How Seth Godin became a speaker, writer, and blogger in demand  - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/sep2008/id20080924_140114.htm?chan=innovation_innovation+%2B+design_top+stories

<comment><USER2> Unalone had a great quote regarding Seth Godin's popularity on this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=305741>.

 _"It's [his popularity is] because he writes short articles that usually make sense on the surface and so people read him because they think it will make them rich."_

<comment><USER3> I tend to agree. What he says usually lack substance, I can't help. Don't want to be harsh, but sometimes I consider it just a distraction.

<comment><USER4> I think that a lot of the time, it is. He's got one or two nicely-written articles and a lot of noise that sounds excellent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seth is a free thinker. I may not always agree with what he says.

During the Q&A session at a Seth Godin lecture I attended, a parent asked him a question about how he taught his kids. He answered with a story about how the school his children attended was doing a play. Seth suggested that instead of having one kid play the lead role for the entire play that they rotate it - so that every kid could get the chance to be the star/be the main role. The kids loved it, most parents loved it.

<comment><USER6> This is just more of the every-child-is-special bullcrap that we fill our kids' heads with these days. Come on, people. Some kids are just lousy actors. Why should they get a chance to be in the main role? The real world doesn't work that way. When these same kids grow up, they will be so badly calibrated that they'll have trouble functioning.

What's wrong with telling a kid he's bad at something, and should move on to try other things?

<comment><USER7> When I was in middle school, I badly wanted a guitar for my birthday. My mom had delayed for more than a year, and at last gave me a talk about how I was tone deaf, and would have a lot of problems playing guitar. I told her I didn't care, I wanted the guitar anyway. Turns out, I was able to teach myself tones and pitches, and I ended up being quite good at guitar.

At a young age, the point is just to give exposure to many experiences, so that they can learn what they love and what they might like to be good at.

<comment><USER6> Your mother's doubt, and you subsequently proving it wrong... don't you think that prepared you for when you inevitably met those kind of doubts again in real life?

My point is that the world we present to children should be more representative of the real world. I think your mom was doing the right thing by giving you that honest evaluation, even though it was obviously wrong.

<comment><USER7> _My point is that the world we present to children should be more representative of the real world._

I agree with that. I just think it's very difficult to tell if a child is innately bad at something and should try something else, or if they are bad it but could greatly improve with practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> _"Since then, through trial and error, he has developed a winning formula: brief, simple books with eye-catching covers and provocative titles—and no business-speak. Tribes, for example, is a 147-page, anecdote-filled call to readers to become leaders of a movement, or "tribe."_

Instead he just makes up or misuses words, which is often just as bad or worse than "business-speak."

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure how well Godin's strategies work for people, but he is an absolute master at marketing one thing: himself.

<comment><USER9> That's an easy thing to say, but it's just not true. Seth hates promoting himself, it makes him uncomfortable, and he goes out of his way to avoid ever mentioning his own books or his startup on his blog. When he releases a new book he'll usually post a couple paragraphs from it on the blog, and that's about it. In the three years since Squidoo went into private beta he's promoted it maybe three or four times on his blog and probably mentioned it less than ten times total.

<comment><USER10> Alex3917 - I don't disagree. But, isn't Godin's approach still masterful self marketing? Being self-referential is tacky. So, justifiably, he avoids it.

My point: the fact that you know his style of promotion means he's self promoting. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Patrick Barwise, a London School of Business professor of management and marketing, tut-tuts that while Godin's writing is "very readable with lots of examples, it's not grounded in research. His arguments are oversimplified and overstated."_

Sounds lot like academic marketing aswell. It's not that rare that highly regarded authors suggest different views or even complitely contradict views and solutions to same problems.

Its not like actual science, you know.</comment>


Show HN: Meric's Test of Consciousness of an AGI - <AUTHOR> I've investigated philosophy, spirituality and religion for a while, and came up with my way to test whether an artificial construct is conscious or not, i.e., whether it matches the definition of "strong AI".
meric's Test of Consciousness
Let the AGI be placed into an artificial simulated universe. (e.g. some kind of really advanced, Escape Velocity-like universe[1])
Assuming the AGI can fulfil its needs in the artificial simulated universe and maintain its existence - When the AGI can realise the following, and not on blind faith, it can be said to be conscious:
1. The reality the AGI experiences is not the Reality.
2. Any reality the AGI can experience is merely illusory.
3. The Reality is not like any reality the AGI can experience - i.e. it's not artificially simulated.
4. The AGI cannot with any precision describe The Reality as it actually is, besides knowing it's somehow infinitely more in some way.
I think this test is more precise than the Turing test. Basically the AGI sits in the simulation and realises what it sees isn't real and there is a world beyond.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Velocity_(video_game) <comment><USER2> We humans realized long ago that those four points can be true in the universe we're living into (e.g. Plato) but how to be sure? Are we conscious or not? Or it suffices to ask the question to pass your test?

Did you check if some philosopher came up with the same test in the last centuries or millenia and the related arguments and counter arguments?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a perfect test - but we can test it on ourselves - when we're a dream, and then we really realise we're in a dream, then we're more conscious than if we didn't.

Yes, it's based on my understanding of the philosophy and religions I've studied - I'll let any reader make their own exploration instead of providing any arguments and counter arguments (of which there are countless...). :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > I think this test is more precise than the Turing test.

This comparison makes no sense since the Turing test is concerned with intelligent behavior and not consciousness.</comment>


DuckDuckGo grew more than 70% this year - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/574853/duckduckgo-the-search-engine-that-doesnt-track-its-users-grew-more-than-70-this-year/ <comment><USER4> > "Our biggest challenge is that most people have not heard of us," Weinberg > says. "We very much want to break out into the mainstream."

It won't help at all if more people get to know of DDG and then leave it after a single trial because the results are not great.

I value privacy a lot and want something like DDG to succeed and become really big, but I get frustrated very often with DDG. I know many people are very happy with the results from DDG. For _most of my searches_ though (on technical and other matters), I end up doing a second search on Start Page or Google because DDG still does not have search by date and the search results are nowhere close to Google.

I do have and use DDG as my default search engine in the hope that DDG keeps analyzing the volume of !s or !g queries as an indicator of how much DDG is lacking and takes action to improve it.

<comment><USER5> FWIW, DDG search in my experience has gotten vastly better in the past year or so. It _used_ to be that 90% of my searches ended up repeated with !g to go to google, but nowadys I'd guess that's like 30%, and even among those, half the time google's answer quality ends up the same.

The only cases where Google is predictably and consistenly superior are 1. error/diagnostic messages: DDG still sucks at precision search, and quotes are not always the answer; 2. queries that require Natural Language Processing: Google understands stuff like "the bad moustache guy from XYZ series" where I myself have only a vague idea of what I'm looking for.

And oftentimes the Instant Answers end up offsetting somewhat poorer quality of results, so kudos to DDG for coming up with those.

(None of this is meant to disqualify your experience though, just expressing my own joy at their results having improved for my use case.)

<comment><USER6> >FWIW, DDG search in my experience has gotten vastly better in the past year or so.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same.

As someone from a smaller and non-English-speaking country, I doubt there'll ever be an effort to improve their results for my language and considering that even Bing does an absolutely terrible job at it, Google is my only choice for when doing local searches.

It's like all search engines apart from Google are stuck 20 years in the past with how bad they are.

<comment><USER7> This could probably be fairly generalized to "90% of Silly Valley lacks internationalisation experience"... I type this as an Aussie/German/Kiwi on a Thai keyboard (desktop; normally I'm on a French Macbook Pro) here in southwest China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most of the comments here are complaining that, while people like the idea of DDG, the search results are poor. Two comments regarding that:

1) the only way DDG is going to improve search results is by you using it regularly. Using it regularly drives not only revenue, allowing them to hire additional developers, but it also drives feedback to help DDG improve search results.

2) I suspect that the difference in search results may partly be conditioned responses. We are accustomed to what we find through Google, so when DDG presents something that looks different (e.g. showing a different answers site that has the exact same result), we feel uncomfortable and think it's not what we want. I think this is just something that takes time to adjust to, but also something DDG needs to think about how try to figure out how to overcome.

<comment><USER9> > _the only way DDG is going to improve search results is by you using it > regularly._

For what company or product is that not the case? Unfortunately, most people (myself included) aren't interested in integrating inferior products into our lives with the hope that "one day" they might be as good.

I decided to default to DDG last year to see how it was, and because my online privacy _is_ worth something. I found the results lacking, having to Google things anyway, and eventually just went back to Google.

<comment><USER10> Hi forgetsusername,

The results have come along way over the past year, and we've also added a feedback tool that lets you share with us when you feel an answer was lacking.

If you are interested in trying us again sometime I know we'd love to hear the feedback as we aim to provide a great search experience without sacrificing your privacy.

We also have our "!Bangs" ([https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)) which allow you to re-direct your search directly to over 7000 providers including sites like Amazon, Twitter, Stack overflow and even Google. In those cases you find a result lacking you can quickly forward the search to another provider without manually navigating or switching your default. We understand there will be times you want to search other sites and so we make that easy to do. (Although we do hope to continue to lower the need for that in the future).

<comment><USER11> Bangs are honestly one of my favorite parts of Duck Duck Go and I actually found out about it from a friend a while after I switched from Google. It completely changed how I used DDG.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm trying to use DuckDuckGo, but for now the local search results are really, really poor. I can't blame them much though, because Yahoo and Bing suck as well. But then Bing's index is in fact the only competition Google has and DuckDuckGo cannot improve as long as they depend on Bing.

