it in vastly different contexts. Heck, that's what politics is all about. I know you mean well and are not trying to spin me. It's just that "how Obama's budget will affect you" can be done a lot of different ways, all with different impacts on the user.

There's also an issue of timeliness -- things are moving faster on the ground, and all of your hard work could be for nothing just in a few day's time.

Happy to upvote you, though! Hope you got some good experience from it. But I also hope this doesn't start a trend of quick hacks that are really more political commentary than useful. Heck, I already knew that the rates would change and that "millionaires and billionaires" now officially starts at 200K per year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the upvote!

I agree with you. There's a bit of bias in all of this, and no matter how objective I try to be (or don't), I'm inherently making a political statement. Most political issues are way too complex to summarize with a website that spits out a binary answer in a giant font. It's dangerous to even try.

On the other hand, I think it's a travesty that our system is so opaque to its own constituents. I'm upset at how difficult it was for me to find a simple datapoint about a widely discussed and hot political issue - namely, what happens to my taxes? I'm still not 100% sure I've got the datapoint correct, either.

This is tricky: We lack information. Information isn't digestible by most folks unless it's in easily consumable soundbites and datapoints. But incomplete information, or information without context, might be just as dangerous as no information at all. So where do we start?

I have no idea, but it's been fun seeing some strangers tweet my site around.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was wading through opaque news and wikipedia articles to figure out how Obama's budget proposal would affect me, and I decided to make a Saturday afternoon public service project out of my findings. A nice change of pace from working on <http://flock.fm>. :-)

Any feedback (UI, technical, tax code clarification, etc.) would be appreciated, although this was a rushed little project.

Disclaimer: This is my best interpretation of tax code...my numbers could be wrong!

<comment><USER3> Looks cool, especially for a weekend hack. The design is very well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should support commas, decimals, and dollar signs in the taxable income allowed. Keeping statistics for how many people using the tool would actually be affected might also be a useful exercise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

I'm updating the site right now to strip dollar signs out of the input. Commas and periods are a bit trickier, and something I hesitated about for a long time. Given that I was trying to get this done in just a few hours, I got lazy and decided to simply throw an alert message if someone uses punctuation. I'm about to update the alert message to make it a bit clearer, since this might be a more common issue than I anticipated.

To keep development fast/simple, I decided against any backend recording of people's data. However, Google Analytics will probably be able to give some high-level statistics...I'll be sure to share the info if it's interesting!

<comment><USER5> Data about the inputs will be worthless. I went once saying that I did not make more than $200k last year, and then got curious and did it again, several more times with different numbers. I can't say everyone will be as curious as I was about the numbers, but I would imagine that several people will want to see what someone who made $1,000,000 would have to pay extra in taxes.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're totally right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool. But I can't use the website on a laptop with a 1366x768 screen: the buttons aren't visible. I can't scroll to them. (If I push F11 I can see them.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Updated the site with a few tweaks...better?

<comment><USER7> Still doesn't work for my netbook since your tweak. 8.9inch screen - 1024 x 600 - doubt many use a laptop this small!

Cheers, nice site, great idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> I lied...I didn't actually fix the problem, because I didn't upload the correct version of the file, because I'm not using proper version control. Color me embarrassed.

Is it better now?

<comment><USER7> Perfect, thanks ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> call me a libertarian but a budget that refuses to address the serious issues that drive spending (entitlements, defense etc) might not affect my direct tax liability, but it still supports a system that devalues the money the government does not take from me every 2 weeks.

<comment><USER9> Problem isn't what gov spends its money on, but how it spends its money: <http://infovegan.com/2010/11/02/how-vs-what>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice site. I had to step back about 3 feet from my monitor just so I could read the damn thing, though. Larger doesn't always = easier to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just shrunk the fonts slightly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like it. Small nitpick: back button doesn't work. Might try implementing the pushState API or use a hack.

<comment><USER12> another nitpick, use the 'label' tag and the 'for' attribute with your yes/no radio buttons to make them easier to select.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair nitpick. :-)

I'll update the page in a few minutes with these fixes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If it's possible, I think it would be interesting for the purposes of discussion to also include the amount you are currently paying in taxes, in order to calculate your net tax amount. In other words, show what your take home pay would be under the new plan.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hey aren't they talking about raising the cap on Social Security and Medicare taxes too?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's way more complicated than this. SS, Medicare, payroll taxes, estate taxes, etc. are all part of the proposal. I just wanted to focus on income tax for this project - I think your average joe can most easily understand income taxes (and probably complains about them most often).

Also, because there are only so many hours of my life I'm willing to spend deciphering tax law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Minor usability critique: It wasn't clear from the wording whether you meant personal income or family income at the first question. It appears that you meant family taxable income.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like the use of "We" and "our" in the disclaimer--a nice touch that makes you sound a lot bigger than one person

(Currently under the impression that its just Snikolic who made this)

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, it's the other way around. I've been been falsely answering all of the posts here on HN in the first person. The site was really built by a "we".

Robert (not an HN member, sadly) is a designer, and my co-founder at <http://www.flock.fm>. We were bored of working on Flock on Saturday, started talking politics, and took a few hours to whip this up together.

<comment><USER17> A member now, apparently! Thought it was worth chiming in. I think it's safe to say that the site has a bias - but we're not claiming otherwise. This is as much activism as journalism - though I believe the facts we present are correct. Personally, I'm biased in favor of education and discourse - and I'm pleased that some has been generated by my and snikolic's efforts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great site. The complaints of political bias are just silly. You're putting numbers into an accessible form. If people find political bias in running numbers, that's their problem. As for the "relieved?" _everyone_ in _every_ camp is currently anxious about taxation and the budget, so it's quite reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER19>
        Obama's budget proposal won't increase your income tax liability.
        Relieved? Tell your friends to keep calm and carry on.

This is quite insulting to supporters of individual freedom, as if all we care about is not to get taxed.

What if I did a similar website asking:

        Did you murder someone in the past year?
        No?
        Obama's proposal to sentence all murderers to death won't affect you.
        Relieved? Tell your friends to keep calm and carry on.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point, and I'll admit I was a little uneasy about throwing that line in...it can certainly be interpreted as a bias. My designer and I were just looking for a witty and ever-so-slightly incendiary phrase to use as a call to action. I apologize...guess it's a bit more incendiary than we planned.

On the other hand: 1) I think your analogy is flawed, and kind of extreme. 2) Hypothetical tax policy proposed by a democratically elected representative is most certainly not an attack on personal freedom. (Taxes levied by a despot would be.) 3) The "Tell your friends to keep calm and carry on" phrase is a direct response to the rhetorical "Relieved?". It's merely a call to action for those who are relieved by Obama's budget proposal and its direct effects on their tax liabilities.

<comment><USER20> Totally agree that you can throw whatever political commentary you want on this site; it's your project to have fun with, and you don't need to apologize. But as long as we're going off-topic and into politics...

>tax policy proposed by a democratically elected representative is most certainly not an attack on personal freedom.

