World Leaders on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2017/world-leaders-and-twitter.html <comment><USER2> _Twitter is here to serve and help advance the global, public conversation._

Twitter is there to make money for its shareholders by showing ads to regular users in exchange for cash money.

 _Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society._

World leaders are a cash cow for Twitter, who doesn't give a hoot about how they came to power. I doubt they'd deny an account to a Saudi prince, for example.

 _Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions._

These two statements are mutually exclusive; if leaders are dependent on Twitter to get information out (they're not) then it ought to be run as a public utility in a truly open fashion. Meanwhile, someone being on or off Twitter would seem to have little impact on other people's ability to discuss their doings on Twitter.

But if we're to accept Twitter's stance, then political leaders ought not to be able to delete their tweets, since the purported necessity of seeing and debating them is undermined if they can retroactively edit the record of their own public statements.

 _We review Tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them, and enforce our rules accordingly._

Twitter is absolutely not going to mess with anyone who could seize any of staff or assets by force, but would like to retain a shred of dignity.

 _No one person 's account drives Twitter's growth, or influences these decisions. We work hard to remain unbiased with the public interest in mind._

Please think of Twitter as a public utility even though it is actually a for- profit business with a PR problem.

 _We are working to make Twitter the best place to see and freely discuss everything that matters. We believe that's the best way to help our society make progress._

NYSE: TWTR has been in a 2 year trough since falling to ~1/3 of its 2014 high and would really like to like to have and eat its cake simultaneously, pretty please.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this, seems appropriately cutting. The whole situation has put Twitter in a weird place, and I can understand why they don't want to cut Donald off, but it's clear that this post is just "We don't want to", but with a few paragraphs of spin. I wish they would be more honest about it.

Personally, I don't think it should be Twitter's responsibility to censor Trump. He has a way of shoehorning himself into public consciousness, and I think the public (especially the mainstream media) needs to self-censor and stop paying him so much attention. I wouldn't care if Donald tweeted whatever he wants, except that it always seems to end up in the news.

<comment><USER4> The fact the president of the United States made an inflammatory public statement is news whether you like it or not. Foreign governments make decisions and tailor their own rhetoric based off of the Twitter messages made by the president.

"Ignore him and he'll go away" was fantastic advice I wish the media used in 2015 and 2016; a different candidate would have won the Republican primary were it not for the president's overwhelming media coverage.

That advice no longer holds true. I agree that sensationalizing public statements is destructive to society.

<comment><USER3> I don't necessarily think his comments should be ignored, just treated like what they are: childish rants that don't have a strong connection to reality.

Foreign governments are going to do what they do either way -- we are past the point of pretending that our POTUS isn't a flaming dickhead. By giving him additional attention, we're validating him as an important part of the American dialogue. He should not be that, whether he is the POTUS or not.

It's true that because of his position, he is now afforded certain powers that make him difficult to ignore. But I think his nighttime Twitter rants are just "acting out" for attention. If he was 5 years old, we would know to pay attention when he's being serious and ignore him when he's not. But we don't.

Honestly, I think at this point we just have to wait it out and try to minimize the damage he does to our society. I can only hope that the experience will be sobering enough to incite actual social change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Trump using Twitter isn't the problem. In fact, it actually gives us a weirdly detailed bit of oversight into his actions and thoughts (such as they are). I actually think this is helpful when dealing with someone so erratic and uninformed. Everyone in their right mind sees his tweets for what they mostly are: Frustrated bloviations and childish temper-tantrums.

The _problem_ is electing someone as President who would use Twitter the way Trump does. We should never have done that in the first place and, thankfully, that's an error We The People can correct.

Addendum:

I do, though, think that Twitter's response is inadequate. They have a community. Their community is being turned toxic by this man and his ilk. His use of Twitter as President isn't the problem, but Twitter needs to address the effect of people like him on their platform and the world in general.

And that _way_ more complicated than just banning a warmonger President. Sadly, I'm not sure Twitter has shown themselves to be up to the challenge.