One favorite example that I've been using for feedback is when I'm searching for "restaurante" (the Romanian word for "restaurants"), in Google Search I'm getting links to nearby restaurants. Which is normal since they've got my location and so on. But they also know that in my country (Romania) the people are speaking Romanian and so they are showing me results in the Romanian language of restaurants from my city.

On the other hand in DuckDuckGo:

1\. The instant answer is terribly wrong, mistakenly identifying a plain vocabulary word from at least 3 romance languages (!!!) as being the name of some insignificant 1-star GitHub project that nobody cares about. Ouch!

2\. Even though the region selected is Romania, aproximately the first eleven results contain the translation of the word "restaurante" from Spanish, a link to some "el Restaurante" magazine I've never heard about and a link to some latin restaurant named Kuuk from Mexico, plus a "Top 10 Berlin Restaurants" (needless to say Berlin is not in Romania)

3\. Out of 30 links I get, none of them is related to Romanian restaurants, Romanian cuisine, or anything related to Romania, even though the selected region is Romania and that word is a Romanian word.

4\. OK, lets assume that some users searching for "restaurante" are interested in Spanish results. Well, one problem would be that Mexico is different from Spain, but lets ignore that as well. The biggest problem is that this set of results is completely useless for Spanish speakers as well.

<comment><USER6> I can only reiterate those same experiences for another locale. Google provides an almost seamless experience when I do searches in English and in my local language. I don't feel like I've downgraded when doing a search locally. None of the other search engines even bother.

Which means that despite being incredibly privacy-conscious, and trying to avoid Google services like a plague, there's literally no alternative for me whatsoever to Google when searching online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> DDG has been my search engine of choice for the past few years and in my experience it is pretty rare that I have to use google for better results. In general I'm quite happy with it.

One thing I would love to see as a feature is the ability to add under settings a list of sites I'd prefer not to see any results from.

For example experts-exchange where they want you to sign up to see the answer. There's also a bunch of scraping websites that don't have actual answers which just pollute the results. Being able to suppress that kind of site would be wonderful.

I'm aware you can use an option on the search itself, problem is that the list of sites I like to remove from the search is too long to type each time.

<comment><USER14> I'd love there to be a "I'm a developer" mode: I know it goes against the point of not tracking people but there are so many tech words that are common nouns etc, and providing a bit of context would prevent a lot of g! searches from me (see example: [https://twitter.com/mrspeaker/status/672115832772784128/phot...](https://twitter.com/mrspeaker/status/672115832772784128/photo/1))

<comment><USER13> You could use the bangs for that:

[https://duckduckgo.com/bang?c=Tech](https://duckduckgo.com/bang?c=Tech)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> DDG results have improved tremendously, top stack overflow / github matches are shown partially which is really neat

I FULLY switched to DDG (& also away from Chrome) when I found out when I click save password on login forms my password is sent to Google Servers (I must have missed it on the TOC)

<comment><USER16> DuckDuckGo really is good enough to use on a daily basis now. One big gripe I still have however, is that there seems to be no way to filter by time. I still have to go to google if I want to find a news article or topic which is recent, or within a certain period.

<comment><USER17> This is a popular request and one we're working on. Admittedly we've been saying that for a while but it's getting close.

<comment><USER18> A really good filter ( for me anyhow ) would be 'prior to this [ week | month ]', since often I want to search for things from the period _before_ they were news

<comment><USER17> Interesting idea - I hadn't thought of that. Duly noted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> DuckDuckGo really looses the battle when it comes to search results.

And since they make the case with privacy, I also want to make clear, they don't loose because Google tracks us all, even if you are logged out from your account, use vpn servers, delete all of your cookies and cache, Google is just so much better and DuckDuckGo awful and some search results are just weird.

I tried once (it must have been this year) to use DuckDuckGo as my main search engine, basically whenever I did not find something quickly enough I just switched to Google and then found my object of desire often times instantly. One of my VPN-Servers is blocked by Google and because of that I am using Bing at the moment, which also seems so much better than DuckDuckGo was when I used it.

I installed LinuxMint on a non-techy person's machine a while ago (few weeks) and DuckDuckGo was set up as default search engine with Firefox, even that person used Google, because he/she wasn't happy with the search results. Used Google even though he/she had to manually go to google.com every single time

"We don't bubble you" is a unique selling point they have profited greatly from, and that's what made them well known to begin with, nothing else really.

</comment><comment><USER20> Good to see them progressing.

I made the switch a year ago having found their results had improved greatly to the point of "good enough". Before that I agree there was a problem.

For maybe 2-3% of the time I'll need to revert to google et al, but I see that as a fair price/compromise for even a small taste of privacy ... which is like tasting the purest of waters.

DDG is my default.

<comment><USER10> Thanks XJOKOLAT,

We recently released a new feedback tool in the bottom right of the search results page. For that 2-3% of time you feel the need to revert, please consider taking the time to let us know why our results didn't work out for you so we can drill down on improving them!

Thanks for your continued support!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My experience has been reminiscent of the old SE days, when different engines would often fare better/worse for varying queries, vs there being an all-out winner. I think of DDG as avoiding a fair amount of overtly "consumer" content. Google is great at getting to "interaction points," DDG is great for information. I quite like the DDG ability to play embedded videos from the search results page, and their accompanying privacy warning.

<comment><USER5> > I think of DDG as avoiding a fair amount of overtly "consumer" content.

True. Since all the 'content farms' out there are busy fighting the SEO war specifically targeted at Google, Google results for some topics are just stream after stream of useless generic garbage from non-experts. DDG, simply by using a different search backend, avoids most of this and often gives much better results in such cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Has anyone considered that the slightly longer and forgettable name DuckDuckGo might have something to do with the low mainstream presence? I think they should rebrand and market with duckgo or maybe just duck.com if at all practically possible.

<comment><USER10> We recently commented about this on a Reddit thread too ([https://www.reddit.com/comments/3vtxib/duckduckgo_search_lik...](https://www.reddit.com/comments/3vtxib/duckduckgo_search_like_nobodys_watching/cxu4fy4))

We do have a short domain "[http://ddg.gg"](http://ddg.gg") although it is worth noting that duck.com is owned by Google and points to their main search engine. So it's not really an option for us.

<comment><USER23> duck.com is explained here for anyone wondering: [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/epd59/google_po...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/epd59/google_points_duckcom_at_google_search_after_duck/c19v4cz)

It's not necessarily nefarious, the domain came from some unrelated acquisition, but they didn't have to make duck.com point to Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> rlv-dan I've been using DDG for many years now, and I think the search results are excellent in most cases. Sometimes I'm not satisfied, and try the same seach on Google. Most of the time though, I get the same results there.

My only gripe is that the last half year or so, w3schools has been getting at the top of the search results. (Previously w3schools did not show in the search results.)

<comment><USER24> That's funny, one of my gripes with Google was their insistence for many many years on making w3schools the first result for html-related queries. I haven't ever noticed that with DDG, but to be fair I also don't do html-related queries very often anymore (because the Dash app has supplanted any sort of technical documentation search; if I want to know what an html tag does, I just ask Dash to show me (developer.mozilla.org) docs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not surprising, but if they really want to become mainstream, they'll have to get people caring more about privacy than they already do. I mean okay, the Snowden leaks and stuff about PRISM got a lot of people using it, but those people were still most tech savvy types who value their privacy over the quality of the search results.

DDG is getting better, but it'll have to beat Google and the likes on a quality level if it's going to get the interest of people who don't seem to give a damn about their privacy.

</comment><comment><USER26> Using duckduckgo i found out that google blocks booksee.org domain. I spend some time trying to find ebook using google, implying its the best search engine in the world.

<comment><USER27> [https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright...](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/booksee.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel like the search results are getting better.

EDIT: Complaint #1 removed. I can change the THEME in DDG to get blue links. Awesome.

#2 Complaint is that I dislike the font-weight changes on search sites. I don't need my search words bolded. I know what I searched for, I trust that those words are in the search results, you don't need to show them to me.

It's actually the SUPPORTING words around my keywords that are going to make me click them after I've already searched. So if anything should be bold, it should be those words because they set each listing apart from the others.

The Positive (for me):

As I do SEO for some companies sometimes, I often times use DDG as a baseline because it doesn't track me. If I see one of my companies ranked high in DDG AND Google, I believe what I'm seeing in Google in terms of SEO A little more. I know it's not really accurate, and I tell my clients this, but it's nice to say that DDG is not tracked so it's not influenced by my previous searches, and seeing a site ranked high there too is a really good thing in my opinion.

<comment><USER10> Hi dpcan,

Thanks for the feedback! Did you know you can change themes from the settings menu? You can then save them as a non-personalized cookie, anonymously to the cloud via a unique passphrase, or via a URL. The bookmarklet tool in the settings menu will build out a URL with any settings group so you can save, share and use your settings without anything local.

For example here are the settings I use: [https://duckduckgo.com/?kae=d&k5=-1&kaj=m&kd=1](https://duckduckgo.com/?kae=d&k5=-1&kaj=m&kd=1)

Dark theme, metric system measurements, prompt for video play, prevent redirect.

If you are a blue links fan you can try: [https://duckduckgo.com/?kae=c](https://duckduckgo.com/?kae=c)

That's our 'contrast' theme which pops out a bit more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wikipedia has lots of disambiguation pages but somehow this idea has never made it into the search world. Perhaps the idea of a single text box that you can type "Michelangelo" into is not a good one. Tracking the user so you can get some context (is it Ninja Turtles or art history usually with this person?) seems a logical extension of the lunacy of that situation.