Couldn't disagree more! It's better than a despot, but tyranny by the majority can definitely be an attack on personal freedom. If the white-majority-held congress voted to take all the property of some racial minority and divide it amongst white people, the fact that it was democratic wouldn't make it right!

And to be more provocative: reasonable people can disagree on whether the same is true if you replace "white" with "middle class" and "racial minority" with "rich". It's all going to depend on your personal moral/political philosophy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the support!

I agree; you're right that tyranny by majority is an attack on personal freedom...but that's a structural failing of our democracy. I think it's a bit unfair to connect systemic faults of a society and government to a specific budget proposal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python-based implementation of Notch's DCPU-16 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jtauber/dcpu16py

<comment><USER2> For the love of pete; please put a copyright notice and license on your code!

Even if you want to use the same license as notch, you must explicitly specify that, otherwise, no one can really use your code.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't no copyright notice mean that it's in the public domain?

<comment><USER4> No. Copyright is implicit. Something can only be in the Public Domain if it's explicitly placed there (and supposedly, not all countries even recognize Public Domain, hence the creation of the WTFPL[1]).

[1] <http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/>

<comment><USER5> Actually, something can only be in the Public Domain if it it's not covered by copyright, or if its copyright has expired; saying "I put this in the public domain" might have no effect whatsoever.

I don't know of any countries that don't recognise public domain (that is, implement eternal copyright).

<comment><USER6> You could release it under a copyright licence that is de facto the same as the public domain. It's "copyrighted to you", but anyone can do anything on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is a good resource for understanding how all of this works? Books, site, tutorial, minix usenet threads... I don't care, just something to get me started.

edit:

Assuming I'm a standard, competent web dev-ish Ruby, Python programmer with little experience below those languages.

<comment><USER8> First read K&R C and get comfortable writing C programs. Then pick up the latest edition of Patterson & Hennessy and learn the MIPS ISA. It's a very simple instruction set that avoids most of the pedagogical distractions imposed by x86 or some other more complicated architecture.

<comment><USER9> Second Hennesy & Patterson. Read it 12 years ago, still remember it vividly; everything made more sense afterwards.

It's expensive though; you might do just as well with a used older edition.

A somewhat perverse alternative approach: get a book on how debuggers work (like "How Debuggers Work").

<comment><USER8> I actually have the pleasure of taking a course with Patterson this semester. He's a great lecturer and he manages to keep the (sometimes very dry) material very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like implementing this thing is becoming the new national passtime, at least based on the number of different implementations that have been discussed on HN in the last day.

I wonder how long till someone implements it in minecraft?

</comment><comment><USER11> There should just be one thread for all the dcpu-16 implementations

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder why so many started to implement VMs for that processor. Just impatience when his next game will be released?

<comment><USER13> implementing a VM is a game itself

<comment><USER12> There are so much things to implement. Why VM from game that is yet created?

<comment><USER14> it's something you can do in one evening.

<comment><USER12> OK, that make sense. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Waiting for a glsl implementation.

<comment><USER16> I am fairly sure notch would have one... if he is planning on running this, then I am going to imagine that he is basically going to have massive farms of GPGPUs planned for doing this emulation.

<comment><USER17> You could try to run a simulation of branch-heavy code on your hardware optimized for branchless number crunching, but you're probably better off compiling the opcodes into something that you can then use to simulate branch- heavy code on your branch-heavy-code-optimized hardware.

<comment><USER16> Good Point sir....

But I was kind of imagining that you could essentially emulate a single virtual system per "Stream processor" or whatever they are labeling the basic units. I was factoring that they could run a couple of hundred "virtual cores" per card despite the fact they weren't that optimized. But I will be the first to admit to not really knowing the details.

The other option of course is something like intel's Knights Corner architecture, which wouldn't pay such a penalty on performance for branching.

<comment><USER18> Branching used to be done by turning the memory of the cores that failed an if test to read-only and just letting all of them continue the computation.

It's gotten better now, but branching is still extremely unwieldy to do. No branch prediction either.

<comment><USER16> I suppose the question is if you would need to have multiple cores running simultaneously on the same processing element, or if the fact you have some many processing elements means you can just be inefficent and give each core the role of emulating a processor. I haven't seen anything about the core speed of the virtual cpu. however if its 5 or 10mhz, you don't really need high performance or efficency, your just need a way of craming more jobs into your servers and leaving the CPUs to run other game code.

<comment><USER17> I was trying to be somewhat polite, but... GPUs aren't magic speed juice. You know those big speed gains that get GPU advocates so pumped up? CPUs have the exact same massive speed advantages over GPUs too! That is, when have a task that the CPU is designed for and the GPU doesn't, CPUs kick GPU's ass.

There's no point in trying to jump through hoops to convince the GPU to be something it isn't. It isn't going to be faster than a CPU, or rather, a lot of CPUs.

Being 5 or 10MHz is irrelevant. Being able to simulate them faster means you need fewer servers to do it. (You can tell who actually works on clouds and who doesn't by the attitude towards performance; people who don't actually work on clouds think performance matters _less_ in the cloud....)

<comment><USER16> Sorry but I think you misunderstood me.

I am fully aware that your average GPU isn't optimal for this task, however I was imagining that there would still be value in shifting the world load off the primary CPUs.

My line of thinking is around being able to use a single GPU stream processor to emulate this CPU in the required performance (ie 10mhz). If you could essentially do that you could have hundreds of these processors emulated for the cost of managing the IO to them.

I am not expecting it to be "Magic Speed Juice", I am actually expecting to be getting 1-5% performance from what the GPU are capable of. However I would see this as a nett advantage if it took the workload off the CPU. Something like Knights Corner could easily do this (its basically a pentium 1 core).

The point I am making is that Notch's CPU is basically a home computer CPU from the 80s. They don't require that much functionality to emulate (as if a dozen emulators in a few hours wasn't a good enough indication) and since OpenCL is turing complete you can emulate anything (see running arm linux on an 8 bit processor), the question is if its efficient enough to be viable?

Can a 1ghz stream processor emulate a 10mhz single issue simple risc core? I have no idea, but I suspect its not the part we have seen so far that will be the determining factor, I believe it will instead be the IO devices that determine the requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's a Python asm compiler to go with those tools <https://github.com/severb/0x10c-asm>

<comment><USER20> This is so cool. Between jtauber's work and the other versions floating around I can't imagine that we won't be seeing basic compilers for higher level languages soon. So far there are emulators for the CPU, multiple assemblers, and a disassembler. Have you checked out the C version on the front page? He's been updating it like mad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is certainly the best implementation so far, clean, readable and actually works. Also allows for writing in ASM and not HEX with the assembler.

</comment><comment><USER22> That Cell class looks a bit odd, and I can't imagine it's doing good things for your memory use. Perhaps you could simplify it by making your registers a list or a dictionary, rather than a tuple?

ie.

      self.registers = { 'A': 0x0000, ... }

then you could access it directly:

      self.registers['A'] = 0x0001

<comment><USER17> Memory use isn't the problem, it's the added code complexity. Not having

       self.registers = [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]

instead is adding ".value" all over the place where it isn't necessary. I haven't actually tried this but it looks like dropping the Cell class entirely, putting that line in as the definition of registers, then s/.values//g ought to work, or very nearly work.

