DuckDuckGo Traffic - <AUTHOR> https://duckduckgo.com/traffic <comment><USER4> Bang commands[0] really sealed DDG for me. I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing "!yt badgerbadgerbadger" to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic.

!g (search on Google) also makes it far easier to switch. Don't like the results? Prefix !g and try again.

My other favorites:

      !sr [name of subreddit] - much faster than "reddit.com/r/[name]"
      !r - <USER2>
      !w - <USER3>
      !cache - get Google's cache of a page
      !hn - HN Search
      !godoc - Search godoc.org for documentation on a Go package. Your favorite language is probably represented

EDIT: formatting

[0] [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

<comment><USER5> This is an offshoot discussion and I have nothing against DDG or bang commands -- just presenting another side of convenient searches.

> I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total > lack of friction of typing "!yt badgerbadgerbadger" to get specifically > YouTube results was fantastic.

I find "use your own search" to be much less friction than going through DDG since it takes me right to results from the custom search, rather than having to redirect through DDG before going to the results. (Edited to add the following) I'm not going to lie and say that it doesn't make me a little paranoid to think of EVERY search I do going through one provider regardless of their current privacy stance.

I've used them since 2002ish in Opera, continued using them in Chrome, and now I use them in Firefox.

AFAIK you don't even need "install-your-own search plugins" \-- just right- click on the search box on the site you want to search, and add keyword.

For example, I have "aj" for Amazon Japan and "au" for Amazon US, so I can just hit cmd-t for a new tab and type "au pretzels" directly in the address bar.

This has the advantage of letting you define your own, too.

<comment><USER6> There's a thing I wish FF had that Chrome has had for a long, long time (an older comment of mine):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056174)

re: ease of searching within sites and building that availability (of sites) up

<comment><USER7> I don't understand the behavior your are talking about. I tried in Google Chrome and could not figure it out.

In Chrome's address bar, you type the name of a site (say reddit.com), then tab, then some keywords, and that does a google search for your keywords inside reddit.com?

<comment><USER8> On chrome://settings/searchEngines you can see all the search engines and their search queries listed. In the keyword column, you can also see the associated keyword. This means if you wanted to search in npmjs.com, then type npmjs.com and then a space in the omnibar. Ofcourse, if you wanted to make it shorter, you can edit the keyword in the same page to say `npm`, then you can search by using npm followed by a space or tab

<comment><USER9> I've used that in Firebird/Firefox for over ten years. If I remember correctly it's configured by adding a keyword to a bookmark and adding a placeholder within the bookmark URI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Over the past 5 years I've tried DDG several times. Each time except the last I wanted to stick with it but the results simply didn't stand up to what I'd see on Google.

About 6 months ago (a year? I can't remember) I switched and haven't looked back. Now, when I look at google, the results actually look less relevant. As well, the ads on Google have become very obnoxious. I don't feel like I'm being served the best results but instead results of companies who paid the most.

<comment><USER11> DuckDuckGo uses Bing underneath so the company whom you should really be complaining to is MSFT.

<comment><USER12> if i search for <something> in ddg and then do "!b <something>" (the !bang for a bing search), I don't get the same results.

<comment><USER13> Try "what is my ip" and notice that both DDG and Bing show the same cached IP address for Microsoft Bingbot in the snippets.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Sure; ddg _includes_ Bing as a source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been using DDG for a while now, my biggest if not only concern with DDG is local specific events or chronologically close events.

If my search string has or shares close proximity to either an event in the past or a local event else where of a similar name, I rarely find my results.

For instance during the Australian Election recently, if I searched for Australian Election I was never returned results for the election occurring at that time (literally). Instead I was returned the results of the prior election, I assume the prior Australian Election has a higher search ranking than the election happening on that day.

NB: Maybe I need to get more Australian's on DDG...

Of course my searching habits have changed to counter act this, now I counter act this by adding either/or/both a locale and datetime and it nearly always works. I still have to use the !g for more specific searches but I say DDG covers 90% of my use cases now.

Edit: a lot, my post read like shit.

<comment><USER15> Totally feel the same here in France especially for recent news.

I guess Google obviously have more horsepower and manage to index in realtime majors news outlets and selected social accounts recursively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just tried DDG for the first time, and I'm blown away how good it is! Since I'm mostly using search engines for programming, I searched for "clojure filter" on DDG out of curiosity. It gave me all the relevant documentation pages BUT here is the "blown away" part - it showed me a small Clojure code snippet on the right side of the screen, explaining the usages of the "filter" with a short and concise docstring. It also worked with Kotlin and Swift! I tried the same search query with !g prefix to google it, but left rather disappointed - it's just links to the documentation. As a programmer, this is a tipping point for me to completely ditch Google.

<comment><USER17> That's not all. DDG has cheat sheets for common Unix commands.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=grep+cheat+sheet](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=grep+cheat+sheet)

<comment><USER18> I really like this. Reminds me of one of my favourite command-line tools, [https://tldr.sh/](https://tldr.sh/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hell yeah, this is really good thing to see!

I've been 100% DDG for ~6 months now and almost never have to use !g anymore. Part of the problem was getting over the anxiety of wanting to double check with Google every time I use the service. 99% of the time I use !g I get the same results as what I got from DDG anyway. Plus having the dark theme saves my eyes and battery.

<comment><USER20> A dark theme only saves battery on an OLED or CRT screen. LCD screens (i.e. most) use slightly more energy displaying black than white. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or- fiction-b...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction- black-is/)

<comment><USER21> I believe most phones are OLED now..

<comment><USER22> Most Samsung phones, maybe. A lot of other brands are not using OLED.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been using DDG for a few years and I find it superior to google.

I used to often use the !g bang to google a result if I didn't find what I was after, but over time the results on DDG and google have ended up roughly on par. And now I could never go back to using a search engine that lacks a bang- like interface.

I also like that my results aren't region specific unless I actually ask for a region specific result set. I had a lot of issues using google because it was constantly finding local things when I'm looking for something more global.

The way I see it is DDG doesn't assume to know best and gives you the tools to find the answer you're seeking. Google thinks they know best and if you're not after their "happy path" you won't be able to find what you're looking for no matter what. Look at how much they degraded the ability of things like quotes and pluses to affect the search.

It's awesome to see that DDG is continuing to grow. They're an awesome example of a product carving a niche against giants in a competitive field and it's inspirational to see.

<comment><USER24> I switched a few years ago, and as a Scandinavian user it's good, but not superior to Google.

It struggles a lot with Scandinavian languages being similar enough that search results will often default to another country, i.e. if searching in Danish you will get Norwegian results.

For anything news or tech related, i only use DDG, but for local queries, shopping etc, i sadly still default to using !g.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> DDG web search has come a long way and I think I am now finally able to use it exclusively.

I just wish it did not use Apple Maps. I hadn't used it since it was launched, I thought it might have improved a bit, but no. A quick browse around Sydney shows so many mistakes. It doesn't even list Katoomba as a town, mislabels it "Blue Mountains" instead (which is the name of the government area/council).

I am not sure how they manage to get away with having maps that are simply wrong (the park next to where I live is mislabeled; instead a random piece of grass around 3 blocks south gets the park name). OpenStreetMap might not have fancy features, but at least it's accurate most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER26> Honest question: what distinguishes DDG from Google or Bing? Why shouldn't they (or won't they) follow the same trajectory as our once beloved "don't be evil" Google of the late 2000s?

I've used DDG off and on, and I think the interface is fine (perhaps better these days as Google seems to have gotten worse), but I see the idea of selling clicks as being too lucrative.

Are we just rooting for the downfall of the incumbent / the rise of the underdog?

<comment><USER11> Because their business model is built on privacy and not necessarily search tech. See my previous comment on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22078338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22078338)

In many ways they are more like a VPN company — a proxy for hire. If they want to expand, a good way would be to acquire Keybase or maybe something like [https://bloom.sh](https://bloom.sh) and continue exploiting the inferior Google alternatives market.

<comment><USER27> A business model implies making some sort of profit. How are they funding themselves currently?

<comment><USER28> Contextual ads that don't spy on you. [https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo- help-pages/company/ad...](https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- pages/company/advertising-and-affiliates/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I originally started switching my default browser search results to DuckDuckGo about 18 months ago due to privacy concerns and not wanting to support Google.

A strange side-effect I noticed over this period was being able to find things _much quicker_ than my colleagues. I thought maybe I was just better at picking what words to type in - but after we did some comparisons, DDG really does just provide better results now (and increasingly so) for the kinds of searches we're doing.

The bangs are useful, but honestly I haven't really needed to use them. Occasionally I'll use a !g or !yt, but this is maybe 1% or less of my searches.

I've even taken the rare step of disabling uBlock and some other Firefox extensions because I _want_ DDG to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER30> 3.5 billion queries for google daily, 54 mil daily record for DDG. That means that google achieves the daily record for DDG for slightly more than 14 minutes. It is incredibly hard / nearly impossible to compete against a tech monopoly in its core business grounds. I would like to switch to DDG, but for me the google results are definitely more relevant than the DDG results. I wish it was otherwise.