I use DDG a fair bit but I feel like without revisiting that assumption that a single context-free text box is even desirable, ditching the tracking (which I am totally in favour of) feels like they are dooming themselves.

I've played a little with running Yacy locally and directing it to crawl only sites I care about. So far that habit has not stuck.

The bangs are a step in the right direction. Suggesting additional search terms isn't quite right, and neither is doing a site specific search since I don't know what site will have the information.

Maybe a "metabang" where you search all the bangs in a category? "python !!tech"

Anyway, its good to see DDG growing.

</comment><comment><USER30> I seem to have finally switched permanently a couple of days ago[1]. Pleasantly surprised.

[1] The clincher? Copying a link on Google and finding for the umpteenth time that it was a #$%# redirect. (This is on my phone so greasemonkey plugins don't help.) There comes a time when you say enough.

</comment><comment><USER31> I recently started using DDG as my default search engine. I'm usually fine with searches, however what troubles me most times is the extracted content on result page. For example, when I search "How to make coffee"[1] the result links are good for both, however the extracted text shown in Google results are generally more relevant to my query. In this example, Google shows me instructions to make coffee in each result, while DDG shows the first text it could find which is totally irrelevant to what I want.

So in short, I feel a lag when deciding when and what to click with DDG.

[1] [http://imgur.com/a/7jCEH](http://imgur.com/a/7jCEH)

</comment><comment><USER32> I started using DDG this year. I've found the main thing that drives me back to Google (and frequently) is searching for anything where freshness of results matters; that's where I'm seeing the biggest difference in quality of results.

<comment><USER10> Hey Jay,

This is something actively being worked on that we hope to have an update for in 2016.

We also recently released a new "News Instant Answer" that pulls in fresh relevant content on popular news topics. Have you come across that in your searches? And, are there any specific topics where you are looking for more freshness and currently aren't getting it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> FYI: DuckDuckGo primarily leverages the Yahoo BOSS api in the US.

<comment><USER34> I'm curious: who will they turn to if (when) Yahoo shuts the service down? Bing?

<comment><USER35> Their only options are Google, Bing, Yandex, Exalead, Gigablast, and Mojeek, and most probably in that order as the last two need to grow considerably first. Unless there's any others that have their own index?

<comment><USER36> How is Google an option? They offer no API whatsoever

<comment><USER35> StartPage uses Google so there must be a way.

<comment><USER36> They probably scrape Google. Willing to bet there is no deal. Google would never agree to such a thing. Even paying $XXXXX a month isn't worth it to them.

<comment><USER35> That's what I always thought but according to this they have a contract: [https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...](https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/147/0/why- does-google-let-startpage-access-their-search-results)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's a great search engine, and gettig better with time ..

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't actually use DDG for privacy primarily. I use if for the instant answer and !bang goodness. If you're a developer, both of these are indispensable. If if the results don't work, you can always !g.

<comment><USER39> I appreciate what DDG is trying to do, but I found myself using !g way too often.

<comment><USER38> It really depends on your use-case. But for me, it works really well, and I'm glad it exists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's really good to see that even in a such powerful monopoly that it is, the "search" who Google has, it still have space for competition. DDG focus on a niche on this, and they are growing.

</comment><comment><USER41> I made the switch. My biggest problem with the lack of privacy is that I don't know in X years how my data will be used. In X years - laws may change - <USER2> may change - the fortune of google may change. It just doesn't seem prudent for me and my progeny.

For example searching for information about cigarettes or cigar clubs - <USER3> years ago may have been socially acceptable. Today if that information were available from the 80's it could provide signal for insurance companies determining rates.

</comment><comment><USER42> Maybe slightly off topic but wouldn't it be nice to have something like WSQL (Web Search Query Language) such as:

       "Select text from *.co.uk where page contains = XXXX and page.popularity > YY".

We then could have different implementations as we do with SQL (mariadb, postgres...) name them Google, Duckduckgo, Bing...

I did a quick search on my default search engine (DDG) and couldn't find anything related...

<comment><USER43> You're basically describing the Semantic Web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wow, so many people talking about how DDG is lacking good search results.

Here's my personal experience. I've tried using DDG 2 years ago, and it sucked. In my language (italian) results were poor, and also for general searches.

6 Months ago I gave it a try again, and I've been pleased enough to use it both at work, at home and on my smartphone.

The results are not always perfect, but I find myself using !g bang mainly when I feel there's something missing (which doesn't happen that much) or when I need to find a very selective piece of information.

I also loved the integration with stack overflow. Works nicely, it doesn't always "answer" your question, but just yesterday it did and the moment was like "wow, it's getting interesting".

So, while I admit that DDG may not be ready for prime time yet, I guess there's a chance that many of us (developers, etc) might start liking it and using it constantly.

While it would be naive to say "I wouldn't go back to google", I'm now an happy user of DDG, and I wasn't expecting it to begin with (In fact I was very skeptical).

</comment><comment><USER45> I really like how their instant answers are open source, and they're really nice. (e.g. npm, GitHub, regex/vim cheatsheet)

I do have 2 complaints, and together, they made me switch back to Google.

1) Results aren't as relevant, especially when I'm searching for very new or specific things.

2) Speed. I'm not sure why, but DDG seems to stumble on some searches, which end up taking 2-3x the time they're supposed to.

<comment><USER46> I haven't noticed speed issues. But I have noticed the relevancy issues. If the first 5 search results in DDG don't seem relevant. I just bang out a google search ("!g").

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> In all honesty, despite me knowing about DDG for reaaaaalllly long time, I still tend to forget their name. "something duck" is how non-tech people reference it. Cant you really name it something easy to remember and (ouch) Google like Duckgo? Or Ducker? Or anything else that can be pronounced by anyone within one breath?

<comment><USER48> If you google 'duck' it should be in the top 5. For me it was the 3rd one, the 1st and 2nd being wiki-type articles.

<comment><USER10> If you Google 'search engine' it's number one.

<comment><USER48> Slightly ironic though - using Google to google 'search engine'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I switched to DDG maybe about a year ago, not because of privacy concerns exactly, but because I was getting concerned that Google's results were getting less and less accurate (literal) for what I was searching for.

I think this is something that technical people tend to care about more than non-technical. I find now that I'm using DDG for very specific searches and Google for "fuzzier" things (via !g).

Google also tends to order results better than DDG, where DDG might have the result I'm looking for in its result set, the relevance ranking of the results isn't _quite_ as good as Google.

About the only other things I search Google for are images (!gi) and if I need to constrain the date range down on the results (afaik DDG doesn't have any way to say "between these two dates" or "in the last month").

</comment><comment><USER50> If I remember correctly, DDG doesn't crawl the web on their own, so considering the many comments here saying they stopped using DDG because of bad result, is there any way for them to improve on this?

Are all improvements made to the actual search results caused by improved from Yahoo or Bing ?

<comment><USER10> Results are powered from hundreds of sources [https://duck.co/help/results/sources](https://duck.co/help/results/sources) and aided and refined by our community.

We recently added a feedback tool on our results page, so if you find a bad result feel free to share the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I use DDG almost exclusively on my phone, and Google almost exclusively on my laptop.

</comment><comment><USER52> Interactive DDG Search Traffic Stats: [http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/10/](http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/10/)

</comment><comment><USER53> I love DDG but I think as the world turns away from document indexing and more toward intent based search, plus the ever increasing use of implicit data (gps location, speed of movement etc) - I can't see how DDG are going to grow.

Ultimately search will end up with something a bit like Siri (but something that works). The hound demo (if real) is a very impressive glimpse of the future of search.

For those who haven't seen it : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1ONXea0mXg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1ONXea0mXg)

</comment><comment><USER54> I generally like it but I definitely don't like some of its apparent integrations.

For instance, I search for recipes a lot. And Yummly "wrappers" seem to come up _a lot_ on DuckDuckGo, often barely acknowledged as being Yummly. I don't know what Yummly is but it just seems _scummy_...it seems to wrap pages that I know are _clearly_ recipes on other web sites, yet they're made to appear like Yummly pages. Why? There's no reason for this kind of middle-man stuff.

</comment><comment><USER55> On desktop I only use DDG, mostly because I think their visual design & typography is much more pleasing than Google's, and the search results are usually just as good.

<comment><USER38> Agreed. The new google logo looks like it was drawn with a Crayola.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I love ddg for english searches.

For non english searches it is still behind google. For example "pizza name- of-my-town" lacks half the pizza places google lists.

<comment><USER57> In case you are from Europe you may want to try [https://www.qwant.com/web](https://www.qwant.com/web)

It certainly doesn't match google when it comes to local searches but I find it a bit more pleasant than DDG.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I've been using DDG almost exclusively for the past two years. It's improved a lot in that time and now I hardly ever have to !g.

</comment><comment><USER59> Tried a few queries with it. Seems like its accuracy has improved greatly over last year, but still throws me a Japanese article for no reason.

Search is really a very hard business, in terms of both technology and market. I don't think they have Google level quality right now, so I won't consider use it seriously.

<comment><USER17> If you could remember which queries gave you a Japanese result I'd love to look into it to help fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> RE: [https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and- affiliates](https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates) I think it would be cool if it was possible to do ads direct with DDG.

</comment><comment><USER61> DDG is basically a meta-search engine. It is then better to host it yourself with [https://github.com/asciimoo/searx](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx)

Set it up remotely and you basicially have your own DDG.

<comment><USER38> ... but without a company and a community of hackers constantly working to add more backends, more instant answers, more !bangs, and give you better results. So why would I use it?