PC, SP, and O are already defined as variables containing the index for that register, a fine way to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason for the Cell() is explained in a comment; I have to be able to pass around references to registers and memory locations distinct from their value. I'm open to alternatives but the above won't work as how do you pass in "register A" or "memory location 0x1000" as the arg to an instruction method in that case?

<comment><USER17> As a offset, probably, with appropriate changes. You're probably better off channeling C design here than Python. I'm running on the assumption that while speed may not be your overriding priority, you will want this to run with _some_ speed. I haven't examined the opcodes, but in this case even if I had to distinguish between a number and a register reference I'd probably do something like let numbers be numbers and let register references be one- element tuples containing the register offset, then switch on the type when it came time to try to use them. That is most likely going to be significantly faster than going through the very powerful class/instance machinery on Python, and should you be inclined to play with PyPy it'll probably JIT a heck of a lot better too. (Although I'd also play with having a number with a very high bit set to indicate that it's a register reference, which would probably JIT even better, since there'd be no type check.)

By splitting the difference and playing with PyPy you should be able to use Python to dodge out on a lot of the C bookkeeping BS while potentially not paying very much on the speed penalty. Using a lot of Python constructs could result in a multiple orders of magnitude slowdown for only marginal gain in this case.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did think about passing around a (type, identifier) tuple where type = REGISTER|MEMORY|LITERAL but I was put off by writing code conditional on type. The OO programmer in me dies a little when that is done rather than polymorphism.

<comment><USER17> Match the tools to the task. Organizational schemes suitable for multi- hundred-thousand line codebases aren't always needed for something like this, which just isn't going to get that large. Old-school bitbashing can be both fast and easy enough to read. OO can cost you a lot here for not very much gain.

Or whatever. Your program, of course. (No sarcasm.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> this one is one of the more complete ones: has a disassembler. should be trivial to add stepping and breakpoints.

</comment><comment><USER24> How did you decide which value of the PC to use (current instruction? next instruction? second word of current instruction?) when PC is one of the operands? The spec is not very clear on when exactly is PC incremented.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd love to see a Haskell or Lisp implementation

<comment><USER26> Here you go:

[https://docs.google.com/?pli=1#folders/0BxArLOveUH1bb081YWhD...](https://docs.google.com/?pli=1#folders/0BxArLOveUH1bb081YWhDOHVTUzZCR2czdFdPOHNXZw)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: "Employees are actually adult-kids" - <AUTHOR> An industry employer self published a book on leadership, success, and profitability. In the preface of his book, there is this quote, "employees are actually adult-kids," and I wanted to hear HN's take on this. <comment><USER2> Assuming I'm interpreting you correctly, this is an argument I've had with my own father for decades. I'm strongly of the belief that there's no line between child and adult. You simply get better at pretending. We're all just a bunch of highschoolers dressed up in adult clothes hoping no one calls us on our bluff, and no one will because they're all doing the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've seen that phrase in other places in its general form it just says "adults are just grown-up kids" or something like that.

And I tend to agree with it.</comment>


Care about search privacy? Duck Duck Go no longer logs IPs. - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/03/care-about-search-privacy-use-duck-duck-go.html <comment><USER3> It seems sort of like you're destroying the possibility for growth with this, though. From what I understand of Google's work, they really have improved tremendously from analyzing data (to find how searches go wrong), and from using the data in new features (such as with spell checking, adding new terms into the query, personalizing searches, etc.).

And I mean, I value privacy. I do. But, I value the quality of the search results even more than whatever privacy is lost from search engines logging, I guess. Unless there is some path to improvement, all I can ever see myself using Duck Duck Go for is porn, tips on murdering my spouses, and information on illegal drugs. Of course, other people would use it for much more-- but for me, there something truly wonderful about being able to search for "nose" and have the first result be a unit test runner I want to use, not a piece of anatomy I already know everything I need to about. Sure, it's stupid-- I should search for "nose tests", but I sometimes make mistakes, and here Google doesn't even need to say so and make me try again. It finds the target anyway, without problems (and the less-likely Wikipedia article is right below, as result #2). Without Google logging what I searched for and building a profile, this wouldn't be possible.

I don't mean to be fanboyish and loving of Google (they do scare me sometimes). If they added some sort of feature that said, "don't record anything I do right now with these searches", I would be very happy. But, similarly, I would also be happy if Duck Duck Go at least had an option to opt- _in_ to logging and monitoring and so on. On my end, I would consider my relatively minimal, and explicitly given, loss of privacy to be worth it to help make a search engine I am using better (assuming, of course, that I'm using it-- and I'm not opposed to trying something new to me).

<comment><USER4> In my opinion Google results used to be great before they did all the personalizing, and now they are often really bad. I get infuriated sometimes how hard it is to search for a specific term. I have to use all kinds of + and - signs in my search terms to get anything near a meaningful result and it is not straightforward at all to simply go to an English version of a Google site because Google insists that I must be Dutch and therefore only want localized information.

Of course they did not get worse because of the personalizing (though the location-based stuff absolutely has to go away - we have browser language strings for that, don't try to guess what I want if I have a way to tell you what I want), but I do think they did pretty well before they did all that, so I see no reason why DuckDuckGo can't as well and wish them the best.

<comment><USER5> > it is not straightforward at all to simply go to an English version of a > Google site because Google insists that I must be Dutch and therefore only > want localized information

This kills me when traveling. There's ways around it, but it's a bit of a hassle. Really one of my only hassles with Google, though I understand it probably serves 99%+ of searches better.

<comment><USER6> Try <http://www.google.com/ncr>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is definitely a killer niche to fill given the current privacy conscious climate [around here]. Kudos.

<comment><USER8> "Privacy conscious climate"? Are we using the same Internet? (The one with Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc...)

<comment><USER7> By privacy conscious I mean users - specifically us techy users (where there is a lot of privacy debate currently going on)

<comment><USER9> It's certainly a niche, but I'm not sure how many techy users really care about privacy. We all have Gmail accounts, right? Which store emailed passwords, password reset links, private conversations, account balances, and all sorts of other stuff?

Another data point... Our userbase at RescueTime is comprised almost entirely geeks. We measure and store second-by-second attention data on their computer. We make all sorts of privacy features available (ability to delete bits of data, track only whitelisted stuff, etc., etc.). The VAST majority of our users never touch any of these features.

And we're growing like gangbusters.

I think people who make the bet that people in the future are going to be increasingly privacy-conscious are making a pretty bad bet... But I do imagine that it will continue to be a niche (though likely a shrinking one).

<comment><USER10> I think you are right but in the short term only. I think long term there will be some huge flap involving online privacy and after that people will wake up to what the consequences can be.

<comment><USER9> Really? What can the consequences be? I'm not being flip-- I think it's easy to say that but its harder to pin down dangerous scenarios.