<comment><USER6> Without his tweets, we'd only know about how crazy and unbalanced he is via the "biased" and "corrupt" and "failing" media... with Twitter, we get to see it directly from his keyboard, thus leading to better debate about his fitness to serve.

P.S. Loved the Full page NY Times ad of his tweets - [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cviq5rBWYAQeh56.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cviq5rBWYAQeh56.jpg)

That being said, it's a double standard, most ordinary people would have been banned before they tweeted half-way down the first column of what's in that ad...

<comment><USER7> > Without his tweets, we'd only know about how crazy and unbalanced he is via

...video of (or live attendance at) his speeches, and via the actual concrete actions he undertakes in government.

<comment><USER8> Right - things that were not tweets:

* Mocking the parents of a man killed in action serving his country in the military.

* The "grab em by the pussy" tape.

* Racist comments about Mexicans.

* Mocking a disabled reporter

* 'Both sides' about actual nazis.

* Having no knowledge of policy

* Constant lying

We don't need twitter to tell us that he's unfit, unhinged and incapable of doing the job.

<comment><USER9> What were the racist comments about Mexicans? I know he made some comments about illegal immigrants, but most Mexicans in America are not illegal immigrants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If they'll single out political leaders and give them special protection from being blocked, the leaders should lose their ability to block others. Twitter is admitting that they are a "town hall" here and they need to let everyone speak their mind to their politicians.

<comment><USER11> Celebrities aren't using twitter in a way that they read replies so it only matters in a box checking sort of way.

<comment><USER12> doesn't blocking someone on twitter also block others from seeing the replies too? If so, it's a lot more impactful than that

<comment><USER11> That's a good point, the block stops them from replying altogether (or quote tweeting).

<comment><USER13> I think the fundamental property of a block feature should be complete undetectability that the user has been blocked by the user in question. For example Usenet killfile: you never know if you're in somebody's killfile unless they tell you so. Twitter's block function obviously fails this test, which makes it completely useless: once you realize you're blocked, just create another account to continue harassing the user who blocked you.

<comment><USER11> Mute does that.

<comment><USER13> So you're saying Twitter already has a block function that actually works? Then it's all the more baffling they also have one that doesn't work, and yet is somehow more well known.

<comment><USER11> They have 2 different functions with different names that do different things. They call the method of blocking you prefer "mute".

<comment><USER13> My point is that "mute" is strictly better than "block", so there's no reason to have "block" in the first place. Even if somebody likes the misfeature of the blockee knowing they're blocked, you can always tweet "I just muted @theannoyingperson", so that @theannoyingperson knows they're muted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I could almost understand this if they had a policy of not blocking anyone else who posted similarly hate-filled speech, but they don't. If you're not in the white house you're going to have a bad time.

So the policy is, "We don't allow hate speech unless you are extremely famous and well-known and then hate speech is totally fine".

Which is, IMHO, total bullshit.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's worth noting that in this post, Twitter does not explicitly define what a world leader is.

<comment><USER15> Also weird that they chose to use the phrase "world leader" instead of president or country leader or something like that. There aren't really that many _world_ leaders around. So Twitter can still prevent the leader of some other country from having their say?

<comment><USER16> I mean, while I agree that Twitter is mincing words here, "world leader" is a super standard phrase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it is hilarious when people argue with Trump on Twitter, because I realize he is 71 years old. He's literally someone's old grandpa on Twitter. How many 71 year olds do you know on Twitter? How many people do you know would argue and talk shit with a 71 year old grandpa on Twitter?

I understand he's not just _any_ 71 year old grandpa, but it's so funny to think about it that way.

</comment><comment><USER18> That's a very roundabout way of saying they won't ban Donald Trump because he's keeping Twitter relevant.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and debate."

I actually agree with this.

"We review Tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them, and enforce our rules accordingly."

Certain world leaders have sometimes posted tweets that would likely get anyone else banned. I would prefer Twitter to be more explicit about what they're doing -- namely _not_ enforcing rules against hateful and abusive content when exposing such content is seen a net benefit.