<comment><USER61> You don't need a company for building a meta-search engine. And most importantly, if you value privacy, you want the whole meta-thing to be open source, always.

<comment><USER38> My point isn't about privacy. If you really are that privacy-obsessed, than building your own meta-search might be the best option for you. For me, I like the fact the DDG's meta-search is incredibly well featured, with instant answers, and many backends for that, its search, and !bangs. So if I'm not that obsessive about privacy, why would I go to the trouble for a weaker search with less features?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> The privacy of DuckDuckGo is worthless when I click on the first link and it includes ajax and fonts from the google domain (and facebook and twitter buttons and whatnot) - might as well just type my search term in google.

<comment><USER38> Then use Ghostery. Or Privacy Badger. Also, I don't think the fonts can track YOU, unless google's got your IP. Which they won't, unless you log into your account. Which you won't, if you care about security. And if you don't, than why are you complaining?

<comment><USER62> Most sites rely on ajax and are completely unusable without it so I have to make exceptions for google anyway.

Also, I'm not complaining at all, I am just stating that the privacy is almost completely useless. I do have a google account, google mail, and so on. I don't have a problem with it.

<comment><USER38> Well, privacy is somewhat useful if Google can't link your IP to you. Also I was referring to Ghostery and Privacy Badger more for your concerns about like buttons, analytics, and the like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Going to chime in on the whole 'results are getting better'.

They might be. On paper; because there is more data.

Unfortunately, nobody is accounting for the 'stale' factor.

Searching old news is well.. old news.

</comment><comment><USER64> And rightfully so.

</comment><comment><USER65> In all honesty, I don't care if they (google) track me. I just want to find the right information as fast as possible.

</comment><comment><USER66> Much deserved progress.</comment>


Ask HN: Which Coursera certificates should I get? - <AUTHOR> I have free access to Coursera courses with certificates until end of summer. I can get any course and certificate for free. Which ones should I get for learning programming? I am a total beginner <comment><USER2> I would stick to the fundamentals of computer science initially then branch out from there according to interest in specific topics. For example the Python for Everybody Specialization then an algorithms specific course like Algorithms from Stanford.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say a Python one would be good. It's pretty popular and fairly easy to learn. Maybe look at an AWS, machine learning, or data science course after that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm but I am looking for something more specific, say links or names of actual courses that are good to learn and good to show to employers

<comment><USER3> At least at my company, managers aren't really looking at coursera, so I can't give you a specific one. They care about experience, college degrees, and industry certs (AWS, CISSP, GSEC, etc), in that order.</comment></comment></comment>


Believe in your side project, the story of Poker Now - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@samuelsimoes/why-you-should-believe-in-your-side-project-the-story-of-poker-now-e48f6b2cf514 <comment><USER2> I've been using this platform for some time now, and one of the things that really makes it special for me is the point mentioned at the end of the article about "always trying to be close to your customers".

Samuel is extremely attentive to people's questions and opinions, nearly to a fault. There's no denying that this sort of stewardship in a project creates user loyalty, especially when coupled with a genuinely great user experience.</comment>


Ask HN: Please help me with what to do with my life? - <AUTHOR> I am a 22 year old guy.Just about to complete my degree in mechanical engineering. I find hardware startup quite interesting and I kinda want to work there. But here is the problem, I have no technical knowledge nor passion left any more to learn. I am kinda depressed in what to do with my life considering I have no idea how to get that cool awesome job in Hardware startup with my lower skill set. I am drifting way. I dont know how to start off again. I know I am surrounded with great minded people like HN community and great resources but dont know where to start off. I even wanted to start a side project but isnt going well. I have lost all hope. I have no idea what to do from this point onwards. I believe I am getting old now. <comment><USER2> "Just about to complete my degree in mechanical engineering... I have no technical knowledge"

Well, those two claims seem to be at odds with each other. Maybe you think you lack a _particular_ realm of knowledge you desire?

When I was just about to finish my (C.S.) degree, I had little mental bandwidth for anything else but that and work. Perhaps take a fresh look after you complete your degree?

</comment><comment><USER3> This post got killed by a spam filter. Sorry. We marked your account legit so if you repost it, it should go through. You're welcome to give that a try, though it's hit and miss which of these posts get a community response.

Also: you're not old! Good grief!</comment>


No, you back off on backdoors - <AUTHOR> http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/03/no-you-backoff-on-backdoors-or-lese.html <comment><USER2> This very much mirrors my sentiments.

Not only is the proverbial cat out of the bag, but it's proudly parading around with its tail in the air, frequently spraying on all the furniture.

And if anyone has a cat, you'll know that you just can't stop them from doing it by force or coercion. You need to remove all the furniture or remove the cat.

<comment><USER3> Is the cat meant to be the government, or is it meant to be the programmers?

<comment><USER2> The cat was supposed to be encryption in the wild. The furniture is the public.

The government can't easily take encryption away. They can ban it is the US, but there are plenty of alternative countries that won't follow suit, and can then benefit from US tech being kicked in the teeth by its own government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "What will happen is, if everybody goes to their respective corners, and the > tech community says 'either we have strong perfect encryption or else it's > Big Brother and an Orwellian world', what you'll find is that after > something really bad happens, the politics of this will swing and it will > become sloppy and rushed and it will go through Congress in ways that are > dangerous and not thought through,"

Does Obama get that the only way to stamp out strong encryption IS an Orwellian world? Anything else is just harming the security of your citizens and the competitiveness of your tech companies.

</comment><comment><USER5> Meh. Eventually tech companies decide they like money and not being in jail more than they like fighting for people's rights, and they throw up their hands and say "what are we gonna do, it's the law", and do it.

See: Every other time this has happened.

<comment><USER6> Well, we did win first crypto wars, didn't we? Sure, the war was long, there were casualties.

<comment><USER7> What casualties are you referring to?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >If you succeed in achieving your nightmare Orwellian scenario, I promise you this: I'll emigrate to an extradition-free country.

It appears as if we have already succeeded at creating this Orwellian scenario and seems as if Huxley was correct and we are currently amusing ourselves to death. The truth is being drowned out by and infinite amounts of triviality and the masses are begging for more. This Orwellian world has no boundaries and there is no escape to some Utopian country. For better or worse this is the world we have created and we need to realize that is not a situation that will be solved by leaving the country. Crypto is going to be a Forever War. Perhaps it will be more effective if we take the long view.

Huxley vs Orwell

[http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death- huxley-v...](http://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-vs- orwell/)

<comment><USER9> Outside of the people that are primed to be Alphas, Betas or something Huxleys world was not actually that bad.

Their is no logical incapablity that people can not live in a consumer society and lose all other, including social, values. Its always temting for intellectuals to point to Huxley and rant on the evils of consumersim. They simple have different preferences then most other people and are unhappy about it, not that different from your standard christian.</comment></comment>


Use of illicit drugs becomes part of Silicon Valley's work culture - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26219187/use-illicit-drugs-becomes-part-silicon-valleys-work?source=pkg

<comment><USER2> Does anyone find the discussion here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2bybwp/use_of_i...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2bybwp/use_of_illicit_drugs_becomes_part_of_silicon/)

to be accurate? I'm a student looking into the trying to work there, and I was curious about some other's opinions.</comment>


Lord Keynes and Say's Law - <AUTHOR> http://mises.org/daily/1803

<comment><AUTHOR> See also: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc></comment>


Node.js hosting: VPN or cloud? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to decide where to host my shiny new node.js webapp. I've done some Googling and found Heroku and some other cloud hosting that supports it but it can get quite pricy fast for a relatively simple app. What do you use to host node.js software? <comment><USER2> I run my own cluster. But definitely check out <http://Nodejitsu.com> and <http://Nodester.com>. Node-ninja.com is releasing soon as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I've signed up for nodester. Thanks for the heads up on the others too!

<comment><USER3> There's also cloudno.de</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: EasyWrite- Write Only Using Top 1,000 Words - <AUTHOR> http://easywrite.parishod.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I recently came across ClearText Mac app which does the same but it works only on a Mac. I also felt that it would be great if the app recommends using certain words instead of enforcing it. So I made this web app which solves both the problems. Read my blog post for more information about this: [http://www.deekshith.in/2016/04/easy-write- intro.html](http://www.deekshith.in/2016/04/easy-write-intro.html)

Also check out the code on Github: [https://github.com/adeekshith/easy- write](https://github.com/adeekshith/easy-write)

Producthunt listing: [https://www.producthunt.com/tech/easywrite-cleartext- for-the...](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/easywrite-cleartext-for-the-web)

</comment><comment><USER2> Wonder if you could substitute as many words as you can with thesaurus. Then save text and substitutions people make so does more and more automatically.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I thought about it. I would like to make it auto suggest words on mouseover or click similar to other auto correction systems. That would be a great addition. Will work on that. Thanks for the suggestion.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you hire an agency or a freelancer to create your website? - <AUTHOR> Was just wondering if people feel more at ease if they hired an agency or a freelancer to create their website. Both has their certain advantages. For example a freelancer would be cheaper and closer to you discussion wise. While an agency would be faster, reliable and professional.<p>Keep in mind that this is just in general, some freelancers are more professional than agencies, and some agencies are more client oriented <comment><USER3> I think it depends on the scale of the project? I do a bit of freelancing for front-end projects, and the sweet spot has been for landing pages and projects that people want to move fast on.