The increasing fact is that the more Google knows about you, the better they can serve up search results (and ads, of course). I think most users would NOT opt-out given the chance to do so (if it meant harming their search quality).

Related quote from Matt Cutts' blog:

"It's a long article, but an example useful fact is that if X is the number of people who visit the Ad Preferences page and opt out, 10X people don't opt out and 4X people actually edit their categories to improve the targeting relevance of the ads they see. Let me say that again: four times as many people change their settings to make their ads _more_ relevant than opt out of interest-based targeting. I think the Ad Preferences page is a good example where users get more transparency and control regarding their privacy."

<comment><USER10> Let me give you just two possible scenarios, there are plenty more:

\- An insurance company somehow gets their hands on search data and finds a way to associate that with their customers, figures out who is probably about to apply for coverage for a bunch of expensive treatments and cancels their insurance before they can make the claim for some trumped up reason.

\- A political party gets their hands on this information and datamines it to the hilt in order to figure out which talking points to trot out on what TV stations in order to swing a maximum block of voters to them.

I'm sure there will be people that will say both of these are unrealistic, but I think that given the amount of data out there it is only a matter of time before someone will find a way to abuse it in a way that we will not be able to ignore.

<comment><USER11> >An insurance company somehow gets their hands on search data and finds a way to associate that with their customers

You mean like the AOL search data leak? I never read anything about insurance companies misappropriating the data in this manner. So I'd say its more of a long shot.

Same with political parties... again, never read anything like that.

Not to say that it hasn't happened, I'd be curious if anyone has any information to show if it has?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I noticed you're running your own servers. What kind of setup do you have? How many machines? Are the machines literally sitting in your garage or are you colo'ing somewhere?

Not asking because of privacy, just curious about the technology. If you've answered these questions already somewhere, sorry!

<comment><USER13> He wrote about his site's architecture here: [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go- arc...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck-duck-go- architecture.html)

He also answered some questions on HN here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=525048>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> He does log the browser string. The EFF's panopticlick project shows that this is a way to identify a user surprisingly uniquely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, really? Any references? I'd consider ditching them. They're not doing much for me anyway.

<comment><USER15> <https://panopticlick.eff.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, that's tracking everything the browser outputs, not just the user agent, which is maybe 1% of the full string.

<comment><USER14> I did an experiment and turned off javascript and redid the test... it still is unique enough to track a browsing session. Give it a try.

I would consider using Duck Duck Go if nothing was logged. Right now I use another service precisely because they don't log anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just turned user agents off.

<comment><USER14> Wow, now that's what I call customer service :-) Thanks for listening... I'll give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How is the legal situation in US? Aren't web services forced to keep records?

<comment><USER17> No, but there are rules if you do. (e.g., have to share with FBI when asked, have to delete after X months).

Most search companies want to identify you. The problem is keeping them from having too many records.

<comment><USER18> >> "Most search companies want to identify you."

I'm not convinced they want to do it for any malicious/profit based motive.

They want to identify me to give me a better user experience, sure.

Being able to identify users searching on a search engine doesn't suddenly mean it's easier to monetize. Google would still make billions from the adverts next to search results regardless of how identifiable users are. It's not related to their bottom line.

I guess I just don't buy the conspiracy theories on it.

<comment><USER19> Storing that much data about users isn't harmless just because the company doesn't do anything bad with it.

Even if that company would forever be _good_ , they could still have their servers infiltrated into or stolen, or some government could decide that they want the data over night.

<comment><USER18> If you're looking at risk though:

      * Computer could have been compromised
      * Wifi/local network could have been compromised
      * Your ISP could have been compromised
      * Some of the peers on the internet between your ISP and google "
      * The datacenter where Googles servers are

And that's before the data gets to Google.

I'd guess that the most common privacy theft is at the first 2 steps - <USER2> computer / wifi network.

Any one of those could happen, someone could be logging all your searches + all internet traffic in some of those cases.

Personally though, "What I've searched for" is in the 'meh don't care if anyone knows this' bucket for me.

<comment><USER20> just because your data can be stolen in other ways does not mean you should do nothing about it. you could address all those issues.

<comment><USER18> Right, but knowing the risk associated with things is important... For example I don't care much about terrorism, I care about making sure my kids look both ways when crossing the road.

Similarly, I care more about individual users PCs getting compromised than Google getting hacked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's still an issue of trust, why should I trust Duck Duck Go any more than a company that has a reputation to lose?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

<comment><USER22> That's a question you have to answer yourself. Right now, Duck Duck Go is the only search service I've ever heard of even trying to make that promise.

As an aside, there are a couple issues with companies and reputation. First is that a company might risk its reputation if the rewards are worth it. Second is that a company might care about its reputation but simply fail to hold true to it. Finally, a company might care about its reputation some of its employees might not.

<comment><USER23> [http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/07/ask-com-to- offer-...](http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/07/ask-com-to-offer- anonymous-search-with-askeraser.ars)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you still want to use Google but want privacy, try:

<https://ssl.scroogle.org/>

What they do is explained here: <http://www.scroogle.org/> and here <https://ssl.scroogle.org/sslnote.html>

</comment><comment><USER25> What about your upstream provider? Do you know what level of data they retain about your traffic and visitors/sessions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Doubtful any. It's FIOS business, and I'm directly connected via to their fiber backbone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> epi0Bauqu you may want to add DDG to Firefox's list of search engines (drop down search engine box, manage search engines, get search engines):

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/search-engines/>

Didn't see it there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm..we do have a Firefox add-on and I am working on another one. I'm not sure why it doesn't show up there though. Thx.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have duckduckgo set as my default search engine in Firefox. Does anyone know how I can make it use SSL? In other words, make it use <https://duckduckgo.com> instead of <http://duckduckgo.com>.

<comment><USER28> In chrome you just add an 's' in the URL in your default search engine settings.

<comment><USER27> Aha, I did this:

      find ~/.mozilla -name "*duck*"

Then I edited duck-duck-go.xml, changing http to https, and restarted Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great to hear! I have been considering switching to DDG to give it a long-term try for a while now and this pushed me over the edge! DDG is now my default search site in FireFox!

Great work epi0Bauqu!

</comment><comment><USER30> I use ixquick, and they have SSL, too: <https://ixquick.com/>

I am curious which of these will grant more privacy and better searches.

</comment><comment><USER31> Unfortunately, if your search engine becomes important enough to spam, you won't be able to use logs as a signal . . .

Best of luck though. Seems like a good publicity strategy.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell The search results page retrieves some content from s3.amazonaws.com. The http referer in those requests contains the search term. Thus, even though duckduckgo.com doesn't know you performed a search, amazonaws.com knows your IP address, what you searched for, and when you searched for it. They _probably_ have a log of all that information too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the process of changing these links to https.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So the one thing that never seems quite right about this: how/why do we trust that the guy doesn't log IP addresses? Let's put it this way: If someone promises not to do anything bad with the IP addresses they store, and we don't trust them about _that_ , why would we trust someone when they say they don't store them at all?