If Random Q. Person posts something that's abusive enough to violate Twitter's rules, there's no particular benefit in allowing that content to remain. If Powerful Famous Person posts the same thing, there's arguably substantial benefit in letting it be exposed.

On the other hand, applying the same rules to both would also be a valid policy. I merely suggest being a bit clearer about what those rules are and how they're enforced.

</comment><comment><USER20> I feel as if I am missing some background that this blog post is responding to. Can HNers fill in the blanks a little?

<comment><USER21> People have been suspended from Twitter and required to delete posts for pretty mild, joking stuff like "we should get rid of men", but Trump has not. @jack has stated a few times that Trump gets exempted from the rules because of the "newsworthiness" of his tweets - this just makes that official.

Example: @Popehat got suspended for posting screenshots of someone abusing him: [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170803/16341437919/twitt...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170803/16341437919/twitter- suspends-popehat-writing-about-violent-threats-he-received-another-twitter- user.shtml)

Example: This guy got suspended for killing a mosquito: [http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs- trending-41097947](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41097947)

<comment><USER9> Popehat got suspended for doxxing. See the screenshot in your link. The person is abusing him, and should also be banned, but doxxing is bad.

Mosquito ban sounds like a natural language mistake - only a human would understand the subject he's threatening to kill is the mosquito pictured, and your link confirms Twitter said it was a mistake.

Obviously Twitter should enforce rules for sex and racial discrimination. Joking doesn't make those things OK.

Trump is a military leader - making threats, like any military and police person, is part of their job. Would you support banning Barack Obama for threatening Assad?

<comment><USER20> If I am reading that right, somone threatened Popehat, and Popehat blogged about the threat. And you are calling that "doxing"???

<comment><USER9> See the tweet in the link above - Popehat published the person's phone number and physical address. The person is an asshole but Popehat shouldn't have done that.

[https://imgur.com/0gIrajl](https://imgur.com/0gIrajl)

<comment><USER21> He published the _business_ address and phone number of a _lawyer_. Calling publishing a screenshot of a threat sent voluntarily with that person's contact info as a signature "doxxing" is pretty weird.

<comment><USER9> Introducing non-Twitter contact details for someone you're having an argument with on Twitter is doxxing. The contact details were sent to Popehat, not to all Popehat's followers.

Pretending it shouldn't count in this case for some unspecified reason is weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How do racist slurs and threatening to murder millions of people "advance the global, public conversation"?

<comment><USER23> It advances the global, public conversation to a racist and war-filled future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This decision to treat public officials as a different class makes sense to me, especially in light of Twitter's (eventual) decision to let Politwoops continue operating despite violating the TOS for API usage: [https://www.wired.com/2016/01/twitter-reverses-itself-on- pol...](https://www.wired.com/2016/01/twitter-reverses-itself-on-politicians- deleted-tweets/)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd love to see an example of a tweet he actually deserves to get banned for. Note that "expressing support for Donald Trump" doesn't count.

<comment><USER26> You mean like threatening nuclear action against another nation?

"Examples of what we do not tolerate includes, but is not limited to behavior that harasses individuals or groups of people with:

violent threats; wishes for the physical harm, death, or disease of individuals or groups;"

<comment><USER9> Would you support banning all police and (non Trump) military from Twitter?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> IOW not silencing obviously stupid, downright heinous, or otherwise extremely dangerous speech from a certain political leader or three serves as public display of their outrageous opinion, hopefully serving as self-public shaming or something.

Honestly I'm still baffled by the situation as a whole (i.e how such despicable people came to be in power _and_ stay in the office), which I feel is kind of unprecedented.

<comment><USER28> Or, you know, we could actually have freedom of speech for everybody. Crazy talk included, whatever your definition of crazy happens to be.

<comment><USER29> There are famous public safety exceptions to free speech that we all agree on. We don't allow people to yell "fire" in a theater for example. The current discussion is about if nuclear posturing threatens public safety.

<comment><USER7> > We don't allow people to yell "fire" in a theater for example.