I think in general it's best to work off of referrals and look at hiring an agency or freelancer in the same way you would hire any employee - <USER2> diligence.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most freelance websites have agencies behind the freelancer accounts that do the work for dirt-cheap but not always perfect, the site then may be needed to be cleaned up or not how you wanted it due to a language barrier. However, if you're technically inclined, it's always a good 80/20 rule route.</comment>


Angular 4 and other naming bits - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/angularjs/status/808439503547351040 <comment><USER2> Does anybody know what is the impact of the breaking change that is mentioned regarding d.ts file format?</comment>


Show HN: Search free-to-use (CC0) images by keyword, color, attribute - <AUTHOR> http://finda.photo

<comment><USER2> Why does the keyword search drop the final character if it is an 's'? For example, when I search for 'dress' the message I receive is 'Showing 0 images tagged dres'

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know why this might've suddenly plummeted from the front page to page 3? Seems strange.</comment>


Systemd: Harbinger of the Linux Apocalypse (August 2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608798/data-center/systemd--harbinger-of-the-linux-apocalypse.html <comment><USER2> Well that explains the discussion regarding the Debian fork released recently (not a Linux user)</comment>


Why US Inequality Is Worse Than Other Developed Nations - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-american-economy-is-rigged/ <comment><USER2> > Some economists have argued that we can lessen inequality only by giving up > on growth and efficiency. But recent research, such as work done by Jonathan > Ostry and others at the International Monetary Fund, suggests that economies > with greater equality perform better, with higher growth, better average > standards of living and greater stability. Inequality in the extremes > observed in the U.S. and in the manner generated there actually damages the > economy.

An interesting passage in the article.

Edit: I think that refers to this paper, am not sure if that's the only applicable reference.

[https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion- Notes/I...](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion- Notes/Issues/2016/12/31/Redistribution-Inequality-and-Growth-41291)

<comment><USER3> It sounds like a "moderation" issue — you need some possibility of inequality to have a healthy level of motivation, but too much inequality leads to poverty and limits human potential!

<comment><USER2> I don't think you need inequality per-se, you need some amount of direct reward, but some amount of social reward for economic endeavors. Starving out either side of that I think yields poorer overall results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem is not wealth inequality. The problem is lack of wealth. Even if you taxed every last billionaire in this country at 100% and stole every single asset from them, it still wouldn't get you anywhere: 2.7 trillion/ 300 million = roughly 8000$ per head, after that you'd get only tiny fraction, you couldn't squeeze any more out of them because they don't have it.

Even those at the 1% mark may struggle to afford a home because if you're earning that income, it means your paying through the nose on housing: 1.5M or more for a mediocre housing.

It's time we faced facts. We're not nearly as wealthy as we think we are. and it's time we started asking why? this question isn't easily answered and has many many many reasons, many due to economics and our lack of understanding of economics.

<comment><USER5> Where do you get the 2.7 trillion figure?

According to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States), total household wealth is $54 trillion, or 180k$ per head.

[https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-average-income-in-usa- fam...](https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-average-income-in-usa-family- household-history-3306189) gives $48k average income.

So if all wealth and income were redistributed, you'd end up with 180k$ wealth and $48k income, which is enough to buy an apartment and live well at least outside the most expensive cities.

<comment><USER6> The GP said take money from "every billionaire", not from every person in the US.

One surprising thing about America is that there is a very large, almost invisible class of small businesses owners, good sales people, old farmers and random professionals that have in aggregate quite a bit of wealth. More than 4% of the US population are millionaires.

<comment><USER7> Yup. A lot of the reason the middle class is shrinking is because many of them have joined the ranks of upper middle class.

<comment><USER7> Here's some data to support this:

[http://www.aei.org/publication/yes-the-us-middle-class-is- sh...](http://www.aei.org/publication/yes-the-us-middle-class-is-shrinking- but-its-because-americans-are-moving-up-and-no-americans-are-not-struggling- to-afford-a-home/)

People want to believe things are getting worse, but they are actually getting better. What's changed is that negativity in journalism has increased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sometimes I try to extrapolate out current conditions. I always end up with heavily policed cities for the protected class, ghetto suburbs and rural areas for the ones who didn't choose the right parents. We seem determined to build a caste system and in the US the Untouchables will be the ones who were born without professional parents. Every five years or so there will be a Hillbilly Elegy to remind the poor that it's all their fault.

This presumes that no trauma intervenes in between. Historically, war, famine, plague and ecological disasters have done pretty well at reducing inequality.

<comment><USER9> I always seem to arrive at "start over with an entirely new set of laws."

<comment><USER10> The combination of democracy and term limits means that iterative change should be the norm. But something isn't working right.

<comment><USER2> Have you heard of the Sugarscape simulation? It can be used as an economic model showing interplay of wealth and taxation and inequality. I don't think I would recommend setting economic policy based on this simplistic model, but it's food for thought.

[http://greenteapress.com/complexity/html/thinkcomplexity012....](http://greenteapress.com/complexity/html/thinkcomplexity012.html)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> US inequality is worse for the same reason the US produces unusually gigantic corporations that other developed nations can't produce.

If you come up with a great business in the US, you can relatively rapidly scale it into the world's largest economy (typically within one generation), and it will make you extraordinarily wealthy. There's nowhere else on earth that you can so easily do that, except for recently in China.

The fortunes of Gates, Buffett, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Page, Brin, Ellison, Waltons, Ballmer, Koch, Knight, Bloomberg, Dell, Jobs, Musk, Hamm, et al. are so epic precisely because of this effect. In Europe, their wealth at the top is heavily dominated by dynasties that took multiple generations to build up. You can more easily accomplish the same thing in one generation in the US.

Sam Walton faced off against huge retail competitors like Sears and Kmart, starting from the middle of nowhere and one store. In his lifetime he was able to scale it across the US, replace Sears as the largest retailer, and make himself the richest person in the US.

If you wanted to tamp down on this effect, you'd have to apply an aggressive living wealth tax. Otherwise it will continue to exist perpetually no matter what (income taxes won't work, the US already has one of the most progressive tax systems; death taxes won't work, that only cuts into dynastic wealth transfer, not wealth built up in one generation).

<comment><USER12> I understand what you're saying, but the tax system is not as progressive at the highest ends as you might think.

Social Security Tax stops being collected once you've paid on ~$128k, so all your income above that is taxed at a much lower rate.

Most wealthy people are able to significantly reduce their tax burden via deductions that aren't that helpful to "ordinary" folks as well, and the very wealthy can arrange for most of their income to come in the form of long-term capital gains taxed at only 15-20%.

So in fact the US income tax system is relatively progressive up to the top bracket of $418k/$470k (single/joint), which just happens to be the bottom of the top 1%...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Feedback loop

> money influences politics ... converting higher economic inequality into > greater political inequality. Political inequality, in its turn, gives rise > to more economic inequality ...

The article is well-written and cogent, but at this point it seems like common sense since we've heard and said these things so often, and they have become so blatant.

"Tax reform", deregulation, lack of prosecution of financial crimes, lack of enforcement ...

> And what we can do about it

But both parties seem to be captured by wealthy interests. I don't mean to be both-sides-ist — there are profound differences between the two major parties — but is there any non-destructive way for them to break free of that embrace?

Someone tell me how we can reform our system — realistically — without another Great Depression?

<comment><USER2> Honestly the "solutions" portion of this article was fairly weak to me. Or at least they were thing that have been fought over before and need to be won still. Perhaps also start looking at solutions constructed differently then the ones on already hard-fought political paths.

One example: a Social Wealth Fund distributing a universal dividend

[https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social- wealth-...](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/)

One thing I don't really like about that specific proposal is that it proposes a single federal management agency of the fund. I think politically and risk- distribution wise it would work out better if the fund were distributed in management. So split the single large fund into a single federal collection, and its management divided into state or regional subfunds so that state residents can both watch and be involved in their respective state's management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > the largest defense expenditures (almost equal to the next 10 or so > countries put together)

Not interested in reading an article that starts with this deliberately misleading "fact".

US spends a lot because it has a huge economy.

[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS)

<comment><USER14> Fascinating. I didn't know that the US military budget is a third of what it was 60 years ago. Yet another example of the media / popular perception being basically uncorrelated with reality.

<comment><USER15> >I didn't know that the US military budget is a third of what it was 60 years ago.

It's a little over a third of what it was 60 years ago _as a percentage of GDP_. And this is in line with most other developed nations.

As a percentage of the _federal budget_ , military spending accounts for 16% of the total budget, and 54% of discretionary spending. The US also spends 2-3x more per capita on the military than France, the UK, and Germany.

<comment><USER16> 60 years ago we were scaling down from the largest scale military action in human history and in the process of repurposing industrial capacity from military to peacetime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article doesn't mention the large number of illegal immigrants in the United States. To what extend does this affect income inequality? A large supply of unskilled labor would tend to keep wages lower.

Maybe the US should keep the unskilled labor market tight(er) and then wages should rise.

<comment><USER18> Does the US have more illegal immigrants as a proportion of it's population than other Western nations? I'm asking because I genuinely don't know. (I was tempted to put quotes around illegal immigrants because it's a fairly contested term but that would have possibly set the wrong tone)

I do get the sense that every country thinks they are a special case with regards to immigration. We definitely seemed to go through that phase in the UK.