<comment><USER22> Flip the question around for a moment. Why aren't we all super paranoid about Google? Because we more or less believe that the way they use the information they collect isn't damaging to us. It doesn't mean we trust them completely, 100%, in every way, shape or form. It doesn't mean we don't use google's service with some degree of reservation that using their service is a bad idea even if they are telling the truth.

If I didn't have a basic level of trust with google I wouldn't use the service. I can apply that same basic level of trust with duckduckgo.

Once you apply that unbiased trust, you have two services: one that uses a variety of technology to protect the information they collect and one that doesn't collect information at all and takes steps to prevent others from doing the same.

Google might get bought out. Google might be subject to a sopoena. A google employee might steal something. Google might make a mistake. Any one of those things might prevent Google from fulfilling the basic promise of "we won't misuse your data." They won't ever have to lie or do anything evil. They might just make a mistake, and all your data will be there, vulnerable.

<comment><USER32> Which did happen once with AOL searches. I see your point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's great news. Pretty ballsy move too, I'd like to see google match you on that one.

The one little issue is that IP traffic passes through a whole pile of routers before reaching your target, so if you _really_ care about your privacy that much then you should probably use https.

<comment><USER32> Ballsy, I don't know. I'd call it very smart. Maybe I don't know the extent of the benefits of IP tracking, but being relatively unknown, this is a great way to gain market share as a niche.

> you should probably use https

Not sure if this is what you're implying, but <https://duckduckgo.com> is mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good move, you now have one more user to not-track. I'll be trying DuckDuckGo out as my default search. I'll give you feedback if it doesn't work out. I hope others will give you a try by setting you as the default, too - you can always switch back. (Those that do, change http to https.)

</comment><comment><USER34> I prefer Google. The full link is in green, it's justified left, the results are wider and don't take as much vertical room. There's a cache too. What does DDG do better than Google? Does DDG have the crawling power of Google or does it pull in Google's results?

<comment><USER22> _What does DDG do better than Google?_

SSL connection. Nothing logged. When I don't care about results personalization, and if I get results I am looking for, DDG has the superior service.

Today, if an employee working for Big Evil uses google to do a search for "Software Developer open positions near Cambridge, MA", that search will likely be logged by websense and the internet firewall. That information might be found and used against you by a political enemy (when you work for Big Evil, political enemies emerge from the woodwork).

A search made over an ssl connection won't log the details.

<comment><USER34> Will the SSL hide a post/get? The SERP still have the terms in the querystring. You can get SSL on other Google apps. Maybe not on search.

<comment><USER35> Yes, it will hide them. TLS runs at a protocol layer below HTTP: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> duck duck go just became my #1 search engine.

</comment><comment><USER37> Nice. A few searches turn up relevant results. But I think it should return more than 5 results.

<comment><USER38> Try scrolling :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't need to care if people retain my IP. I'm on a netbook and mobile 99% of the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even so, your sessions would be obvious in the log, i.e. one could tie multiple searches together. But to your broader point, some people care about privacy, some don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Am I being cynical with noticing that this comes right after your brand awareness post?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. I meant to write that post two weeks ago when I did the poll, but got too busy.

This came about from comments on reddit. I gave it a lot of thought over the past few days and decided to pull the trigger.

<comment><USER40> It was a tounge in cheek comment really. This move will definitely give you some leverage with a very vocal crowd who has concerns over privacy. I really would like to see more search engines around. I am just tired of big G's de facto monopoly status. So well done and keep it up :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> What was the original reason to store IPs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Analytics. Google et al. also use it for personalization, though I never did that.

<comment><USER41> So did you ditch any sort of tracking? It doesn't look like you added cookies or anything. (very cool if so)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I ditched it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Loving this search engine! Even works great on my Samsung Jet mobile phone browser (webkit based).

</comment><comment><USER43> Just turn off cookies and use a proxy, Google results are still way way superior.</comment>


Rail on guard: Metro-North prepares for threat of rising sea levels - <AUTHOR> http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/tech/science/environment/2014/04/22/rail-on-guard-metro-north-prepares-for-threat-of-rising-sea-levels/7987279/

<comment><USER2> I grew up in the Hudson Valley -- this is truly one of the most beautiful stretches in the world. At points, you're essentially surrounded by the river on both sides.

I really think climate change needs to be presented to the public as an economic problem. Our infrastructure is going to continue to get hammered, costing billions, and we're essentially subsidizing it.

<comment><USER3> _I really think climate change needs to be presented to the public as an economic problem._

Doesn't matter. If you don't think it's going to happen it doesn't matter what kind of problem it is...

<comment><USER2> Never doubt the American Public's capacity for believing in anything that comes directly out of their paycheck.

(But, yes -- it's a remarkably difficult sell, as we've seen.)

<comment><USER4> Prob is that waterfront real-estate in Westchester[1] is just white privledge. And all waterfronts are geologically (not climate-related) unstable. So basically rich white people want perpetual status-insurance. The climate angle is a red-herring.

The economic cost of natural disasters--NY, CA, and FL--is all related to RE development ("upscale") of unstable geography.

[1] Hudson Valley/Fairfield CT etc.

<comment><USER2> Interesting point. In California this issue exists with high-end real estate on mud-slide and fire-prone areas, like Malibu. Things that would make a difference, like controlled burns, are fought by homeowners who don't want to look at charred landscape -- and as a result the the LAFD spends enormous resources on heroic measures. [1]

1: [http://books.google.com/books/about/Ecology_of_fear.html?id=...](http://books.google.com/books/about/Ecology_of_fear.html?id=_WhrAKFa5aEC)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Brian-Puccio > When these points fail, Metro-North — the nation's largest commuter railroad > with 280,000 daily passengers — is completely cut off from Manhattan.

It's the nation's second largest when going by ridership (the number cited) to the LIRR with 334,000 passengers[0]. Both the LIRR and Metro-North are commuter rail systems for New York and are both MTA-owned/-operated, along with the subway, bus[1], etc.

The MTA is launching a $120 million project to "storm-proof" the Long Beach branch of the LIRR this year (among a myriad of other plans).[2]

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_commuter_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_commuter_rail_systems_by_ridership)

[1] Except out in the 'burbs, our buses got spun off and privatized somewhat recently

[2] [http://www.thelirrtoday.com/2014/04/storm-proofing-long- beac...](http://www.thelirrtoday.com/2014/04/storm-proofing-long-beach- branch.html)

<comment><USER5> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_tra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership)

#1 and #2 spots differences in ridership..? Is that a typo?

<comment><USER6> I don't think so - NYC is just that busy of a city.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how many climate-changer denier politicans will attempt to legislate to prevent Metro-North from considering climate change in their future planning - the same way NC did that:

[http://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest- science-...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science- rising-sea-level/story?id=16913782)

<comment><USER8> Well, you may ignore the science, but you can't ignore effects it predicts.</comment></comment>


California electricity prices up during eclipse - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/tweetatweir/status/899365198649106432 <comment><AUTHOR> This is just one node in CAISO (California's energy market).