Can we stop using ungrounded dicta from a since-overturned decision suppressing core political speech as if it were an uncontroversial statement of an established valid limit on free speech?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So is Twitter going to filter fake news on one end and let world leaders spew their crap on the other?

What happens if Donald tweets a nude photo or a member of the Saudi royal family posts a video of a state beheading? Are those going to get deleted?

</comment><comment><USER31> Are there really people here suggesting that Twitter block the POTUS? Look, he's a madman, but he's also the president. It's not up to Twitter to try and alter the national dialogue.

<comment><USER7> > Are there really people here suggesting that Twitter block the POTUS?

There are people seriously suggesting that Donald J. Trump be held to the same standards with regard to content as other Twitter users, rather than Twitter being a biased, pro-Administration propaganda organ.

Twitter has clearly decided against that (that's been clear for some time, but now it's official.)

> Look, he's a madman, but he's also the president.

And that's why reporting _about_ him is valuable and ought to be protected, and it certainly a reason that he has disproportionate power of _government_ tools of communication.

It's not a reason for a private entity to grant him preferential liberties in a discussion forum that are not granted to others, particularly his domestic political opponents.

<comment><USER32> Allowing accounts of world leaders does not make twitter "a biased, pro- Administration propaganda organ". It makes twitter a place where world leaders are given a generally unfiltered communication tool. This has nothing to do with bias. If anything it is arguably the absence of bias.

<comment><USER7> > Allowing accounts of world leaders does not make twitter "a biased, pro- > Administration propaganda organ"

Allowing accounts of "world leaders" (so designated by Twitter) does not.

Allowing such accounts _freedom from content and participation standards that are applied as a bases for restricting or banning other participants_ , OTOH, does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I blocked Trump on Twitter a long time ago for my own sanity. It's understandable that Twitter won't ban him, but that doesn't mean we have to read what he tweets.

</comment><comment><USER34> Content aside I wish Twitter could have at least gotten the English grammar correct on their post. Whoever wrote it doesn't know how to use commas.

</comment><comment><USER35> Except that they block world leaders (and other globally important actors) as requested by the US security/power community.

PR. No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER36> TLDR: @realDonaldTrump can post whatever he wants and we won't do anything about it. Also, we claim that he doesn't impact our growth.

</comment><comment><USER37> Blocking a user from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that user, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.

<comment><USER26> Except that it's only newsworthy in a recursive way. They give him a platform to break their own rules and be controversial. The simple fact is they want him to be controversial on their platform, not someone else's. This is a dangerous game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What a joke.

</comment><comment><USER39> I feel like this effectively makes Twitter an avenue for propaganda dissemination, giving world leaders who frequently blur the line near facism a "no-rules" platform to give out (mis)information. I mean, trump just denied climate change on Twitter and then threatened to bomb a country that has millions of people (aka killing millions of civilians). I can't be the only person who, at the very least, is a little freaked out by trump's presence on Twitter and this announcement

<comment><USER40> Isn't Twitter much more akin to something like a bulletin board or a printing press? Certainly the platform on which speech is disseminated should be viewed independently from the speaker?

<comment><USER39> Twitter frequently removes and censors users at the request of governments and due to rule breaking, etc. They aren't a bastion of free speech</comment></comment></comment>


Is Bend Becoming the Next Startup Haven? - <AUTHOR> http://www.opb.org/news/article/is-bend-becoming-the-next-startup-haven/ <comment><AUTHOR> Probably not a major one, but it's a pretty nice place, so if it gets "enough" of an ecosystem, things will go quite well here.</comment>


Coin Demoes The Tech That Scored A $15.5M Round Led By Red Point - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/05/coin-demoes-the-tech-that-scored-a-15-5m-round-led-by-red-point/ <comment><USER2> "It makes sure the swipe data is actually yours"

Can't you generate the swipe data from the other information you have, i.e. name, the card number, the expiration date, and the CVV2? ISO/IEC 7813 also specifies that there can be discretionary data but it seems it's unused, so what is the significance of swiping in addition to taking a picture and it seems also entering in the expiration and CVV (and number?) manually?</comment>


Europe abolishes mobile phone roaming charges - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/27/europe-abolishes-mobile-phone-roaming-charges <comment><USER2> I can't help but wonder if they solved the underlying problem, or just passed it off to the carriers. If they banned carriers from imposing roaming charges on each other to carry each others' traffic, then that could potentially work; if they didn't, and only banned charging the consumer, then that creates a massive market advantage for the larger European carriers, who can charge the smaller carriers with no way for those smaller carriers to recoup the charges from their customers.