<comment><USER19> If you're looking for a "better" term you could try using "undocumented immigrants" as that's the term normally used in more liberal media.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: [from a16z article] Why are Chinese business models more sophisticated? - <AUTHOR> Discussion of https://a16z.com/2018/12/07/when-advertising-isnt-enough-multimodal-business-models-product-strategy/
Let's assume that Chinese digital products have more sophisticated/desirable user experiences, as well as greater diversity of revenue streams.
How might this be explained on a macro level?
Example conjectures:
1. Maybe Chinese possess greater capacity for product complexity. Eg. because of STEM education or introducing computers at an earlier age.
2. Maybe Chinese Keynesian "animal spirit" exceeds that of the West-- greater raw, supply-side entrepreneurial drive, leading to faster experiments and better products.
3. Maybe China has more competition, and hyper-competition (competition within similar strategies) than the West, yielding greater competitive pressures driving product innovation.
4. The a16z article describes Chinese product innovations that are often network-based. Maybe Chinese society is more communal, yielding greater opportunity for network-based products.
5. Maybe Chinese consumers exhibit greater product switching behavior; they are more willing to try a new product vs. settling with a current choice. They are less satisfied with "good enough", leading to greater product innovation due to retention pressure. In the West, young people exhibit greater product switching behavior, and this trait declines with age. Maybe China has more young people than the West, as opposed to greater intrinsic switching behavior.
6. Maybe the greater sophistication/diversity of Chinese products is baseline macroeconomics: paraphrasing Adam Smith, "specialization is limited by the extent of the trade network". Larger trade networks have better stuff of the same type, cheaper stuff of the same type, and new types of stuff. Maybe China's domestic market is so large that their products are naturally of greater variance, including the variance of sophistication and revenue diversity. <comment><USER2> Please don't submit articles this way. Instead, submit the URL and then post your thoughts as a comment in the thread. That way your comment is on the same level as everyone else's.

This is actually the reason why links are disabled by default in text posts. From [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html):

 _This is to prevent people from submitting a link with their comments in a privileged position at the top of the page. If you want to submit a link with comments, just submit it, then add a regular comment._

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of it seems to derive from the fact that the payment systems in China are more sophisticated/efficient.

Micro-transactions are easier to perform when it's cheap to transfer $0.03 from one entity to the other and that's not possible with ACH or credit card systems in the US.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article does a pretty good job of explaining why Chinese business models can be more sophisticated at a macro level:

> _Largely because many people could not afford a computer, China skipped the > PC and the credit card; smartphones were the way many people were exposed to > the Internet for the first time. So today, products aren't just mobile > first, many are mobile only. Mobile payments have penetrated the country and > China has become a seamless digital society._

Payment friction doesn't seem to be as hard in China as it is in the West. Beyond gambling-esque micro transactions, transactional payments don't really exist - and attempts to do so have largely failed. For example many of the ideas tried in the Podcasting section failed in the west. I comes down to

1\. Our payments infrastructure really works against small transactional payments. Paying .30+2.9% on a $3 means 10% of your revenue goes to payment processing

2\. There isn't a very widely penetrated payments platform that is low friction - meaning users would rather turn away than pull out a credit card. Not to mention credit card processing isn't perceived as completely safe - there's an added risk for every new site I give my credit card too that they might overcharge me or get hacked and dump my data.

China doesn't seem to have these problems, and when your customers are more willing to pay because they feel more comfortable paying for things online, you as a company can experiment with more business models. IMO, Western companies are forced to think about advertising or SaaS in order to streamline the payment process. In each section of the article, alot of the "diversification" comes down to micropayments.

I find it interesting, in the Video section, the article compares to iQiyi to YouTube, instead of Twitch, which is less reliant on Ads, but more on paid subscriptions which include emojis, game tied purchases and special messages.

<comment><USER5> What are Chinese mobile transaction costs/rates like?

<comment><USER6> .1% iirc

<comment><USER5> Do you think America needs to get there? Aren't credit card processing/PayPal/Apple Pay/Amazon Pay all hovering at like 3%?... What will it take to drive those prices down?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Regulation bodies, existing payment infrastructure, perception of privacy concerns are some of primary hindrances for a super app to not exist in west.

<comment><USER8> > super app

Are you referring to WeChat? If so, I think Telegram is well positioned for that in the west.

<comment><USER7> Have been happy user of telegram, what is new?

<comment><USER8> Telegram's creating a blockchain platform for payment processing on the app. Telegram TON or something. Raised a few $B for the funding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most of these ideas aren't China specific, or Chinese innovations. Korea was often the innovator with mobile oriented content.

Paid webnovel services exist across much of Asia, and they've been trying (mostly failing) to get that to work in the US. See webnovel.com for an example of that.

</comment><comment><USER10> The premise of the article implies that there are only "subscription" based models, and "advertisement" models. And really, all I have to point out is Patreon (which is a subscription / donation model), which already blows a hole in the argument entirely.

Consider the team behind "Kurzgesagt -- In a Nutshell". Beyond just Youtube clicks + Patreon, they're also an animation agency who contracts out their artistic skills: [https://kurzgesagt.org/agency/](https://kurzgesagt.org/agency/)

Patreon subscribers get some mild benefits, but for the most part, the whole world enjoys their videos for free.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

In addition: there's a huge community of free advice (rather good advice too) for a variety of topics in Western culture. Reddit / GameFAQs / Wikis have basically killed video game guides (RIP Prima Game Guides), because you can get deeper information from community websites.

Why buy a game guide from Prima (which will inevitably go out of date), when communities are able to build websites / extract frame data / hack the game for precise information for free?

[https://www.smogon.com/bw/articles/bw_complete_damage_formul...](https://www.smogon.com/bw/articles/bw_complete_damage_formula)

This is the level of competition you've got, for free, in the game of Pokemon. No serious game guide company is ever going to be as complete as the analysis available for free in the general Pokemon community.

Just because there's no $$ on this project doesn't mean that its worthless. It just means that free information in the West more readily available, to the point where game guide companies cannot compete.

And there's a huge variety of topics: from programming, to finances, to more, where good, solid reliable advice is free. Python communities, Blender 3d modeling, etc. etc. Its certainly a problem for authors / podcasters who wish to get paid, but I'm not entirely sure if it is a general problem in Western Civilization in general.

In short: Wikipedia (and other, more niche, community wikis) have killed the encyclopedia (and other non-fiction sources) in USA Markets.

That doesn't exist in China because China has blocked Wikipedia, allowing for a thriving nonfiction Book / Podcast market to exist. I'm not Chinese, but my understanding is that the free-information / Bloggosphere / Wikisphere in China is far weaker due to free-speech / censorship issues.

I'd take the open society of the Western World with free (in beer) and free (libre) speech any day over high-revenue for podcasts.

<comment><USER11> Patreon isn't Facebook for money.</comment></comment>


How I Founded a $2B Company with a 95 Cent Book from RadioShack - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/how-i-founded-a-2-billion-dollar-company-with-a-95-cent-book-from-radioshack-8143e0d9607d#.nx3j2x3q2 <comment><USER2> Discussed a few weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159844) (same URL, minus the unique hash)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a fun title and a fun story, but I'm not sure if any real lessons can be derived from it.

They needed information on how to get the best audio quality and volume from a relatively small speaker and enclosure.

And they found a cheap booklet about building speaker enclosures. If it wasn't for radio shack, they probably would have found it somewhere else.

I'm not sure what to read into this.

<comment><USER4> For many years, Radio Shack was one of the few convenient places for consumers to quickly pickup random small parts related to electronics, audio, ham radio, etc.

On the other hand, there's a very rose-tinted nostalgic view of Radio Shack in many circles. The chain's main business as far back as I can remember was selling a lot of overpriced and low quality audio gear and other consumer electronics. It was far more a shopping mall location for unsophisticated consumers to buy their stereos than it was a makerspace of some sort.

<comment><USER5> I really enjoyed this recap of a manager's time at RadioShack.

[http://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack- eulogy...](http://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy- stories)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The standout sentence for me: "Because it supported the soul of Silicon Valley, the generations of tinkerers and builders who started small." Starting small is not what I associate with SV!

<comment><USER7> I'll take this opportunity to point to the _real_ history of SV:

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

Lecture by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The first half doesn't seem to be about SV at all - except that it is.

Bottom line: _Huge_ spending on R&D during WWII (based mostly on debt, by the way) _by government_ is the true foundation of SV, private capital only came in when the field had been prepared and fertilized.

I keep posting this video when the context seems appropriate because it was an eye opener for me who had a CS and a business education and had always thought SV was the proof of private capital's success.

<comment><USER6> Just got around to watching the lecture. Fascinating, thanks for posting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _At the heart of the Jobs and Wozniak blue box was the TRS-80, "one of the first affordable personal computers and one of the first computer devices RadioShack ever produced."_

This can't be right. ATW, the first TRS-80 was released on August 3, 1977. Jobs and Wozniak were long past their blue box by then. They incorporated Apple on April 1, 1976, released the Apple I on April 11, 1976, and released the Apple II on June 10, 1977.

<comment><USER9> Right, and unsurprisingly someone called it out in the comments. Not sure why it wasn't edited.

I found the use of 2000s-era "RadioShack" branding distracting. It was "Radio Shack" when it mattered.

Also surprised that Woz points to RS at all. I wasn't there, but I had the impression that there were better options in SV even back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That book was more like the inspiration for the company, not the actual investment itself. They had to make those devices, and the cost for those isn't less than 95 cents.

A modern analogy would be someone finding some interesting tutorial or video online (for FREEEEEEEE probably) that gave them some information and sparked an idea that they decided to found a business on.

This is basically just a way to attach a cute, marketable, "humble" story to their company. It's useful that they have one, but it's not a blueprint for how to start a successful company.

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't a bkueprint, but I totally se it as an investment. Had they not seen the book & read it, they wouldn't be having their company. So it is an indirect investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "How I Founded a $2B Company with a 95 Cent Book from RadioShack and a decent amount of time and and money"

</comment><comment><USER12> "How I tried to start a company with a $AMOUNT book from $OTHER_RETAILER... and failed misarably"

Survivorship bias is a _huge_ deal in this type of thing.