<comment><USER31> Duck Duck Go Traffic Daily Average Dec 2019: 47,942,069

Duck Duck Go Traffic Daily Average Dec 2018: 31,037,684

=LN(3500000000)/(LN(47,942,069)-LN(31,037,684)) = 4.72 Years to catch up. Assuming steady _percentage rate_ of growth and Google doesn't grow.

<comment><USER32> I think the answer is closer to 10 years, as ln( 3500 / 48 ) / ln( 48 / 31 ) = 9.8

In 4.72 years, they would be at 48 * ( 48 / 31 )^4.72 = 378 millions / day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I love DDG, I just want to point out that everyone is hating on Google's new search results, in part because of a distracting favicon, and DuckDuckGo results have had similar favicons for months now.

<comment><USER34> Can't say I ever noticed the favicons at all, nor do I see any comments complaining about them. I don't think favicons are Google's problem, I see no evidence for this hypothesis.

A more likely problem is the information density of the results pages. Google rarely manages to put more than a single search result above the fold on my screen, while DDG generally gets in six. That, unlike favicons, is a huge disparity between the two.

<comment><USER35> There is a post with 600+ complaint comments on first page city more than a day now... How can you say "you don't see any comments complaining"?

<comment><USER34> I don't see any mention of favicons in this thread other than the one I responded to, and I don't know what thread from yesterday you're talking about.

But since both DDG and Google have favicons on the results page, I find it hard to believe this is _really_ a matter that has people moving to DDG. This hypothesis basically amounts to _" people are blind idiots who notice favicons on one page but not the other"_, and I don't think that's true.

<comment><USER20> > I don't know what thread from yesterday you're talking about.

It's got >2600 upvotes and has been high on the front page for 18 hours now: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823)

> people are blind idiots

Hm...you may be onto something there :-)

<comment><USER34> Favicons are mentioned once in the first page of that discussion. I think attributing all that outrage to the favicons, not the fact that they made ads look like results, is a massive mischaracterization of that discussion. Bordering on bad faith...

I maintain that favicons are VERY low on the list of reasons people are switching from Google to DDG. DDG having favicons too should be proof enough of that.

<comment><USER20> I think you are the only person trying to infer that anyone claimed favicons were the key thing.

The original tweet that started the whole discussion is: "There's something strange about the recent design change to google search results, favicons and extra header text: they all look like ads, which is perhaps the point?"

The comment you replied to said: "everyone is hating on Google's new search results, _in part_ because of a distracting favicon" (emphasis mine).

There is no real inconsistency there, but for some reason you seem to have decided that there is and that it is very important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ironically I made the switch to DDG in protest of the Dragonfly fiasco. Only later I learned DDG results are sourced from Bing, which provides censored search in China for years. But I stayed with DDG because the UX suits me.

</comment><comment><USER37> I like DDG because it covers most of my basic search needs. I only use Google when I need services that are related to my location. Searching with Google is becoming less effective for me because the first pages almost always bring up ads or business-related content (like blogs that are sponsoring something or are trying to sell some product or service).

<comment><USER38> Same here. Google is scarily good at giving me local results, but for general web searches, DDG is almost always more accurate. Google almost always takes my very specific query and stretches it too far, so the results are actually for something a lot more commonly searched for. I see this a lot with programming-related searches where I'm looking for a very specific problem and Google just gives me general tutorials on the topic while DDG usually has the correct SO answer in the answer card and all the other results are more relevant too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've never considered switching to DDG but I'm starting to seriously consider it. The thing that is pushing me over the edge is the latest Google search results display change making everything look like an advertisement. Honestly, it's just super confusing to me and I can't get used to it. Here I come DDG.

</comment><comment><USER40> A testimony on how hard it is to compete in a red ocean. Ten years, big growth and still barely a dent on Google's share. But I hope you get there someday.

Congratulations to the team behind this!

</comment><comment><USER41> Fully switched, first to Firefox, in 2018, on desktop and mobile, then to DDG, last summer. It is really good now, so no looking back.

</comment><comment><USER42> Ironically I just made the switch to DDG today with Firefox because Google's results have become so polluted and irrelevant.

I expected Firefox to ship with DDG as the default but alas it did not to my surprise. Why is Google still the default in Firefox?

<comment><USER43> A significant fraction of Mozilla's funding comes from google paying to make google the default. I am not sure what the dollar value of this agreement was, but it was a sizable fraction of a billion dollars a year last I checked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've been really skeptical of DDG, but one of my favorite features they've implemented is the system wide dark mode support on macOS and iOS. It's worth using just so I don't burn my eyes out on Google's solid white results page at night, with the option to jump to it if I need it.

The results are sometimes worse, but at this point, I'm pretty happy with DDG. DuckDuckHack is discontinued though, which is a shame. I feel like it's one of their advantages (letting the community write new features into the engine), but they don't seem to want to do anything with it.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm not good at graphing data, but isn't the graph exponential while the growth is almost flat or, at best, linear? They mention the graph is yearly but still their best period was 2017-2018, which is not accurately plotted.

I'm not trying to throw mud at DDG's great accomplishments but it does feel a little deceiving if you just look at the graph and go out sharing it with your friends like they're outpacing Google or the search market overall 5-10% yearly growth, which means they are currently at par at most, once their initial boom passed.

<comment><USER46> Growth is the first derivative, not the second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I have been using DDG for like ten years, I love it, but I still use google for country specific results. I live in Switzerland and if I want, for example, a toy for my kids, something I want to order locally (for free shipping or the like), I use google.ch with the country option set on. I hope for DDG to add a bang someday like !.ch to have only results from swiss domains (not only .ch but all domains registered to a Swiss address). Of course for all countries.

</comment><comment><USER48> I've used DDG for some years now, and never had the problem switching and needing !g that others describe. (I use things like !w to search specific actual sites, but not to change global search engine.)

The only thing that bugs me is regional result relevance. It gives you a toggle on/off for present country by IP; as far as I can tell it has no effect.

I get /en-us/ and amazon.com as (all) the top results whether it's on or off.

<comment><USER49> As a 99% DDG user: I've always had better results with Google on specific tech problem-solving searches. Not sure how to explain it but it feels as if Google Search understands better the significance of the word order I'm using in order to give extra context. With DDG performing the search it's like I can tell from the first result that it really didn't get at what I was trying to figure out. How is Google so much better that that? It's been this way for years.

Still this isn't enough to take me away from the bangs and additional speed and privacy.

(Even when I see some joker/SEO is e.g. abusing Unicode to get bolding in DDG search results, saw that the other day)

<comment><USER48> Maybe my results _would_ be better on Google, but for me it's enough that I've never had a problem with DDG to make me bother trying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I've been using DDG for a bit more than one year in all my devices. At the beginning, DDG results in any non-English language was not very good, but it got improved a lot recently! I still use !g bang command if I don't find something, but it is nice to see that DDG gets better and better over time :-)

</comment><comment><USER51> Adding specific bangs to your phone's dictionary amazingly improves using DDG on mobile devices.

e.g. for Google, I just have to swipe "bang" at the and of any query to add "!g" at the end of it. DDG picks it up flawlessly - you don't have to mind the spacing, etc. Google fires up instantly.

</comment><comment><USER52> Funny, I just started using DDG on my phone recently and found it extremely responsive and the UI very nice.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've been using DDG for a gradually increasing share of my searches and as my primary mobile browser for years.

The search side has been great, though Google still wins for many queries, due to personalization. On the other hand Google also fails for me on many searches by being "clever" compared to its functionality a decade ago and assuming I've made a typo or are searching for something I've not.

On the mobile app side, DDG is a bit frustrating though. About 5% of sites have major issues. Probably the worst is Indie Hackers, where I simply can't log in. After hitting oauth, a blank page with a Firebase URL comes up and I'm still not logged in. Fortunately _most_ sites with oauth-based login don't have this issue on DDG but enough do that it's annoying.

</comment><comment><USER54> I was curious how it looked on a log scale: [https://faculty.washington.edu/cah49/DDGTrafficLogarithmic.p...](https://faculty.washington.edu/cah49/DDGTrafficLogarithmic.png)

Very consistent growth since 2014.

<comment><USER55> But lower than before that. It's a "rotated hockey stick" curve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I've noticed the significant drop in quality of Google results as well. Tried DDG couple of years ago, but wasn't happy. This post, however, pushed me to install the DDG extension in Chrome and give it another chance. Let's see how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER57> Unlike some other comments, I use Google mainly and DuckDuckGo sometimes.

As I'm building a product or doing some other imperitive job, I'm not focused on privacy (other than the fact that I put on AlgoVPN and switch between my VPNs often) than getting results that fix bugs or genuinely help me.

Sometimes when I'm searching pretty vague/generic queries I go to DDG because there's a ton of websites that hack their SEO to the top and DDG alleviates that.

As Google recently rolled out its horrible UI I may go to DDG a bit more, but at the end of the day I just need good search results, regardless of which platform (which both engines provides, but based on if the query is generic or not)

</comment><comment><USER58> Good, now do something about shady websites at the top of most of my searches with DDG.