The article mentions that that "will require reform of the roaming wholesale market on which national phone operators across Europe trade services between each other.". I'm starting to think that the old joke about XML applies to regulation as well: _____ is like violence, if it's not working, use more until it does.

<comment><USER3> Both wholesale rates and retail rates have been regulated for a decade or so now, so larger carriers can't charge smaller ones ludicrous rates.

<comment><USER2> > Both wholesale rates and retail rates have been regulated for a decade or so > now, so larger carriers can't charge smaller ones ludicrous rates.

If regulations force the retail rates to zero without forcing the wholesale rates to zero, that's still a problem; either do both or do neither.

<comment><USER3> Well yes, obviously wholesale rates have always been capped lower than retail rates. Now, I can't really find a precise account of what's going to happen in 2017, but I see no reason to think it will be different.

<comment><USER4> Here is a nice overview. Maybe slightly outdated by the latest developments, but the concept of wholesale and retail rates is clear [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But be careful if you find yourself in Switzerland or Norway. It's easy to forget that those two are not in the EU and that can easily end up costing you a lot. I had a layover at the Zurich airport yesterday and I almost enabled data roaming which I disabled as soon as I left for the US... it was a good thing I checked the carrier text message letting me know that every MB of transferred data will cost me almost 9 EUR!!!

<comment><USER6> > those two are not in the EU

Norway and Iceland are in the EEA, and Switzerland has similar trade deals. So, much EU law does apply to them. I don't know if the roaming law does.

<comment><USER7> It definitely does not apply to Switzerland.

<comment><USER8> This is in Italian, but Switzerland, Norway and Croatia are included. [http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/impresa-e- territori/2015-10-2...](http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/impresa-e- territori/2015-10-27/definitivo-l-addio- roaming-2017-150435.shtml?uuid=ACk5cEOB)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The newest news says, that the first big carrier is looking for legal ways to get around this. So "abolish" might be a little to much promise.

The news behind the news is, that the EU parliamentarians likely did sacrifice net-neutrality to get rid of the roaming charges (it is rumored, that many feared that when the whole package was not voted for fast, the roaming charges would also be dropped from agenda).

So, very possible, in the end we get nothing of it at all!

<comment><USER10> Well, they didn't sacrifice net neutrality. They created net neutrality, but ISPs can still zero-rate some sites.

It's intended to avoid the Netflix-Verizon issue, but it still allows for unfair competition, although the ECJ already mentioned they would consider that an antitrust violation.

So we might end up with a fair result.

<comment><USER9> Some people, and also the inventor of the WWW, do not agree.

<comment><USER10> Yes. Zero-Rating is bad.

But you can't say they "banned" or gave a "heavy blow to" Net Neutrality.

They created a very limited law, that provides some of the protections of Net Neutrality, but most importantly, it creates more competition between ISPs.

But, as most of the other protections of Net Neutrality are anti-monopoly laws, the ECJ might end up ruling that, if one combines this law with antitrust laws, these protections are implied.

<comment><USER9> To which extend Net Neutrality was damaged, is debatable -- and likely we will only see in the future what the net-result is. I can only see for now, that they left dangerous holes in the Net Neutrality case here, which the providers where longing for very much, because they want to use these holes to draw money from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Watch out for carriers in low tax EU environments poaching subscribers and then allowing them to roam. Particularly if there is any sort of discrepancy between what the carrier pays to terminate a call elsewhere in Europe and what they pay to receive a call.