<comment><USER13> Looking forward to "How I drink six cans of Coke a day, yet still run Berkshire Hathaway".</comment></comment>


San Francisco: Protected tenants and what you need to know (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://thefrontsteps.com/2007/12/07/truth-be-told-protected-tenants-and-what-you-need-to-know/

<comment><USER2> Some context <http://www.sftu.org/ellis.html></comment>


Walmart patents a shopping cart that can track heart rates - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2018/10/10/walmart-may-soon-track-heart-rates-through-shopping-carts/amp/ <comment><USER2> This is creepy, do they have an opt-in for this?

<comment><USER3> It's just a patent so far.</comment></comment>


Android is dead. Long live Android. - <AUTHOR> http://zakelfassi.com/2013/03/21/android-dead-long-live-android/

<comment><USER2> seriously??? couldn't the title be `Android founder stepping down`?

i can't stand these `_ is dead. long live_` titles. they're absolutely childish and convey _nothing_ about what the article entails.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had similar thoughts about his departure. Think about this: Microsoft, Mozilla, Canonical, Tizen, and Chrome are all leveraging the "web platform" for their apps. If Google does somehow merge Chrome and Android, allowing "web platform" apps for phone and tablet that leaves one company out on it's own. Apple. Food for thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed ... you got it all my friend !</comment></comment>


How do U.S. Internet users spell 'search'? G-o-o-g-l-e - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/software/257426/how-do-us-internet-users-spell-search-g-o-o-g-l-e

<comment><USER2> This just makes me think that the market is ready to be disrupted. Probably not head-to-head with Google but in a way that goes around the current concept of web search.</comment>


Show HN: Llama – a fun, timed, task manager - <AUTHOR> https://llamalife.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> 10 months ago, I gave myself the challenge of learning to code, then to launch a product from scratch. Today I'm celebrating the launch of Llama v1.0!

Llama is a productivity tool that helps you power through lists, not just make them. It does this by letting you set a 'timer' for every task. Your goal is to finish before the time runs out.

The name comes from one of my favorite travel experiences to Peru where I visited a small town to learn about their culture. While I was there, Llamas were roaming around their village - those Llama's looked soo relaxed and were leading their best life

This is my attempt at leading a 'Llama life'. I built Llama because I found a huge correlation between my Mental Health and my Productivity levels throughout a given day. For me, if I don't feel like I'm making progress it significantly affects my mood. And during these Covid times and WFH, being productive has been all the more challenging.

It's been a journey - from knowing no code to learning html, css, javascript -> React, flexbox, styled components, bootstrap, webpack, git, node.js/express, Stripe integration for payments, Firebase for user authentication and database . But am excited to be finally releasing v1.0 of Llama.

Would love to hear your thoughts and any feedback.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> On main page I see: "Customize with emojis", take a look at [https://medium.com/@mantia/the-plural-of-emoji-is- emoji-7d05...](https://medium.com/@mantia/the-plural-of-emoji-is- emoji-7d053dc50e3f)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the heads up! will change that! :)</comment></comment>


Wikileaks' Assange Wins TIME Person of Year Reader Poll - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikileaks_assange_wins_time_person_of_year_readers.php

<comment><USER2> Related:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2001882>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1990612>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1975517>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1968958></comment>


Russia Has Invented Social Media Blitzkrieg - <AUTHOR> http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/13/russia-has-invented-social-media-blitzkrieg/ <comment><AUTHOR> Best quote describes how Russia played groups against each other in an attempt to Balkanize the US:

"Not content to impersonate African-Americans, the Russian trolls also pretended to be American Muslims. They took on the digital identity of a real group called United Muslims of America and, according to the Daily Beast, "pushed memes that claimed Hillary Clinton admitted the U.S. 'created, funded and armed' al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State; claimed that John McCain was ISIS' true founder; whitewashed blood-drenched dictator Moammar Gadhafi and praised him for not having a 'Rothschild-owned central bank'; and falsely alleged Osama bin Laden was a 'CIA agent.'"

At the same time that they were attempting to foment Muslim discontent in America, the opportunistic Russians were also pandering to anti-Muslim nativists — including organizing an anti-Muslim rally in Idaho in 2016. The Russians were behind websites such as "Being Patriotic" and "Secured Borders," which often promoted "fake news" such as the claim that "Michigan allows Muslim immigrants to collect welfare checks and other benefits for four wives.""</comment>


The most underhyped Silicon Valley success: Meebo - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2008/08/04/the-most-underhyped-silicon-valley-success-meebo/

<comment><USER2> "This is like an MBA-level course on the latest advertising and community trends." (<http://qik.com/video/149651>)

I do not have an MBA, so do not know if this is true, but the video provides some good insight.</comment>


Designing More Usable Web Sites - <AUTHOR> http://trace.wisc.edu/world/web/ <comment><USER2> It's a page fulla links. Couldn't they make it more, I don't know, _usable_?</comment>


Verizon reportedly seeking to sell Tumblr - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/02/verizon-reportedly-seeking-to-sell-tumblr/ <comment><USER2> The same thing happened with live journal. Executives massively over-react to the terror of possibly hosting child pornography, and therefore decided _all_ pornography - or even anything mildly erotic - had to be ejected. And, like what happened with live journal, the site never recovered.

As a sex positive liberal, I admit a certain level of schadenfreude at seeing tumblr's decision bite them in the butt. Using child porn as a pretext to justify a puritanical purge of all erotic content is absolutely obnoxious IMO.

<comment><USER3> > Using child porn as a pretext to justify a puritanical purge of all erotic > content is absolutely obnoxious IMO.

And not what Tumblr did - their erotic content ban was under way before the CP snafu got them temporarily kicked out of the iOS App Store. Consensus is that it saves them from SESTA-FOSTA legal troubles.

<comment><USER4> Did SESTA-FOSTA actually accomplish anything? Do we have numbers to show that it put a stop to sex trafficking?

Why was this legislation pushed through so quickly without any opposition like SOPA or PIPA?

I don't get the "why".

Who was behind this?

<comment><USER5> It definitely made things worse.

"New statistics shared by the San Francisco police show... sex trafficking shot up 170 percent in 2018." [https://www.dailydot.com/irl/increase-sex- trafficking-sesta-...](https://www.dailydot.com/irl/increase-sex-trafficking- sesta-fosta/) They claim it's just improved reporting because of increased outreach.

"DiAngelo says she received calls from women who are suicidal because they've been forced to work on the streets and return to dangerous pimps." [https://www.kalw.org/post/one-year-federal-law-curb-sex- traf...](https://www.kalw.org/post/one-year-federal-law-curb-sex-trafficking- online-remains-controversial)

"Breyer estimated that there were about double or triple the usual number of workers seeking assistance." [https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/1/17306486/sex- work-online-f...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/1/17306486/sex-work-online- fosta-backpage-communications-decency-act)

"online private group chats where sex workers could share survival strategies and harm reduction techniques to stay safe have also disappeared" [https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture- features/anti-s...](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture- features/anti-sex-trafficking-advocates-say-new-law-cripples-efforts-to-save- victims-629081/) (Banner image kinda NSFW)

Here's an actual survey of sex workers in Seattle. [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KBsVBQh7EsRexAyZacaf...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KBsVBQh7EsRexAyZacaf_fUvvsVb2MR1Q30_gV7Jegc/edit#slide=id.g3b643c759f_0_50) (results start on slide 7)

And it's had effects internationally. [https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/sex/sex- work...](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/sex/sex-workers-in- australia-say-american-law-is-creating-devastating-losses-back-home/news- story/09139a2f0d631cd7284090d2336ca517)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tumblr is an absolute goldmine of pure original content unavailable anywhere else.

A savvy enterprise that acquired it should re-allow adult content with however many filters they like to make amends with the community and devote a while to redo UX and quality of life. Content creators will absolutely come back, as no proper competitor ever rose in the current vacuum yet. After that it could turn into a unicorn in less than a year.

<comment><USER7> I think we're going to see companies start pulling back from hosting user generated content in general. Policing it is a massive headache and a guarantee of getting pulled into all the current political dogfighting.

<comment><USER8> Or we could go back to the concept of content-agnostic neutral platforms, the best of which have self-moderation available to taste (e.g. subreddit subscriptions).

There seems to be a growing reluctance to accept that a person or a group being allowed to exist on a platform does not in any way serve as an endorsement of that person or group. I believe that the copyright legislation in Europe, for example, has very little to do with copyright, and very much to do with holding platforms accountable for the content that their users produce. The net result is the platforms necessarily invoke nuance-less strategies for sanitizing the content according to a narrow band of what is acceptable.

<comment><USER9> > Or we could go back to the concept of content-agnostic neutral platforms

Europe's Article 13 and its companion will make sure that NEVER happens.

<comment><USER10> The EU is so frustratingly inconsistent on internet-freedom matters. On the one hand there's a tendency towards very strong privacy protections through the GDPR and similar legislation/regulations. And on the other there's blatant publisher-protectionist insanity like Article 13. It's a mess.

<comment><USER11> How is that inconsistent? Both things are heavy-handed.

<comment><USER12> By that same logic,

> How is that inconsistent? Both things are a law.

<comment><USER11> Which supports my comment, because if it's a law it's heavy-handed. I was comparing it to having no laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was pretty active on Tumblr in 2010 had thousands of followers when that was "big" back then and its sad they never asked for paid subscriptions with minor aesthetic features. I would of happily paid $5 a month to use my domain with my Tumblr blog instead they gave that away too. Charge for GIF avatar features. Charge to be able to have access to / or to post NSFW content.