For instance, search for any late model car and you'll find a slew of websites like 2020-make-model.com or 2021modelmake.com etc. These sites look like they're all generated from a similar template with minor changes, with some real pictures along with short poorly written articles that are completely useless, at best they're speculative. They're just good enough to get into the top search results but don't actually provide consumers with any useful information.

</comment><comment><USER59> A couple of months ago I switched from Google to DDG and I'm quite happy so far. The reason? The outrageous number of ad results I was getting. I once even thought I was not searching on Google but on a scam website that looked like a Google, but sadly I checked and realized it was Google. I just don't understand how Google has turned into an ad manager instead of an Internet search engine

</comment><comment><USER60> I don't want to sound like an astroturfer but bing results have actually gotten much better too. Though search is a big field and something I wouldn't mind mozilla getting into too.

<comment><USER13> That's why DDG's results have been getting better, since it's Bing underneath.

<comment><USER61> This is an oft repeated misconception, their results come from multiple sources. (ddg user since ~2013, and there were times when they did heavily favor yandex or bing usually, but these days the sources are much more varied, and they also have their own crawler called duckbot I think)

<comment><USER13> [https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- pages/results/so...](https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- pages/results/sources/)

Sounds to me that the 400 sources and their own crawler are used for Instant Answers, while all their "traditional links" come from Bing and Verizon.

<comment><USER61> I guess I stand corrected. I wonder why the results are so much better than bing in that case?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I made the switch today, I'm liking it so far. Google results just aren't relevant anymore, I don't like scrolling through obvious keyword spam sites that are full of nothing of value.

</comment><comment><USER63> I use DDG a lot and that may be (partially?) because of the privacy thing but the auto-complete is basically useless.

Otherwise it's getting better and better. I have replaced the Google search bar on Android by the DDG one and I notice less and less the difference in quality, while I love searching anything without the feeling it will affect my Google profile account.

</comment><comment><USER64> Any information on traffic from different language users and regions?

I'm impressed by DDG's search results for non-English queries. I remember it was almost unusable in Japanese a couple of years ago. It's not bad now even in Japanese, although there is an obvious overwrap with Bing's results if I compare using the same query.

</comment><comment><USER65> I like DuckDuckGo, right time this page appeared on my timeline, I'm going to switch to DDG while google's search results look like an ad lately.

\- [https://twitter.com/craigmod/status/1219644556003565568](https://twitter.com/craigmod/status/1219644556003565568)

</comment><comment><USER66> As long as the search results don't need to be extremely localized, I found DDG much better and less obnoxious for a year.

Still can't get away from "Pizzerias around me" style queries on G + not expecting DDG to take these up anytime soon, as they are probably like 10% of my search queries per day anyways.

<comment><USER67> DDG gives you the option to have it detect your location or you can set your location manually. I just set mine to approximately my usual location and it gives pretty good location-based results. For example, "pizza near me" shows a map with a bunch of nearby pizzerias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> How is DuckDuckGo not have any Non-SRE engineering positions open? They must be scaling teams right now! I'm baffled.

[https://duckduckgo.com/hiring/#open](https://duckduckgo.com/hiring/#open)

</comment><comment><USER69> As much as I love Google for what they did for entire human knowledge back then, I would love for their monopoly to experience a real challenge at least somewhere else except China and Russia. Switched to DDG a year ago and happy to use it since!

</comment><comment><USER70> I wish DDG had a larger selection of swag. I'm a big fan and am happy to see such great growth.

[https://duckduckgo.merchmadeeasy.com/](https://duckduckgo.merchmadeeasy.com/)

</comment><comment><USER71> G: After this Hackernews post.

</comment><comment><USER72> this is truly awesome to see how much DDG has progressed, it's nice to know there are still some tech companies out there that won't gouge its' users for every last bit of information and advertising they can

</comment><comment><USER73> If you are Google, would it be in your interest to support a supposed competitor, who really is only just aggregating Google search results mashed up with others like Bing, that appear to basically produce the same results as Google; in order to at least be able to make the claim that you are not a monopoly?

Does your answer change when you consider that Google gave the duck.com domain to DDG a few months ago?

If that does not change your opinion, why would a competitor that controls a rather pivotal assets like an extremely valuable domain like duck.com to what is presented as a competitor to Google?

<comment><USER74> If you read the other comments, it's Bing searches plus their own crawler plus just about any other search engine BUT Google?

Also no, they don't produce the same results. Google is becoming useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Shit prediction: Alphabet acquires DuckDuckGo for >10B

</comment><comment><USER76> Search answers in Google and everywhere else. You won't find yahoo answers anywhere on Google. I checked until 10 pages.

That was my turning point

</comment><comment><USER77> I would like to use DDG but it needs a verbatim mode that I can use as a default. That's the best feature of Google.

<comment><USER78> I find that my non-verbatim searches on Google return mostly garbage, so I'm not sure I would call "please stop displaying garbage" the best feature of Google. Maybe a "last thread" feature. That said, I've recently started switching to DDG.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Does DDG also have stats for how much they spend on social media marketing aka hype stories on Hacker News?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can assure you that I besides being a happy user I'm completely unaffiliated to ddg :-)

I guess the rest of the social media marketing as well is just another benefit of being nice to your power users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> I switched my default to DDG yesterday. Very happy so far.

New Google SERPs are insulting to me as a user.

</comment><comment><USER81> Interesting: Regardless of the value of `Day Average` the graph remains (almost) same

</comment><comment><USER82> But it's anyway going to die soon if it's gonna commercialize.

</comment><comment><USER83> Any chance that DDG will not turn into Google if/when they grow too much?

<comment><USER84> I still prefer others causes, such as Ecosia.org or www.lilo.org ;-) DDG is just about money and they will turn as a Google next.

<comment><USER85> Same, been using Ecosia both at work and at home for a few months now. Maybe twice a month I make a point to Google something for very specific/technical results. Otherwise Ecosia is great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Does DDG have anything special that could metigate the current SEO madness?

<comment><USER87> I don't keep up with SEO trends, but if you can spare a one-sentence summary or a link: I'm curious what fits under the umbrella of current SEO madness?

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> It is time that Google adds support for !ddg

</comment><comment><USER89> can't they show most searched terms by ip ? ;)

</comment><comment><USER90> i love ddg</comment>


Show HN: DocTemple – Turn .csv data into .docx documents - <AUTHOR> https://doctempleapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, I'm Jan, creator of DocTemple.

The idea came from doing much more advanced version for one of my customers where he needed a tool to fill repetitive templates with data from the database. Employee enters database id and based on the data it filled it accordingly (with loops and conditional statements within document).

After working on it I was like "Wait a minute, there has to be more companies that are underserved in that specific area of filling templates manually." So I created a completely new app based on the same idea - to let people fill thousands of templates in minutes instead of hours. And to let them do it in simple fashion. I truly hope I achieved that.

After long 6 months of developing my own product (there where months that I had only 2 days to work on it because day job and life + never implemented payments before) and making sure everything works as I wanted I can finally say it's ready to show it to the world.

For sure the biggest challenge here will be to find the companies that actually need it.

I hope you will like this little tool! If anything you can reach me out here and on the chat on the site as well.

Thanks and looking forward to your thoughts and feedback!</comment>


OpenVidu: Open-source, multi-platform, WebRTC videoconferences - <AUTHOR> https://openvidu.io/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how these compare to Jitsi and BigBlueButton. I've been using the hosted Jitsi instance at "meet.jit.si" and have been self-hosting bigbluebutton and both have been rock solid.

<comment><USER3> Since twilio acquihired the kurento team, it barely got any updates, while the webrtc spec and implementations move fast. So I'd definitely stick with a jitsi based solution, which is way more modern and getting regular updates.

<comment><USER4> can you build a new app on top of jitsi?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The open-source variant does not support P2P sessions if I understand it correctly, which is weird since that is half the point of WebRTC.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I'm a little confused about this as well. It's also not clear if the demos can be used as is. I would use this for an ad-hoc meeting with friends if there's no restrictions. Given that they don't mention it maybe that's fine? I'd be willing to go through the steps to set this up on my own server, but why do I need to if this site already provides everything I need?

<comment><USER7> The demos run over a shared instance of a server with fixed resources, so I wouldn't count on it being the most stable experience, especially if it becomes popular enough to saturate the machine's resources.

The intention of these demos is just to provide a showcase of the types of applications that a developer might be able to build, using OpenVidu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem with all of these is that different browsers such as firefox and safari have trouble with negotiating connections.

For example we built the software we use on [https://intercoin.org/meeting](https://intercoin.org/meeting) or any website. It works across safari on ios and chrome and we even made a workaround for webviews:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/qbixapps/status/11564841564250398...](https://mobile.twitter.com/qbixapps/status/1156484156425039872)

But the sdp connections between the browsers fail and A can hear B but C can't. Weird.