A better metric would be a hub price, but I don't have ready access to those (our software doesn't capture them since we aren't involved much in CAISO)

For reference Texas has NO increase, prices are way down. But Texas is a lot of wind. New York, Midwest and the PJM markets are showing about 20 to 30% increases in prices during the eclipse.</comment>


Ask HN: is it ethical to copy ideas from a similar site? - <AUTHOR>

I need the advice of the HN community: a few days ago, a site similar to ours came up with a much nicer web interface and flashy Ajax. It made some shortcomings of our site very clear. So we re-implemented our key page, clearly inspired by this other site.
You can judge for yourself: the site that inspired us is http://www.builditwith.me . Our old page is here:  http://fairsoftware.net/publicProjects and our new implementation here: http://fairsoftware.net/startup-ideas-find-co-founders.
I initially tried to contact the author of BuiltItWithMe to see if they would like to share or discuss, but didn't hear back after several days.
I believe in transparency and openness, but I'd really like to hear the opinion of people on HN. What is the right thing to do? I wouldn't want the other guys to believe that we are stealing from them (I'm pretty sure that we aren't, legally speaking). I don't think there should be any hard feelings. Am I just naive? Where do you draw the line, when you hold yourself to higher standards than just "anything goes on the Internet as long as you can get away with it?" Asking for permission doesn't seem practical. What else?
Thanks! (I'm somewhat optimistic based on the recent comments on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=989120) <comment><USER2> It's fine to steal interface ideas. However, I think you took a step backwards in doing so. Yes, what you had wasn't very good. However, what you have now is even worse. Your original implementation was on the right track and just needed some refinement.

<comment><USER3> I agree, the old version gave more information on what positions were needed at a glance and was a bit more clear...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think its unethical at all.

I think you did more than most would in trying to contact the buildItWith me guys and that is certainly commendable.

I also don't think there is any confusion between the two products(From a look and feel perspective) so no harm no foul. The internet is filled with people taking "inspiration" from other sites and products. This can be evidenced simply by the number of websites that look like <http://www.campaignmonitor.com> .

</comment><comment><USER5> Blatantly copying is a bad idea. Understanding why they're different, and figuring out the motivations behind their (different) choices and then reflecting on the choices you've made for your product is a good idea.

Jason F at 37Signals wrote about this a while back: [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1561-why-you-shouldnt-copy- us...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1561-why-you-shouldnt-copy-us-or-anyone- else)

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, it's called competing.

<comment><USER7> And someone will eventually do the same to you. Be flattered when it happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From a philosophical standpoint, I don't think you were wrong to borrow interface ideas.

(I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds to say though, that while copying some of their better ideas, I think you may have also copied some of their worse ideas. The way scrolling works on both sites is very confusing -- your original site was better in that regard. )

<comment><USER9> I agree about the scrolling problems. I can't see the entire description for an app because I can't move anything in that panel on the right. I can zoom out to view all the text, but then it's too tiny to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Honestly, I think your (original) site looks better.

It (updated site) has a similar layout, but that's about it. You didn't copy their look, maybe their layout. But if you asked someone on the street, I doubt there would be any confusion.

edited: in parentheses to clarify

<comment><USER11> I agree. The original site was better in my opinion. The other site that inspired you is a nightmare to view. Design is as much about function as it is style.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Obligatory quote? "Good artists copy, great artists steal." - Attributed to Picasso

<comment><USER13> Then there's this: [http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/07/th...](http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/07/the-bad-artists-imitate-the-great-artists-steal- banksy-500x333.jpg)

<comment><USER14> yes yes yes, love bansky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes, copying is fundamentally moral/ethical. (Although where it conflicts with a law, like copyright, it is another question -- does the law have precedence?)

(As I have written in other places:) To evaluate something morally, we can follow Kant (in 'Groundwork For The Metaphysic Of Morals'), whose fundamental moral rule is: Act only if the maxim of your action can be willed as a universal law. That is, we ask: would we want an action to become a general law? If a digital object is good, then copying it duplicates and spreads that good. And the incidental cost of copying is practically nothing. We can certainly wish this were a general law: if everyone copied freely and widely, we would all benefit – we would all receive very much more good, and at negligable cost.

You might say there is a loss to the originator, in losing an exclusive advantage. But that really has a hidden presupposition of some social or legal construction like copyright: there is nothing intrinsic in the actions or materials that suggests or requires exclusivity. Abstracts are naturally copyable. Everyone knows and expects that. And ultimately everyone benefits from it.

The copyability of things is like a free natural resource. It should be exploited and used as much as possible. That is the message of the ethical argument. The sad thing is that the copyright/patent/IP attitude has become so inculcated that many people no longer see the underlying truth.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's not only ethical, it's dumb not to. It's what businesses have been doing since time immemorial. To watch your competitor improve and not do anything to compete is stupid. Ask Yahoo or KMart.

From the legal angle you're probably alright. We recently built a game largely based on another game (sort of the way omgpop built blockles, which is really just Tetris) and I've spoken to attorneys about this extensively. Other than crossing certain lines (trade dress, trademark infringement, etc.) you're probably safe. If you're using their art, or their branding, you may have trouble, but they certainly can't claim to have invented AJAX and a better UI.

You should seek legal counsel of course if it ever becomes a problem.

</comment><comment><USER17> IMHO I hate their interface. That flashy Ajax is too overwhelming. Your plain list is easier for me to read. Have you tried doing user testing with your two pages and then also test how users interact with your competitor?

</comment><comment><USER18> Aren't you supposed to be developing _your users_?

In other words, what does it matter what _their_ site does? Your users are on _your_ site are they not? This builditwithme "looks nice"; it has 129 people; what are you worried about?

Get some feedback from the people on your site. Talk to them, find out what, how, why, where they are looking for and (not finding) help with their project. It makes the farthest sense, at least in my opinion, to try to answer those questions by looking at some other guys site design.

</comment><comment><USER19> Seriously, that's a step backwards. I get no overview, can't just browse, and with my browser window at 1024x768 your non-scrolling sidebar sometimes doesn't have a more info button at the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER20> I find that it is important to not just blindly copy something, but to truly unpack the principles behind it and attempt to improve upon it. This allows you to be inspired by great work but to (hopefully) take it even further and polish it even more.

If you can't change or tweak anything about the original inpiration then it's a good bet you don't fully understand _why_ it works or how, so you aren't going to grow in the process.

</comment><comment><USER21> We have had people inform us that they were going to mimic the core idea of our site (and now they have, with venture backing). I wouldn't be worried about borrowing an interface.