This ads first mentality for profitability is stupid. Lastly throw in an ad here or there for different musicians under their respective tags if you want ads. Talk about contextual advertising that wouldnt bother me if I had seen it. Like maybe a band is doing a concert in my own bam!

The way I used Tumblr I may of paid $10 a month for a premium account if they just made it all the worthwhile. They also provide asset hosting for free. Come on!

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately targeted advertising appears to be the best way to maximize returns for massive, VC-backed social media platforms. Charging for stuff simply isn't as profitable. The numbers have been run before multiple times.

<comment><USER15> I was talking with Twitch's Director of Engineering about a year ago and he was saying that their ad revenue dwarfs their revenue earned directly from users (subscriptions and bits) by at least 10 to 1. I was amazed as I've seen how much people are willing to give away on that site.

<comment><USER16> Which is nuts when you think that something like ~70% of twitch users have an active ad-blocker.

<comment><USER17> Do advertisers know if their ad is getting blocked? I'd assume that they do but are being willfully ignorant about how ineffective adverts on the web really are. I mean who even clicks on an ad on the internet, Grandma?

<comment><USER16> I don't generally click the links, but if I see something I like, I'll google it or go directly to the site. As for if advertisers "see" their ad being blocked: it depends on the way the ad is being blocked / served. Most adblockers just blacklist certain web domains, so if a JS call is made to that domain it is blocked. The advertiser won't ever see it was blocked or have to pay for it being shown. The website owners are usually the ones hurt most by adblockers.

Twitch gets around this now by integrating the ads directly into the video stream before it even hits your browser, so there is no way for a simple ad- blocker that blacklists domains to tell when the stream is streaming an ad vs the actual content.

Most publishers put up with adblocking because most ad companies offer "set it and forget it" solutions. Just drop a piece of JS into their HTML and they start earning money. Eventually publishers will get their ads via a REST API or something (server side) and splice the ads directly into the HTML themselves, so that the ad-blocker won't know what is content and what is ads.

At that point, ad blockers just have to make their best guess at which HTML elements (div/span/etc.) contain ads by checking names, dimensions, and other features and deleting that element.

I think their might be laws that say you have to explicitly label ads or sponsored content as such, so that might make it easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Step 1: ban the thing the product you just bought makes all of its money from

Step 2: ????

Step 3: sell it for a loss!

<comment><USER19> The worth of a large collection of shady pirated porn blogs is marginal. You can only host very cheap ads next to it and it devalues the rest of the site.

<comment><USER20> A great deal of the porn is, as I understand it, not pirated, but original content. It is, after all, something a significant percentage of the population naturally possesses the resources to create.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _cuts down tree_

Would anyone like to buy this nice stump?

<comment><USER22> Stump grinding is actually a big thing now. They make woodstove pellets from it, and mulch, among other things.

edit: I should add that it adds to the overall destruction of a forest ecosystem and I don't agree with it on large-scales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What has Verizon achieved with the AOL/Yahoo = Oath purchase? Flickr gone. Tumblr gone.

A bunch of blogs?

<comment><USER24> Yahoo is still most likely an advertising cash cow.. a cow that is probably shrinking though. Wouldnt be surprised if they keep laying off Yahoo staff to make it as profitable as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Classic. Telecom shouldn't be messing around with owning social media websites. Sadly tumblr is burnt toast thanks to yahoo and other cruft

<comment><USER26> Yahoo was pretty good stewards of the site however. I think Yahoo recognized the importance of the community at least.

Yahoo never monetized Tumblr, but I don't think they did anything particularly wrong with it.

<comment><USER27> Yahoo didn't do anything because of their lack of ability by that point, not a virtue.

In the same way that didn't stop Verizon..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Anyone want to hazard a guess at how many hundred million dollars of Tumblr's value was destroyed by the adult content ban?

There should be zero bonuses or incentive payments for the executive group that made this decision. The effect was predictable and widely forecast.

</comment><comment><USER29> If BuzzFeed is to be believed, Pornhub of all places has expressed interest: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/pornhub-i...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/pornhub- interested-in-buying-tumblr). It seems weird until you realize they probably couldn't do a worse job than Yahoo and Verizon did; at least they understand why people visit the site.

<comment><USER30> Pornhub is competent, "gets" Tumblr, and has the know-how when it comes to filtering porn. With how cheap they're going to get this, this could be a massive win for Pornhub.

<comment><USER31> Agreed. Seems like a no-brainer for PH if they have the cash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If Tumblr with porn was a dumpster fire, now it's just a dumpster with ashes.

Good luck with the sale.

</comment><comment><USER32> A lot of people will blame Yahoo for Tumblr's demise, but Tumblr's product just did not do enough to keep up in the mobile era. They were soundly out- competed for attention by Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, and Facebook.

<comment><USER33> If you think the demise of tumblr is about anything other than FOSTA, we must be experiencing different parts of the internet.

<comment><USER34> Tumblr peaked (in google searches) in mid-2013: [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=t...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=tumblr). Peak Alexa rank was at #23 in August 2013 according to this: [http://tumblr.com.alexarankdb.com/](http://tumblr.com.alexarankdb.com/)

FOSTA became law in April 2018.

So please explain to us how FOSTA was responsible for Tumblr's demise.

<comment><USER35> I was a heavy Tumblr user until I discovered Reddit around then, which made it easier to find the same type of content with more consistency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Please sell it to Pornhub.

Don't run it as a porn site, but run it as an art site for adults.

Restore all the adult content.

Make a decent mobile app, where viewers can like or tip easily.

Help creators get paid, using Pornhub's leverage with their financial institutions

<comment><USER37> When the porn ban was being implemented they were saying for creators to upload their content to them (art etc), which seemed odd. They're really been following this for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'd like to point out that Verizon didn't buy Yahoo to get Tumblr. In all likelihood they never had any plans for it to begin with. I'm honestly surprised they didn't just shut it down.

</comment><comment><USER39> Not surprising. I don't think Verizon "gets" Tumblr, or knows how to deal with it

<comment><USER40> To be fair, Yahoo didn't "get" Tumblr either; they just more or less didn't try to do anything with it. Verizon tried to appeal to more advertisers...but completely shot themselves in the foot. I honestly don't see how it can be salvaged. There is a rumor that PornHub could buy it, but I'm not sure how that's possible. It will be interesting how cheap it is sold. Yahoo bought it for $1.1. Billion. I'm sure by now it's worth 1/4th of that.

<comment><USER41> It's not clear that Tumblr can be salvaged anymore. A name like pornhub could give confidence that Tumblr won't try another porn purge; at least to the people paying attention. But I suspect that the vast majority of users that left would simply be unaware of change of policy, let alone the change of ownership.

And even if they were, the community is gone, and you can't just rebuild that.

<comment><USER42> How about selling Tumblr to where its community has seem to gone? Twitter. Gives Twitter a long format and a better platform for content.

<comment><USER43> I don't think they all went to one place. You say Twitter but my anecdotal impression was reddit.

<comment><USER44> I have some model and photographer friends who were big on Tumblr and they came to visit me a couple weeks ago. They ran popular tumblr blogs and are fully financed from their Patreons. Their said all their friends who's livelyhood depended on their reach switched to twitter from tumblr. I'm sure the small porn blogs or so just died or maybe went somewhere else. But twitter is where the bulk of the professionals took refuge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Its amazing how quickly sites can fall when management makes a bonehead move and the community turns against it, reminds me of Digg.

</comment><comment><USER46> Lost in the flutter of this discussion is Oath's absurd, borderline comical full-page GDPR notice that gets slapped on _every_ Tumblr subdomain. This was as much or more of a traffic deterrent for me than the content restrictions, which as far as I can tell were never competently enforced (but succeeded in driving off a lot of users anyhow).

<comment><USER47> Agreed - personally, I was never a tumblr user anyway, but Oath's farcical "GDPR" notice has ensured that I will never use any of their sites, whatever kind of content they may have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Alternative take: the great porn purge cleaned the sites biggest problem up, and in the hands of a capable administrator, it's a nonissue (which is to say pornhub is a good fit)

<comment><USER49> Keep in mind that a fairly significant section of the community (anything sex- positive, adult-adjacent, or associated with either) got swept out along with the porn, and a larger portion followed them ("community" bites both ways, especially if you break trust). I'm not sure I can think of any social sites that have survived and rebuilt after such a large exodus - after all, you've already alienated the populous most interested in and willing to discover your product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It would be quite a plot twist if PornHub acquired them :)

<comment><USER51> They're definitely interested:

[https://popculture.com/trending/2019/05/02/pornhub- intereste...](https://popculture.com/trending/2019/05/02/pornhub-interested- buying-tumblr/)

<comment><USER52> Techcrunch has another article about why _pornhub shouldn 't buy tumblr_ , which brings up some good points [https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/02/porns- secret-monopoly/](https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/02/porns-secret-monopoly/)

<comment><USER53> But top 10 porn tube sites like Xvideos and Xhamster aren't owned by Mindgeek. They have enough porn to satisfy the majority. The article is arguing mindgeek alone is causing issues and lower wages. When it seems more like it is people being cool with piracy and tube sites popping up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What is Tumblr even worth now?

</comment><comment><USER55> How much do they want for it?

</comment><comment><USER56> Wasn't this one of Marissa Mayer's accomplishments ?

</comment><comment><USER57> ಠ⌣ಠ</comment>