Zoom or Google Hangouts doesn't have such issues because they always assume one specific environment. Cross browser videoconferencing is not easy

But hey ours is open source and not locked into Twilio or these guys:

[https://github.com/Qbix/Platform](https://github.com/Qbix/Platform)

Search for the string WebRTC

<comment><USER9> Can you describe why in some cases one cant hear the other peer? There are different sdp versions if i remember correctly but if you only use audio and video without changing the tracks later on it should work perfectly i guuess.

<comment><USER8> Here is what our developers said a week ago:

 _Hi. I learned logs of your meeting where there were problems with peer connections. I couldn 't reproduce the bug in real-time for now, I'll continue to debug tomorrow. Some conclusions: \- problems with peer connection were happening between Firefox <-> Safari ("Mikki" was using Firefox); \- first time (on the beginning of meeting) bug was caused by error In Safari while adding video to peer connection - this interrupted negotiation process: Failed to execute 'setLocalDescription' on 'RTCPeerConnection': Failed to set local offer sdp: Failed to set local video description recv parameters So, Firefox- user didn't receive any video from two Safari users. I googled error, there are very few explanations like a problem with codecs, but I think the bug depends on who was the initiator of peer connection as next time (after reconnections) this error wasn't happening (the similar bug is between Chrome and Firefox). \- the second time, the bug was happening only between Firefox (Mikki) and Mobile Safari (Alexandra). This case is less clear for me as the negotiating process wasn't interrupted, but peer connection between these users was failing int several seconds after it was established._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks perfect for a project I've been planning for a while, but the way the pricing works seems dangerous to base a small company on. They're pricing it per minute per core (even if idle), as if it's a service - except that they're not providing the service, I am. I'd much rather pay a flat fee than never know how much I'll have to pay.

If they want to charge for use, fine, charge ACTIVE time, not UPtime. Running a single dual-core EC2 instance should be no different than running a 10-core dedicated server at 20% load.

<comment><USER7> This has been our first approximation to pricing, and I agree with you, it has its shortcomings. We are aware of it and recognize it's not the ideal method of charging users.

Changes on the pricing are on the table now, we'll keep studying different options and change if something makes more sense than what we have right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hi there, I'm Juan, main developer of Kurento Media Server. I'll try to contextualize here what is OpenVidu and where it comes from.

Kurento [1] is a WebRTC server which you deploy in your cloud and then control through another application server, of which OpenVidu is one. While Kurento tries to provide generic building blocks to allow creating multiple types of applications, OpenVidu started as a project that builds on top of those capabilities and focuses on the most commonly requested use case: videoconference rooms.

From that initial premise, the amount of tasks to do in order to achieve a professional solution seems endless: easy configuration of producers and consumers, with roles and permissions; automatic scaling when the load requires it; dynamic distribution of media flows according to the needs; recording of the sessions; compatibility with different browsers, and also why not, with apps on mobile platforms; filtering the media to apply video effects; the list goes on.

Then, problems will happen. And troubleshooting WebRTC issues is difficult, because information is all disperse and nebulous, so one is expected to have all the tools in place beforehand to inspect logs and be able to have an explanation of why something went bad.

OpenVidu aims to provide an easy to use framework that can cover all those needs and then some. Its open-source part covers all the basics, and for the last months we've been working on the Pro offering, which tackles the targets of automatic scalability, session monitoring, and automatic instantiation of Kurento Media Server nodes to handle different amounts of sessions (i.e. "elasticity"), among other things. Some of the features listed in the Pro page [2] are ready for prime time, and some are a work in progress.

We just released OpenVidu version 2.12.0 [3], which is where a new license version for the Pro tier sees the light. Our team has been for quite a long time in the game of WebRTC, working and learning together with the open-source community while developing Kurento, and now I hope you find that OpenVidu is a nice value proposition and it helps you build your dream application!

It's late here but tomorrow morning I'll be hanging around here to answer any questions. See you!

[1]: [https://www.kurento.org/](https://www.kurento.org/)

[2]: [https://openvidu.io/docs/openvidu- pro/](https://openvidu.io/docs/openvidu-pro/)

[3]: [https://medium.com/@openvidu/openvidu-2-12-0-a-new- chapter-f...](https://medium.com/@openvidu/openvidu-2-12-0-a-new-chapter-for- openvidu-d31c78d22857)

<comment><USER11> Please, please fix [https://github.com/OpenVidu/openvidu- call/issues/26](https://github.com/OpenVidu/openvidu-call/issues/26) as this is the only thing blocking us from actively using it or even thinking about "going" pro.

<comment><USER7> Hi, we have just set this on top of the OpenVidu Call roadmap. We'll fix it soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another interesting open source software is Jami [https://jami.net/](https://jami.net/)

I'm using it and I'm quite happy with it.

<comment><USER13> How ready is this? I'm asking because a friend who volunteers in a charity is looking for something that would allow her to have a large video conferencing group, perhaps around 20-40 people. With it being a charity, their budget is usually zero. I don't really have any experience with this kind of thing and couldn't really give her a recommendation, but perhaps this is a possible solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Either I misunderstood the calculations or this is much more expensive than Twilio</comment>


Microsoft's BizSpark, In First 30 Days, Reaches Thousands of Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2008/12/09/microsofts-bizspark-program-in-first-30-days-reaches-thousands-of-startups-developers/

<comment><USER2> This is a smart move for Microsoft. They should have done this about 10 years ago though.

<comment><USER3> @snowbird122, yeah its a smart move, but i bet majority of YCombinator type start-ups will not choose Microsoft. atleast i think so.

<comment><USER4> Why not? Not disagreeing, genuinely curious what your thoughts are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It will be interesting to see how many startups succeed using this program. Since startups often employ tools for competitive advantage, this will be a good test between the microsoft and open source tool chains.

Also, as pg's essay points out, great hackers like to work with great tools / languages, so it will be interesting to see if they can recruit the right talent.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>

<comment><USER6> I'm using BizSpark to get access to tools so I can develop some Office plugins and related msi installers. In such a situation, the greatest competitive advantage is found using their tools. And, in general, you should be able to use any language that targets the CLR.

<comment><USER7> "Competitive advantage" means roughly "doing things your competitors can't". You can't do that with off-the-shelf tools unless your competitors are in Nigeria and can't afford them.

<comment><USER6> you can do it with off-the-shelf tools if your competitors decide to use really "hackerish" languages and tools and end up taking longer to produce the same or lesser product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Azure, great. Let me know what its called next month.

<comment><USER9> What sort of things do you like about it compared to Amazon and Google's offerings?

<comment><USER8> What I meant was, Microsoft is always changing and renaming things. I would not be surprised if "Azure" will have a new name, new group, new PUM, new logo, and a new API next month. If its still here at all. That's one reason learning Microsoft tools gives me a headache. By comparison, the *NIX toolset is relatively stable.

Their constantly shifting brands etc. matches how they are constantly reorganizing their groups internally. Its an endless shuffle game and a lot is lost in the churn.

Nevertheless they pull in the $$$!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone tell me the advantages of using .NET for a scrappy web startup?

I learn to develope in ASP.NET in college and found that finding support online is quite difficult (damn gridview).

With the maturity of Django, RoR, and PhP frameworks is it worth it to find a bizspark partner and pay microsoft tax until the your business dies?

<comment><USER11> Visual Studio cannot be beaten, especially when free. C# is evolving towards better support for concurrency and functional style programming. F# is getting much acclaim even from die hard critics of .NET. You can use one framework for your entire application--be it frontend (ASP.NET MVC), backend, enterprise, even distributed computing on Amazon (MPI.NET). An added bonus is that the majority of professional programmers out there are familiar with .NET in case you ever need to hire (this is slightly more true outside the realm of web development and silicon valley).

Regarding support online, I've never had a problem self learning .NET, especially with MSDN, the ASP.NET community at large, and now stackoverflow.com.

<comment><USER12> _Visual Studio cannot be beaten._

Visual Studio is a provincial piece of work that can't even get its imitations right - viz. the need for plugins (Resharper) to bring it up to minimal acceptability. The only people I know who praise Visual Studio are the ones who believe that Microsoft is responsible for all computing innovation.

(Though I seem to recall that as a C++ environment 10 years ago it was pretty good.)

<comment><USER3> @gruseom, yeah you put that in right words, i agree!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> msft, please get in line behind sun's opensolaris, under the sign that says "CAN'T EVEN GIVE IT AWAY"

<comment><USER9> Really?

Here is the profit(not revenue) filed under their latest annual report for their server and tools division, the exact software you are claiming they can't "give away"

Server and Tools: 4,261(2008) 3,593(2007) 2,980(2006)

<comment><USER14> Do you have URL I can look at for more numbers like those?

<comment><USER9> I got them from the Microsoft website. They post all their filings on it.

If you really want a day with numbers then I'd start here: <http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar08/index.html>

<comment><USER14> cool, thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


$35M in 30 Seconds: Token Sale for Internet Browser Brave Sells Out - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/35-million-30-seconds-token-sale-internet-browser-brave-sells/ <comment><USER2> That's crazy. I can't imagine how that must be. To have so much demand for your token that people pay 35m in 30 seconds to you for it. There were reports that people paid $6,000+ just to cut in line to get to buy some before the ICO time ran out.</comment>


Anyconnect iOS IPv6 Is Tunneling Traffic to Local - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/1pX7u <comment><AUTHOR> So I updated to iOS latest Anyconnect. Which claims now support ipv6. But after some testing, it seems like the iOS app will not tunnel ipv6 traffic when the server doesn't support ipv6 in the first place. But instead of dropping all ipv6 traffic, all ipv6 traffic will go through local connection if your local connection support ipv6.