</comment><comment><USER22> What are you copying from builditwithme? I don't see much of a similarity. Anyway, I think your original site is much better than the new one.</comment>


Getting started with Let's Encrypt - <AUTHOR> https://scotthelme.co.uk/setting-up-le/ <comment><USER2> My god that's a lot of work (as opposed to using letsencrypt-auto) just to be able to use HPKP. I hope anyone who follows the guide understands that they can have things working in a tenth of the time if they forgo (or don't intend to use) HPKP.</comment>


RV Office of David McKinney - <AUTHOR> http://davidmckinney.com/blog/2013/12/29/redesigning-the-office <comment><USER2> I love this! I 1) abhor offices and 2) feel like i should be outdoors most of the time. This seems like an unbelievably good compromise.</comment>


Show HN: OS Pre-Launch Page with Heroku and Campaign Monitor - <AUTHOR>

While procrastinating doing the ironing today I whipped up a Sinatra/Heroku/Campaing Monitor application for a Pre-Launch Page.
If you're following MVP/Lean Startup principles or preparing for launch, you should start gathering interest for your application.
In 5 minutes or less your new idea can start collecting e-mails (assuming you promote it). Easy to follow directions are included.
http://vouched.heroku.com <-- Example (actually this is mine.  Vouched: Recruitment with Social Proof).
On github: https://github.com/maxdemarzi/Camel <comment><USER2> Nice example, very quick and simple and well worth people setting up while they're still prelaunch. I'd also recommend starting to add in your meta tags and ensure you're submitted to search engines, meanwhile tracking with some more generic web analytics tool such as google analytics. Campaign monitor is great, but even on your landing page it can be worth while to measure conversion.

</comment><comment><USER3> easy to click: <http://vouched.heroku.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> It's an attractive page, but I'd venture to say it's either not very usable, or there's a formatting issue on Chrome 9 with Vista.

On the page I see, there's the header, and a rocket that takes up the entire page. The signup form itself is actually below the fold, and has no margin below it, so it appears to be absolutely positioned with bottom: 0;

This makes it easy to overlook which, arguably, is the number 1 point of the site -- to harvest emails.

If you put the signup form, perhaps with a translucent background (and of course rounded corners) sitting about halfway down the rocket, I think it would look even more appealing than it does now, and be TONS more usable.

Here's the screen as I see it on my computer: <http://twitpic.com/46zq4o>

<comment><AUTHOR> The dangers of big monitors. I made the rocket smaller.

<comment><USER4> Much better, thanks. I should probably have mentioned that I was using my laptop, and hence, the widescreen monitor.

If it were me, I'd still move the contact info higher up on the page. Perhaps if that were floated left (or right) and sat next to the rocket, or even if it hovered over it; Really though, I'm just picking nits.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my website - <AUTHOR> http://popbub.com/

<comment><USER2> At first glance I have no clue what the site does or what it's for. Can you add some text to explain what's going on? What's a bounty (meaning how do I put it up? Is it an arbitrary amount of points I decide? Is it something I have to pay for in advance to be able to offer it to someone else?)

After looking a bit more at the site I have a slight clue but still very little idea about the site and its features. As a user, I'm unwilling to login with Facebook just to test it out and explore.

Is this similar to an existing concept that I don't know about?

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, thanks for the feedback.

When you sign up via facebook you get 200 points. I'll add a feature where you can create an anonymous account for less points so you can try it out.

It's completely free, so you don't have to pay for anything.

You can put up a bounty by creating a challenge. Hit 'Submit' on the top to submit a new challenge. Yeah it's an arbitrary amount that you decide.

<comment><USER3> What's a point? What can I do with them? Why would I want to accumulate them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Assuming popbub had users, would you do it if you could buy adspace on the front page to promote your startup?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay, full disclosure: I'm not a web developer. I did, however, create <http://sleepyti.me> last month and have gone through extensive research and A/B testing to produce a nice, easy to navigate page. I get around 10k views per day, and the site generously pays for more than the cost of its hosting.

First of all, as a couple of other users have said, I have no idea _what_ your site is. Popbub.com doesn't exactly make the product obvious (although it does have nice potential), and there is pretty much nothing telling me what to do.

Let's get some text in there! It astounds me that you expect users to "sign in with Facebook. Do it now!" when you literally haven't explained the point of _anything_.

I'm not trying to be harsh, as this is supposed to just be constructive criticism. The design of the site is simple and although there are a few typographic errors it's definitely not bad to read.

Get some descriptions in there, and maybe a screenshot or demo or SOMETHING so I know why I'm staring at the page.

Good luck!

<comment><USER5> David, could you give me a sense of your customer acquisition strategy for sleepytime? For instance, I googled "when should i wake up" and sleepytime didn't come up. But I see you have a ton of facebook likes. I'm trying to build an ad-based source of passive income so i'd be very interested to hear your methods.

<comment><USER4> Sure.

I built Sleepyti.me as a free app, and did not expect to make money from it. As such, I am not interested in acquiring subscribers (I don't offer a service), or paying for traffic via AdWords. Startups with a product (for example WakeMate, which has received considerable HN coverage this week) have saturated this advertising space, and it's not really an area in which I'd want to throw money.

In my case, the profit comes from sheer traffic. The more traffic I get, the more people will click relevant ads in the single banner AdSense unit I display after the information has been given to the user.

Since my profit comes from traffic, it does not make sense to pay for traffic via AdWords in the traditional sense: the money would just go in a circle.

It's repeated a lot, but the best way to drive traffic to your website is to solve a problem. Sleepyti.me is one way to solve the problem of waking up tired (a common problem, I might add), but there are obviously infinitely many problems to choose from.

Once the tool/site is written, it must be tested to provide an elegant experience. Critique from other developers (some here at HN, but also over at [Proggit](<http://reddit.com/r/programming)>) helped me a lot.

Once the site launches, it's imperative to provide users an outlet to express their interest and show it to other people. Lucky for us, this no longer entails "enter a friend's email address here to tell them about us!" A simple Facebook like button allows the site to spread organically. Each time a user "likes" the page on Facebook, his or her friends will see the notification and have the opportunity to like it his/herself. Theoretically, this could spread through all of Facebook's ridiculous userbase, which would provide more than enough traffic.

HN, Reddit, and more recently StumbleUpon have provided great outlets for traffic, and social media like Twitter and Facebook have allowed it to grow quite nicely.

I'm (ambitiously) trying to launch similar sites at a rate of one project per month, given leniency for interesting bugs or project changes.

Sorry if this post was a little exhaustive, but I wanted to make sure I included the necessary background information to answer your question :)

<comment><USER5> Awesome, that's very helpful. Thanks, David. Can you give me a sense of how much you're profiting?

<comment><USER4> Sure.

My most profitable day so far brought in about $30; I've had a few such days. Average is somewhere around $14/day.

My goal is to earn $10/day or $300/month per site, which I think is both achievable and a nice goal. December, being my first month with a payout from Google, is on track with this goal (granted, with some residual from November): I have $344.77 in unpaid earnings that will be sent to me at the end of the month.

As I briefly noted in my earlier post, I'm trying to do one of these projects per month--if my goals can hold, 300 * 12 sites is equal to a residual income of 3600 per month or $43,200/year. Lofty goals, but that's not a bad salary for residual income!