Not sure if it is a intentional design choice or serious bug? While I haven't looked very deep into it but I doubt ipv6 connections got dumped to local is encrypted in anyway. Mac version doesn't seem to be have this problem and properly dumped ipv6 link when the vpn server doesn't support ipv6.</comment>


Fully Charged Batteries - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelmator.com/weblog/2010/01/15/fully-charged-batteries/

<comment><USER2>
      All of the Pixelmator Team ... just returned from a nearly three-month vacation. ...  I hope that you can find it in your heart to grant us the time we took

It it just me, or does begging off on vacation time like that seem... distasteful?

<comment><USER3> Not any more than this:

"And because Spider has been so successful and other Pixelmator releases were also very strong, we have made lots of money."</comment></comment>


Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.knocktounlock.com/ <comment><USER2> Dear HN.

Please stop making a big deal about how you don't like hipster beards.

It really makes HN look like pretentious douchebags instead of intelligent thinkers.

It makes HN people look like the have no understanding of marketing.

If you're going to criticize the marketing, do it from a metrics perspective, rather than being exactly what you're claiming to hate by telling people to stop being hipsters - arrogant.

Let people be who they are. Measure them by their output and their product, and the effectiveness of their decisions. Not on whether or not they conform to your taste/style.

I get it - if you have design critiques, it makes sense to share those. If you have marketing critiques, it makes sense to share those (like: "If you market this to hipsters, you will not get the hipster-hating crowd to buy"). If you have a personal soap box of despise for another person's tastes, please do not bring it here.

<comment><USER3> > Let people be who they are. Measure them by their output and their product, > and the effectiveness of their decisions. Not on whether or not they conform > to your taste/style.

I would guess that the true point being made is that these people are _not_ "being who they are," because _someone else_ has caused them to "conform to [their] taste/style."

Your reaction is actually pointing out _exactly the same thinking_ on their part as you're using to criticize it: hackers don't like it when someone has forced their idea of aesthetics on them--because hackers are, fundamentally, aesthetes--so we get vicariously offended when they see a trend of some group "forcing" their idea of aesthetics on some other group.

This applies even if that "force" is just the majority declaring some particular style to be "objectively fashionable." Hackers don't like the idea that things _can_ be "in vogue", because it coerces their ability to self- style down set paths they might not want to have gone down. Even if they would have liked a particular style, having it be popular means it's no longer their _creative idea_ to choose it--so it doesn't demonstrate their creativity, and that's all they cared about doing in the first place.

<comment><USER2> That makes sense.

However, there's one problem.

> these people are not "being who they are," because someone else has caused > them to "conform to [their] taste/style."

This is assumption based on cultural hints. There have been quite a few times on HN where hackers have proven to indeed not be aesthetes, because hacking marketing requires aesthetic. This goes down to whether or not you appreciate aesthetics of your own appearance, as well.

I don't see anyone making the claim that this is "objectively fashionable". What I see is a bunch of people who rage against a marketing decision because it bastardizes their seemingly misguided need for aesthetic "purity" (whatever that means).

The criticism I'm offering isn't to stop liking your aesthetic preferences. If you don't like beards, don't grow one.

But someone posts a link on HN, and people bitch and moan because the primary subject of marketing is sporting a beard. It really misses the point of HN discussion. Again, I understand if the conversation is centered around the marketing (or other) implications of the decisions made by those who created the product and the site. But the conversation doesn't revolve around that at all. Instead, it's a bunch of "get off my lawn" and raging against trends without any particularly discernible purpose.

<comment><USER4> > _But someone posts a link on HN, and people bitch and moan because the > primary subject of marketing is sporting a beard._

I see two posts making fun of beards. Two.

Why are you even making this discussion? Meta discussion is frowned upon on HN. If you feel someone's discussion is off-topic, down-vote them and move on.

The irony is your meta discussion is now the top-voted post, instead of discussion on the actual product.

<comment><USER2> Totally agree with the idea that meta discussion should be limited. And, to be fair, it's not my fault my comment is the top voted post. I think the discussion about the fake/real login screen should be upped more than this one, certainly. But, I will say that I don't agree that this thread is invaluable or should be frowned upon for this discussion.

I think the product is quite nicely done. I bought it. And I believe the discussion revolves around not only the product, but the presentation and the reception of that presentation. So the "meta" value here isn't limited to the beard conversation. It's a larger discussion about the HN community, which isn't quite "frowned upon." It's important that we all contribute to moderation and encourage better thought.

I posted early in response to a initial negative discussion (which indeed is a pervasive issue on HN) about the pretension of the video, the aesthetics, etc. It's not just a response about beards - it's a response regarding the product and a more valuable way of understanding marketing, which I think will contribute to the discussion of the OP in the future.

And thus, I think it is quite relevant to this particular thread. But I will rest my case here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The negativity in this thread is a perfect exemplar of the say-anything- critical-to-look-smart, "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.", poisonous middlebrow dismissal that pg complains about.

This is an amazingly light convenience, with really solid, streamlined execution. People, it's ok to think something is good.

<comment><USER4> Ugh.

Just people you disagree with someone doesn't make them negative.

It's critique. HN is a place of dissenting opinions.

It's ok to have an opinion different than yours.

<comment><USER6> The "Ugh", that's what the GP is talking about. A number of the posts come across as spiteful, which is not objective and as such, has no place here. In fact objective criticism is something that developers aren't good at at all, but such an important _engineering_ skill. Speak to designers and learn how to do it. You'll be a better engineer as a result.

 _Edited for clarity._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> \+ Excellent website

\+ Really well thought-out interactions (noticing when I download, auto installing to /Applications)

\+ Plain-English ToS under creative commons.

\- An unsigned latest.zip for downloading, at least use a dmg so you can sign and have more control over the presentation

\- Extremely difficult to find Knock on the app store. The app could open a web page or itunes, right now I'm left searching and wading through knock- knock joke apps.

\- Making me run software before telling me the price of the software

All in all, you're doing great with presentation, but it has a few minuses. I can't use the software because I don't have an iPhone now, so this is where my review ends.

<comment><USER8> I disagree on the zip. dmg used to be the preferred format for reasons I never entirely fully understood, but that ship has sailed, and I think for the better. Zip is much more convenient. You can, of course, sign the app within the zip.

<comment><USER7> You can sign the app within the zip, true. The advantage of using a dmg is to control the presentation, which seems like a strong desire for this particular product. Downloading a file named "latest.zip" that had an unsigned binary in it was by far the worst part of the excellently designed experience of installing the software.

Apparently the iTunes link thing is a bug [https://twitter.com/jschloss/status/397783949746769921](https://twitter.com/jschloss/status/397783949746769921)

<comment><USER9> Please, _don 't_ use DMG. Just .app in a plain .zip please.

The nifty "presentation" adds a several needless steps and pitfalls to running an application:

• Mounting and verification of DMG is slow (Zip CRC and Developer ID signatures give you verification too).

• "Nothing happens" after clicking DMG — user has to find DMG mount on a cluttered desktop.

• Clicking app icon in the DMG window is tempting, but generally it's a no-no (some apps don't mind, but some ask to be moved to Applications, and some throw "error -13 read only volume" kind of errors).

• User is expected to copy the app to Applications folder, with instructions given in form of non-localizable non-accessible text-in-image, and it's trickier when sidebar with shortcut to Applications folder is hidden (and remember "Applications" folder name is localized and sounds nothing like it in many languages).

• User has to unmount and delete the DMG, but that gives non-obvious behavior when the app is running off the DMG.

• It gets super confusing when user has pinned app in the Dock while it was running off the DMG

<comment><USER10> > • Mounting and verification of DMG is slow (Zip CRC and Developer ID > signatures give you verification too).

It takes a few seconds, hardly that much slower than opening a zip

>• "Nothing happens" after clicking DMG — user has to find DMG mount on a cluttered desktop

1) Unless you've really fobbed up your view settings, mounted drives show up, in alpha order, in the farthest right row.

2) DMG's have a bless value that makes them spawn a finder window on mount, the below command is run when my xcode spits out a new release build

        'bless --folder /Volumes/$Application --openfolder /Volumes/$Application'

>• Clicking app icon in the DMG window is tempting, but generally it's a no-no (some apps don't mind, but some ask to be moved to Applications, and some throw "error -13 read only volume" kind of errors).

Really a non-issue and only apps built on an old SDK should have this behavoir any more (more recent SDKs will let them shove things in /tmp while run from a mounted dmg)

>• User is expected to copy the app to Applications folder, with instructions given in form of non-localizable non-accessible text-in-image, and it's trickier when sidebar with shortcut to Applications folder is hidden (and remember "Applications" folder name is localized and sounds nothing like it in many languages).

The user also has to drag the zipped app to applications. You can also solve this "problem" by including a finder shortcut to the Applications folder in the the DMG. Finder automatically localizes the Application's folder alias because it's a special URI

>• User has to unmount and delete the DMG, but that gives non-obvious behavior when the app is running off the DMG.

User has to delete the .zip and sometimes a, now empty, folder.

>• It gets super confusing when user has pinned app in the Dock while it was running off the DMG

No it doesn't, the DMG is automatically mounted and the app run if they do this

<comment><USER11> > No it doesn't, the DMG is automatically mounted and the app run if they do > this

It really does, especially if you're one of the 99.999% of users who deletes their dmg's after installing. Then you just see an app icon with a big (?) in the middle of it.

<comment><USER10> You're not "installing" if you just run it from the DMG, so your point is moot

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've just bought the app just to try it out. It works as advertised. But I was even more interested in security.

When you install the Mac application, it will ask for your computer's password. This password is then stored, as I understand, on your phone.

//////

Quote:

When Knock connects to your Mac, it sends your password over that signal using both Bluetooth's built-in encryption and our own proprietary, 1024-bit RSA encryption.

//////

I think for many users, this is secure enough. This will probably not do if you are more interesting than an average joe.

What I don't like is that 'proprietary' remark. It almost sounds like they wrote their own crypto implementation of RSA 1024. Again: probably safe enough for home use.

I searched on knock unlock in the IOS app store and found it immediately.

It seems that the Knock application also records usage.

Furthermore, I seem to have troubles with sleep, if the computer does not wake from sleep with this app, I'm not sure if I think it's useful.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is pretty clever, but is this much better than the existing Bluetooth proximity unlock utilities?

The iPhone app that this pairs with costs $3.99 by the way.

If you use Mac OS, Proximity is similar to BlueProximity, there are probably other solutions that don't require an iOS app and accomplish the same thing without the magical novelty, all the same, I think it's neat and if the app weren't $4 I would try it out.

<comment><USER14> I think you underestimate how much delight it gives people. Search on Twitter and behold how many people are blown away by this 'magic.'

Not to mention I wouldn't be surprised if they extended their app to work with other devices.

<comment><USER15> I suspect that this kind of delight, even though it becomes routine, actually enhances user experience in the long run.

For example, I have compiz set to use the "Burn" effect when closing windows. This is delightful and unobtrusive, and completely pointless. But man is it a stress reliever when I decide to close all of my windows in frustration.

<comment><USER13> This is a good observation. You're probably right. Routine and habit and the actual experience of those routines and habits do have intrinsic value in the way you go about executing them :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems insecure. If I leave my phone by my computer, or if my bag gets stolen with my phone and computer in it, I'm in trouble.

That said, it's pretty cool, and I like the website design.

<comment><USER17> I do see your point, but wouldn't dropping your car keys also allow someone to steal your car?

<comment><USER18> But having a car stolen is way less of a problem than all your personal data being stolen. If my car is stolen because someone stole my bag with the keys in it then all I lose is my insured car.

If my laptop is stolen with the 'keys' to the laptop also in the bag, my life could become very difficult very quickly taking me years to recover from.

I think the point is you don't want to have the same paradigm as car + keys when it comes to your private information.

<comment><USER19> Do you use full disk encryption? A lot people don't and it's easy to get your data when you got logged in as another user.

<comment><USER18> I use FileVault built into OSX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems like magic. What method does it use to unlock your Mac with no password?

<comment><USER21> It doesn't actually unlock your machine. If you lock your computer it will not work. What it does is put up a page that looks nearly identical to the login page with small changes. It's a cool app (I tried it) but I'm disappointed that I can't find a way to toggle the lock via Alfred/Keyboard shortcut.

I can get in the habit of hitting a key combination/alfred command when I get up but having to click the icon in the menu bar will get annoying.

<comment><USER22> Now that's a massive dealbreaker. That should be made more obvious.

<comment><USER23> Indeed. I'm thinking this is less and less secure with every word I hear about it. Here I was imagining it used overlay effects from a system process and some kind of Kerberos certificates or other mechanism to convince the computer to login for real. A fake password screen... sigh. Sounds like the next virus.

<comment><USER24> My thoughts exactly. Frankly I assumed the very reason this was on the front page was because they weren't just doing a fullscreen app.

This is a gimmick, as far as I'm concerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This looks really cool, but it's pretty annoying that you allowed me to download and install on my Mac without telling me the iPhone app costs $3.99. In fact, I can't find anything on the website that says this thing does or does not cost money. Maybe you are hoping that people will assume it's free, download from the website, and then buy it on the app store because they already got that far. If so, it seems a bit dishonest.

<comment><USER21> This reminds me of a comment I made a week or two ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540827) I made a similar comment about hiding the price on your launch page and got a response from the creator who was very helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> i may be completely biased because i have long hair & a (sweet) beard, but …

i'm finding it odd that there are people who feel like commenting on the appearance of the gentleman (actor/friend/founder/dude) in the video in a negative way. who cares how a guy in a video is dressed to demonstrate a product? and then even if you don't associate with the type of grooming or style of dress, that's totally cool, but to start throwing around gross oversimplifications like 'hipster'?

stop being so fucking superficial.

<comment><USER27> The tech industry "meritocracy" at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If your page scrolls, you should have a scroll bar.

<comment><USER29> Does it scroll? It doesn't do _anything_ for me (Opera), so I guess everything's broken.

<comment><USER30> Introducing a javascript requirement to _scroll the page_?! That's just plain rude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Here's a controversial position: This is not going to be popular amongst iOS devs (I am an iOS dev) but the best thing for iOS as a platform is for Apple to appropriate this.

With the M7 coprocessor, iOS would be able to register a callback for a given "gesture," like two knocks. Then the phone could implement such functionality while staying in standby! Combined with a facility for securely determining proximity, you could use such a facility to securely unlock everything.

<comment><USER32> How you reconcile which app gets which gesture then? Would two unlocks trigger both a machine unlock, a text to my mom, and to start playing my podcasts? Not to mention that it's like pulling teeth to get Apple to allow things to happen in the background.

I was intrigued at how they did this from a locked phone, and it turns out they don't. You have to have the app launched before knocking, meaning at it's core, this is just a shake listener with a count and some Bluetooth code. Not that it's not worth $4 (yeah, app isn't free), but it's not getting my $4 yet, since typing my password is still easier and plenty secure.

<comment><USER31> _> How you reconcile which app gets which gesture then?_

The user decides. All of the callbacks get registered with a name and description, but the user picks which one is active.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Neat product. FYI, on your home page, I get the background image, then "Watch This" > (I click) > "Watch This" goes away, but nothing happens. And content below the fold is not visible or hinted at. (Mac OS X 10.7.5, FF 25)

<comment><USER34> They broke the mime types for the video files - the Firefox console shows how it's rejecting each <source> option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Reminds me of BlueProximity. Unrelated: Too bad my neither my 3 year old laptop nor my one year old Chinese phone support bluetooth 4.0, I'll just have to waste a lot of battery if I use BlueProximity. Wait a sec, I can have a bluetooth toggle widget on my screen, how about that!

</comment><comment><USER36> Brilliant video! The app looks really interesting but like others I'm a little concerned about the security of something like this...

</comment><comment><USER37> If iphone is a part of your product it might be a good idea to make your website work well on mobile safari on iphone.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have been knocking my iPhone 5s for the past 10 minutes, but nothing is happening. On my mac, it seems that everything has been setup correctly, I can see my iphone name in the unlink button, so everything must be set up correctly. On my iPhone 5s, I see my personal icon for my macbook Pro retina 13'' and a big picture of a macbook pro. I have been knocking everywhere in my iPhone: the picture of macbook pro, my macbook pro personal icon, the white spaces around the app, my home screen, notification center, my locked phone, and nothing seems to happen.

I understand that you are trying to make this as simple as possible, but things you assume to be obvious might not be obvious for others. For example, where do I knock? Does the phone have to be awake? Does the app have to be open? etc.

Also, your app seems to be failing silently. I have been knocking all over the place and it would help tremendously if there was an alert telling me what had gone wrong. That way, I can email support and pinpoint exactly what is wrong. As of now, I have no idea why your app is not working.

 __edit __

Finally figured out what I was doing wrong. Put your phone flat on the table. Then tap twice on your phone and you should see rings show up on your macbook pro. Your phone can even be locked.

Do not hold the phone in your hands while you tap it. I was holding the phone in my hands before, which causes the taps to fail to register.

<comment><USER39> I had the exact opposite experience! Knocking and knocking and knocking, not working... pick it up off the table, works in my hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Back when KDE got the ability to wake on bluetooth, I set my phone up to unlock my computer whenever I was in the room. This eliminated logging on, but at the price of requiring my phone to have bluetooth running all day. This was back when batteries were not so large as they are now and bluetooth was a bit of a battery hog. Of course, this was the dumb-phone era too, and I was accustomed to charging my phone twice a week! Charging it every day was too much of a hassle so I soon went back to logging on with the keyboard. I charge my phone every day anyways now, so it would be zero trouble to use wake-on- bluetooth again, but the novelty isn't there and logging in via keyboard is easy so I haven't bothered.