I'm still very new at this, with a _lot_ to learn, but I'd love to write up my experience in a HN post. I know a lot of people are interested in making money this way, and although I'm certainly not an expert, I'd love to lend any insight.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, David. I think an HN post would be cool. I'm probably the only one benefiting from your knowledge what with these comments buried deep in the bowels of HN.

You've got a plan -- my only concern would be the upkeep of 12 sites. But who knows, one of those sites could turn out to be a home run. Thanks for writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Facebook has something like 500 million users, but that doesn't mean that everyone has an account. I don't and never will. Give people another option, including 'yet another account' for your site. The majority of users will not trust your site to connect with Facebook, Twitter, whatever. No one's dad understands OAuth or OpenID.

And like everyone else mentioned, I have no idea what your site is for. Add a big headline "PopBub will make you rich or get you laid or both" and then explain how.

</comment><comment><USER7> The biggest problem I see is that while I can log in with Facebook there is no easy way to log out without manually revoking access. Other than that I would be interested in seeing how the community progresses since each new member will bring in bounty points, so the people with bounty points to spare will end up being new members and old members who had won bounty points from new members.

If you get a bunch of members it would be really fascinating to watch how the bounty points flow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I've been trying to fix that. Facebook isn't making it easy... if anybody is familiar with the Facebook javascript SDK holler. 200 points :)

<comment><USER7> I can help with that. Basically you just need to show the login button. It automatically turns into a logout button when the person is logged in. Or for a prettier solution you can use the following JavaScript attached to an onclick event handler on a custom logout button:

        FB.logout();

Edit: For reference I would recommend reading this page thoroughly because there are some other cool things you can do with the SDK:

<http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/javascript/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I need some direction here.

I'm testing it out on my dev, and the login button is not turning into a logout button even when I am logged in via facebook.

Also, FB.logout(); is logging the user out of facebook, which probably isn't desirable.

Is this only happening on my end?

<comment><USER8> Edit: Whoops. I didn't quite grasp what you were asking until I had already responded. I think that is the intended behavior behind FB.logout() (as opposed to only logging one out of your site and not out of Facebook).

If you want to only log someone out of your site, you've probably got a session variable of some sort you want to destroy, right?

<comment><USER7> Yes, clearing the cookies on your domain will log users out of your site only. You can accomplish that with some simple JavaScript. Just check the cookies using your browser inspection tool to see which one is set by Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it, but will there be a way to create an account instead of having to use Facebook to log in?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can, but i'm curious as to why you wouldn't use facebook to log in.

<comment><USER10> Because I don't trust you and I don't trust Facebook. (Nothing personal)

<comment><USER9> or maybe because I live under a rock and don't have a Facebook account, with no desire to get one?

<comment><AUTHOR> ok if you're interested, send me an email at jkwon.work on gmail.com and i'll send an invite out for people who don't have facebook accounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't have a fecebook account.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok. what do you have, openid? or just an email?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So this is Mechanical Turk or Elance meets services bartering... i think?

</comment><comment><USER5> neat! i imagine that the network effect issue will be the most important. is there a vertical where this type of economy makes particular sense?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I wonder if it will work in education, in particular in a college setting.</comment></comment>


How Australians think about same-sex marriage, mapped - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-13/same-sex-marriage-support-map-vote-compass/8788978 <comment><USER2> Who you marry is no-one's business but your own.

Hard to see why this even needs thinking about, but I guess there are plenty of people in this world who want to impose their world view onto others.

Looking at the chart in the linked post, I wonder what the heck is going on at the top of the Cape York Peninsula that leads them to think different to the rest of Queensland.

<comment><USER3> > but I guess there are plenty of people in this world who want to impose > their world view onto others.

Not supporting the "no" voters at all here, but both sides are technically guilty of this.

I guess for example if you follow a religion that is opposed to same sex marriage I imagine it would feel as if same sex marriage advocates were trying to impose their world views on you and vice-versa.

<comment><USER4> They are not forcing no voters to marry same sex persons

<comment><USER3> Again, let me preface this by saying none of these views are my own, I'm just trying to be sympathetic for both sides of the debate here so that we avoid creating echo chambers every time this topic gets mentioned.

Although I think it's unlikely that any celebrants, or at least ones affiliated with various religions, will be forced to marry same sex couples, they're not the only people that are involved in a wedding. So even if celebrants are protected, will that same protection extend to photographers/caterers/musicians/venues etc?

The main pain point at the moment as far as I can tell is this plebiscite, whilst it's asking a very necessary question, doesn't give any indication of what people are _actually_ voting on. A "Yes" result could potentially hand a more progressive government a blank cheque in terms of their justification to legislate however they want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> alan-crowe Linguistic change keeps pace with social change. If Jane Austin jumped two hundred years in a time machine, she would notice the change in language. In her day (and social class) marriage is permanent and adultery and divorce mostly absent due to heavy social penalties. Also, no premarital sex, no unwed mothers.

Surveying today's social scene, she would notice that we have totally abolished marriage as she understood it. She would also notice that we were sentimental about words. We reused the word marriage for the very different social institution that replaced marriage, rather confusing ourselves about the extent of the change.

Well, no. We are not in fact sentimental about words. Jumping 200 years in a time machine creates the cognitive illusion of a year when things changed. Jane expects to be told that we abolished marriage in 1917 and held a competition for a new word for the new world. Why did "marriage" win?

But there was never a single year when the world changed. All the changes were small enough that it never made sense to coin a new word. Yes, we can see now how temporary our sexual pair bonds are. If there have been a single year when it happened, we would have coined a new noun("tempriage" instead of "marriage") and a new verb ("to tempry" instead of "to marry").

If we had new words, linguistic change would reveal social change instead of concealing it. We would have a very different take on "progressive" versus "traditionalist". The progressive position approves of homosexual tempriage. The traditional position rejects homosexual tempriage.

At this point we spot that "traditional" need scare quotes around it. There is no traditional position on tempriage. Tempriage is thoroughly new. Some 21st century people want to shape the new social institution one way. Others disagree.

We have no authentic traditionalists. Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks he is arguing that against gay marriage, because marriage has traditionally been between a man and a woman. In fact his is arguing against gay tempriage, on the basis of an unspoken and tenuous analogy between tempriage and marriage.

I don't know what to make of all this. I would love to understand the world around me, especially social change, but it is so confusing. Not only are social changes very large, but we try to understand them through a rhetoric of tradition versus progress, without understanding that our "traditions" are new-minted.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Aside from the data itself being interesting, I thought the way it was presented on this page was very well done.</comment>


Ask YC: Any hackers currently in Cairo? - <AUTHOR>

I am and probably will be for a few months on-and-off. Would be cool to meet for drinks or some "co-hacking" somewhere by the river Nile or whatever. Sorry for the unusual thread. <comment><USER2> Have fun, I was in Cairo 8 years ago, very cool place. What are you doing there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Freelance consulting (.NET/SharePoint however) in a German/Egypt dev shop. Lovin' it here (so far). Still, no takers?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This request is now current once again. Who else is here? Thi time I'm staying at least until end of December.</comment>