This tap-your-phone stuff is similar, except less convenient. You actually have to take your phone out of your pocket and then tap on it, as opposed to just walking up to your computer and having it unlock automatically. In fact, this is probably slower than logging in via keyboard, depending on how fast a draw you are.

<comment><USER41> The big breakthrough here is that Bluetooth LE uses a totally negligible amount of power (such that many devices can run for years on a CR2032 button cell).

Also, you don't need to take your phone out of your pocket to tap it (it doesn't have to touch the computer, just any moderately firm object, such as a knuckle through a pants pocket).

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> \+ great website

\+ great UX

\- knock just works if I touch my computer once (I would just type my password instead of knock my phone)

\- knock does not lock my computer if I knock to get a water or something at work for example (version 2 maybe?)

\- the download file could have the app name on it (I do not care about being a zip)

\- Expensive for this kind of feature (0.99 would be more appropriate)

\- Some information about how my password is being stored would be nice

</comment><comment><USER43> I like this! Btw some of us have slow internet connections. The video was buffering and stuff I couldn't watch it without manually loading it up separately.

I can't get it to work? Are there minimum requirements for the mac end? I'm using the last 17" mac they made.

</comment><comment><USER44> More apps and devices seem to be using wireless proximity as some kind of authenticator, along with the assumption that a specific received signal strength confirms the user's intent to perform some action. However, such systems seem to be quite prone to a simple attack consisting of a battery- powered bidirectional amplifier connected a pair of highly directional antennas. Simply point one antenna toward the user's phone and the other antenna toward the user's computer, and you can fool the computer into thinking the user's phone is closer than it really is.

<comment><USER23> The trick is in opening the app and knocking. The knock releases the advertisement. Similarly, in other use cases, geofencing from the phone means the phone has to think it's nearby to release the signal. Not saying it can't happen, but that's a lot of work. Easier to just hack the device, prompt the user with a fake pin-pad or login screen, or do social engineering and/or gain physical access.

By the way, this attack is much more successful in reverse, for listening to and replaying keycard transactions. I was shocked to discover how little materials would be needed to make a decent amplified antenna.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, don't use this. You lose key encryption (done at lock screen by osx) and DMA prevention, which were rather nice security features that the default OSX sleep mode provides.

</comment><comment><USER45> Love the site and design.

BUT something already does this, for free, it's called keycard.

As someone else pointed out, very hard to find on app store, then also, it suddenly costs $3.99 in app store. YOU HID THAT PART NICELY.

One other thing, why name your zip file "latest.zip" \- took me a good minute to find it in download folder.

Apple should already have this crap built in with new ios/mavericks though :( Also, does it work on my mac 2010? Doesn't look like it. >.<

Since iOS 7 - nothing works for this type of setup, Knock, or Keycard.

<comment><USER46> * One other thing, why name your zip file "latest.zip" \- took me a good minute to find it in download folder.

ls -lrt ~/Downloads

<comment><USER45> So you want me to terminal to find something the latest i've downloaded in my folder? should just be named correctly, professionally.

<comment><USER47> Personally, I think you should already have your downloads sorted by date, not alphabetically. No matter what the file is called, you can always just assume it's the first/last file in your downloads. I agree the filename should be changed though: latest.zip seems like something you send your friends to give a proof of concept.

<comment><USER48> The first thing I always do on a new mac is change the downloads folder on the dock to sort by date added. It makes further customization and downloads _much_ easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't really care for the product, but that is a great video. Love the music selection, the editing, wording, concept, everything really. Great execution.

</comment><comment><USER50> Just tried it out - works as advertised!

Doesn't work if you have it in screensaver mode and locked - you need to have the login screen up. Still very neat.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is pretty cool and its nice that you can knock your phone to unlock while in your pocket but it means if I leave my phone at my desk to charge anyone can unlock my computer, which is a no-go.

I wish someone would just hurry up and implement unlocking of your mac via touchid(I have no idea if its technically possible to use touchid for other apps then apples).

</comment><comment><USER52> A brilliant idea, beautifully executed.

</comment><comment><USER53> I find this... useful. But I'm not sure why. I spent the $3.99, and it sort of feels like a novelty app... but I can see myself actually using it for it's intended purpose, so.. is it really a novelty at that point?

I don't know, but I like how well it works.

<comment><USER54> Does the knock app have to be open to unlock your computer?

<comment><USER53> Nope - a push notification appears on your lock screen - just tap your phone at that point, and voila, you're unlocked. It's pretty slick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> 1\. How to uninstall it now?

2\. It seems the app changed something in the system settings, so that now, when I lock the screen, it goes off. Before, it started to show the screen saver. How to undo this?

3\. You should have provided answers to my questions in your FAQ section, really.

</comment><comment><USER56> It's a good example of practical skeueomorphism but I don't want simplicity to get to my desktop. I want it to be as complex as possible so I know that its ME and ME ALONE accessing my desktop.

</comment><comment><USER57> I dropped the $3.99 on the iOS app only to find that the Mac app wasn't compatible with my computer.

Looks cool, but I was pretty disappointed that I paid money and it didn't work with no warning.

<comment><USER58> You can get your money refunded by contacting Apple. [http://www.labnol.org/software/itunes-app-store- refunds/](http://www.labnol.org/software/itunes-app-store-refunds/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'm getting this JS error: Uncaught You must specify your applicationId using Parse.initialize

while submitting my email. If owners of project are here, I'm using Chrome on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER60> Have Apple loosen their restrictions on background services? This is neither VoIP, music or navigation. Any ideas how they slipped this through the approval process?

<comment><USER61> Yes, as of iOS 7 any app can run in the background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Have purchased but cannot do anything, iPhone is waiting for Macbook and Macbook is waiting for iPhone, cycling bluetooth doesn't help (iPhone 5 and Macbook Air 2012)

hmmm

<comment><USER38> Same with mine. I have a macbook pro retina

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> This is annoyingly similar to our Thrust to Unlock... [https://vimeo.com/78670679](https://vimeo.com/78670679)

</comment><comment><USER64> I wonder how well this works if your phone is on an unyielding surface, like a tabletop, instead of against your thigh or in your hand.

</comment><comment><USER65> doesn't work for me - I've installed & opened Knock on both Mavericks & iOS7 & Bluetooth (which, to be fair, is through a Belkin USB stick) & the PC doesn't recognize the iPhone, simply telling me to install it from the App Store. I love th concept so would be grateful for a fix...

</comment><comment><USER66> How does this not drain the iPhone battery?

<comment><USER23> Bluetooth Low Energy. Unlike old bluetooth, this new service shuts down all the time to save power. In fact, apple recommends geofencing any bluetooth beacons you know will stay put, so it only starts scanning for nearby devices over bluetooth once you're within a certain radius. In this case, the app only looks for devices when you launch the app, though if you were willing to put up with a delay, you could do so on-knock. Haven't looked at the app yet. One more alternative: it could send the message and have your mac constantly looking for messages when locked. Third alternative, it pairs in the background and only once iOS notices the new device does it start actively opening communication channels. Apparently connect times are a few ms? [http://www.connectblue.com/technologies/bluetooth-low- energy...](http://www.connectblue.com/technologies/bluetooth-low-energy- technology/)

<comment><USER66> But the app has to be running in memory AND watching the accelerator AT ALL TIMES. How does that not drain the phone battery?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Does it log you out when you walk away?

<comment><USER22> I think that would be the real winner - locks when you walk away, unlocks when you return. So simple I'm surprised it doesn't already exist.

<comment><USER68> Or that Apple hasn't built it into iOS and OS X by now.

<comment><USER23> This. At this rate, Microsoft will do it first to sell more phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Is it that it doesn't work with pre-2012 MBPs, or that it hasn't been tested on them?

</comment><comment><USER65> one question - does this use the real Mac login screen or some less-secure alternative? a lot of similar apps I've seen used the latter which is a dealbreaker from a security POV, & it would be great if Knock differs in this respect

</comment><comment><USER70> this page breaks my browsers back button on osx.8 chrome 30.0.1599.101.

no android app?

<comment><USER71> Android only has system level BLE as of 4.3 if I'm not mistaken, which has <3% adoption currently per Google.

<comment><USER72> Also, BLE support on most 4.3 devices is _just broken_. Fitbit's experience: [https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/987861-andr...](https://help.fitbit.com/customer/portal/articles/987861-android- device-compatibility)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Very cool, would kill for an Android equivalent.

</comment><comment><USER73> is it possible to use this as a 2-factor solution? that seems like it would be a nice step forward.

</comment><comment><USER74> Touch-ID to unlock would be fun.

</comment><comment><USER75> That video is so fucking pretentious I could puke into my mouth out of disgust.

<comment><USER76> Uhh, because other ads are completely honest and show perfectly real situations?

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> holy shit. this is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER78> >rolled up skinny jeans

>hipster beard

>authentic, vintage old storage space

>edgy minimalism

I am not buying it.

<comment><USER79> This is exactly DH0 [1]. I will therefore take the high ground and respond with DH1, "Of course you would say that, you're an anonymous internet troll. Crawl back into your cave."

[1]: [http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Shave. All of you with beards. Shave. For the love of all things holy, after the BoSox - it's jumped the shark... shave.

As for the app, etc. I'd like to see this grow into some multi-part thing that could optionally include voice, fingerprint, code, etc.

<comment><USER81> Come on, HN. Talk about the product, not about the dude's beard. What is this, middle school?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could the NPM fiasco happen to Maven? - <AUTHOR> What's the level of vulnerability that Java's maven faces, if something like the NPM fiasco were to happen to a widely used mvn dependency? <comment><USER2> You mean, unpublishing a widely used library? Once it had been uploaded to, say, maven central?

I couldn't figure out how to do that and some googling turned up:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9789611/removing-an- artif...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9789611/removing-an-artifact- from-maven-central)

Which indicates it "can't be done".

So, no I dont think maven has that particular issue.</comment>


Please don't post about WWDC tommorow - <AUTHOR> I don't think the WWDC with it's (as some other user said it) "shiny new devices" is relevant given the current situation. Just a thought. <comment><USER2> What should we post about then? Just keep repeating the same articles until anyone interested in the usual HN stuff disappears?

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I would consider almost any sort of alternative content refreshing at this point, even if it's something I don't actively follow. Sadly, I've been upvoting stuff I wouldn't normally upvote the last few days just for the sake of it being something different in hope that others would do so as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Hacker News"... that term does not only refer to some programming stuff - like a new javascript library or some startup with a new idea... I don't think that Apple's "Developer Conference" (...) is something interesting right now.

As "Hackers" and technology affine people we are the ones to actually be interested in this - share as much information (every new leak) with others. If we find some new apple product more important - god have faith with this world...

(sorry for the passive aggressive way I wrote it - I am little heated)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would be better then massive PRISM panic</comment>


DOJ takes bloggers laptops over reader comments left at Wordpress hosted blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.financialpost.com/m/wp/fp-comment/blog.html?b=opinion.financialpost.com/2011/12/20/climate-crackdown

<comment><USER2> Seems like this is written by a conspiracy nut. Facts are wrong (Michael Mann isn't a professor at UPenn) and the story is one-sided. There's no mention of what else Tallbloke wrote on his blog or the fact that the equipment seizure was due to the email hacking that occurred ([http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/uk-police- seize-e...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/uk-police-seize- equipment-as-part-of-investigation-into-climategate-email- scandal/2011/12/15/gIQAPWYOwO_story.html)), not because of any comments.

Here's the opposite side of the story with its own biases: [http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/12/computers_of_crimi...](http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/12/computers_of_criminal_cyber- th.php)

<comment><USER3> I was reading on my phone in bed, but your comment so missed the point that I was compelled to get up in the middle of the night and write a full response.

1) Yes, the author confused Penn State with the UPenn. The Financial Post should probably correct it, but I find it excusable that a Canadian author writing in a Canadian paper might not properly distinguish them. This did not cause me to discount the rest of the article.

2) Yes, it's one sided. It's an opinion piece in the comment section, and labelled as such. This is indicated by the breadcrumbs at the top reading "Home / Opinion / FP Comment".

3) No mention of email hacking? What about the "link to a zip file posted online at a Russian Web address" that "contained 5,000 emails written by some of the most prominent names in climate science." Sure, it didn't use the word hacking, but for all we know it might have been an inside job. Unless you have personal knowledge to the contrary? (cue the police coming to seize your computers)

4) Wait, they didn't seize his computers because of one particular comment left on his blog by someone unknown? You do realize that Tallbloke is not a suspect in the case, and that his computers were seized _explicitly_ in an effort to track down the source of that comment containing that link? Is this the first time you've come across this story?

5) "Seems like this is written by a conspiracy nut". Well, that's a matter of opinion, but "seems" is an odd word choice. As the byline mentions, she's the proud author of the "recently published exposé of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert." I haven't read it, and so can't comment on its quality. Have you? I've read some of Matt Ridley's books, though, and he called it "one of the most important pieces of investigative journalism in recent years". (<http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/delinquent-teenager>)

5) I do appreciate the link. In particular the part where he retracted his clearly libelous statements, in which he coyly refers to "certain things that could be misinterpreted", as if "the seizure of computer equipment that appears to be linked to the storage and dissemination of the stolen documents" might have a completely different meaning Mr Tatershall's legal jurisdiction? And the part where he offers Mr Tatersall space for a response in return for not "pursuing legal action that was previously suggested"? Was this perhaps added after you read it? Or is that the part you are calling attention to?

<comment><USER4> > Yes, it's one sided. It's an opinion piece in the comment section, and > labelled as such. This is indicated by the breadcrumbs at the top reading > "Home / Opinion / FP Comment".

This strikes me as a rather poor excuse (if it's intended as such). I agree nobody should expect an opinion piece to be vigorously researched, cited, etc....but all opinions are not equal. There's a difference between someone who is just casually writing their thoughts with the understanding that they are not fully vetting them...and someone who is clearly biased and pushing a particular agenda.

> Wait, they didn't seize his computers because of one particular comment left > on his blog by someone unknown?

Well, we can't know all their reasons...but based on the facts so far...no they didn't. They seized them because he referred to a possible hacker as "our old friend" and wrote an article/linked to the hacked emails....AND because a potential hacker commented on his blog, possibly leaving evidence in his account/on the server...then refused to cooperate with the investigation.

Are they justified doing so? I don't know. I think the "old friend" comment is innocent. I also think based on what we know it's pretty frivolous. Unless they have some clear evidence linking this guy, I think they are overstepping their bounds. Of course they might have it...they're not gonna say.

One thing I would also say is that I don't think this guy is being treated any differently than anyone else who gets in the way of any government investigation (that is to say, poorly).... I hope climate change denialists don't hold this up as some sort of proof of their conspiracy theories.

<comment><USER3> _This strikes me as a rather poor excuse (if it's intended as such)._

I didn't really intend it to excuse the quality of the content, only to assert that it's allowed to be one-sided. My view (biased, but not self-interested) is that the piece is both well researched and biased, and that the research produced the bias. The author isn't author casually writing scattered thoughts, but rather reiterating the book that she's spent the last year writing. She may be wrong or misleading, but she's spent a lot of effort learning about the subject.

 _Well, we can't know all their reasons...but based on the facts so far...no they didn't._

You're right. I'm presuming that Tallbloke was merely an running a blog that allowed comments, rather than a conspirator. I conclude this because there were three blogs being investigated simultaneously, and I find it highly unlikely that all of them are colluding. But I guess we'll have to wait to see how it turns out. If they have inside knowledge not yet released, I'd have to revise my thinking.

 _I hope climate change denialists don't hold this up as some sort of proof of their conspiracy theories._

I'm sure some will, but I don't think there's any monolithic set of denialists. On the blogs in question (<http://climateaudit.org/>, <http://noconsensus.wordpress.com>, and <http://tallbloke.wordpress.com>, all more skeptical than denialist), most of the commenters seem to be concentrating on the civil liberties aspect. It's seen as a precursor of the potential downsides of SOPA. There's a lot of libertarian beliefs among the skeptics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So this means if now they want to search your home and seize your computers, all they have to do is use a proxy to post just a LINK to this zip file on your public blog, maybe even your facebook - boom, instant seizure without judicial review.

Also works if a blogger is your competition or you just don't like them.

Kudos to Matt for not obeying any kind of gag order.

I guess the future is government hassling people for having knowledge, can't have that.

Did they use a "National Security Letter" for this without judicial review?

</comment><comment><USER6> The definition of a mixed blessing: your mother-in-law driving off a cliff in your new Porsche.

No, scratch that. I quite like my mother-in-law, and I wouldn't own a Porsche in a pink fit. Revised version:

The definition of a mixed blessing: a conspiracy nut is prevented from lying about important stuff by a government that wouldn't know Freedom of Speech if it bit them on the arse.

</comment><comment><USER7> It looks like the joint UK/US investigation has run out of leads and is going after the bloggers' computers in the hopes that the hacker had some communication with them. Or the police might have evidence that we won't hear about until trial. It will look the same to us either way; we weren't at the warrant request hearing. In the meantime, a few bloggers are without their computers for the foreseeable future.

There was apparently another hacking last month. This might have influenced the police to act aggressively. [http://www.desmogblog.com/climategate- hackers-slither-again-...](http://www.desmogblog.com/climategate-hackers- slither-again-night)

<comment><USER8> +1 for the cartoon, but is HN seriously going to be a platform for this kind of non-story story? Polite Yorkshire policemen enforcing a search warrant? Would that Occupy Wall Street had them to deal with instead of the pepper- spray brigade!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's things like these that make me not want to add commenting to any blog/website I work on. It's bad enough when someone anonymously makes a comment and people actually believe it. When the DOJ start raiding your home because of comments though... That pushes it over the edge for me.</comment>