<comment><USER12>
         > Watch out for carriers in low tax EU environments
         > poaching subscribers and then allowing them to roam

That sounds like an ideal situation, although as we've recently seen, companies need to be very careful with:

        > low tax EU environments

as the EU has shown itself willing to declare these illegal state subsidies retroactively.

<comment><USER7> Those were special tax deals for special companies. It's perfectly legal to just set a low tax rate, as long as it's universal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Roaming charges in the eu have always been a way to legally rip off the customers.

<comment><USER14> The new "fair" rate is 50 EUR per gig! 10 times the normal cost! It's still a rip off.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. They aren't banning roaming charges, they are capping them at a rate that is still a rip off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So from what I understand, this means that when I roam in the United Kingdom on an Irish sim, I get no extra roaming charges, which is great.

Does anyone know if this has any effect on calls/texts to other countries?

<comment><USER17> This is already the case for some carriers, Vodafone (when Passport is enabled) off the top of my head, and also Meteor. Has been the case for some time.

There has been an issue with data though, and I'm not sure the new proposal solves that. Also if you have a plan with minutes, they won't be included as minutes while abroad, you'll be charged, but at a standard home rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hopefully this will peer-pressure US carriers to follow suit.

<comment><USER19> There are no roaming charges inside of US, are there?

<comment><USER20> There can be roaming charges and roaming data caps inside the US although they're not very common with the major carriers. The only time I've specifically encountered a cap with AT&T (I have a grandfathered "unlimited" plan) was when I was in Furnace Creek in Death Valley. (For those not familiar, Furnace Creek is quite isolated but it did get cell phone service a few years back.)

As others have said, international roaming is very expensive without a specific plan. I left early on a trip to Europe last winter because of a snowstorm and before I knew it I had a big bill because I had used my phone in Toronto airport and my roaming service wasn't scheduled to begin for a couple of days. Fortunately, AT&T moved the start time for the international service earlier for me.

<comment><USER21> AFAIK AT&T always lets you buy International plan add ons back to beginning of the current bill cycle. Still a rip.

T-Mobile has 'free international data' but it's 2G speeds (capped at 128 kbps) and the upsell is a rip, $50 for half a GB.

<comment><USER20> AT&T's system for international add-ons on their site is a lot better than it used to be when you had to explicitly cancel the plan over the phone when you got back home.

I'm happy enough with their offerings. I suppose there are circumstances where I'd just buy a SIM card for my old phone when I arrived at the airport, but for most purposes I'm fine with paying $30 for 120MB or whatever it is. It's no hassle and serves my purposes for a week of travel or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> right now some genious at ATT is calculating the business case for roaming charges between US states. not like the US has anything like the EU commission enforcing rules against corporations. oh man, the billions to be reaped. and hey, how many really travel between states? and aren't most voters against the federal government and for more state-level government? make some GOP doofus to run with it, next step - profit!

<comment><USER23> Roaming in the US only really went away sometime around 2000. I would say the wireless carriers are competing pretty hard right now (what with all the offers to pay $500 to get people off their old plan and huge LTE build outs).</comment></comment>


Lessons From My Failed Startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/5e912a457276 <comment><USER2> More medium.com spam, for the love of whatever is holy to you why do you keep spamming HN with this stuff? Props to you guys for figuring out how to beat the spam/voting ring detectors but you're ruining one of the nicer websites that I know about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author of the post here. Is the only reason you think the post is spam that it's hosted on medium?

I mostly posted this there to try it out but if there is something wrong with doing so (other than seeing a tld of medium.com), I'd really appreciate hearing about it.

<comment><USER2> Medium.com has been literally _flooding_ the HN front page in the last few weeks, not a day goes by without 1, 2 or as earlier today even 4 articles (for want of a better term) on the homepage.

Comparable content from other sources would normally not gain nearly as many upvotes in as short a time as the medium.com stuff does.

You know there is something afoot when a medium.com story gets more upvotes and appears on the homepage _seconds_ after being posted contrasted with for instance an article written by Joe Armstrong or phys.org article about the visualization of chemical bonds being formed and broken.

That's not proof by a long shot but there is definitely something going on there.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many of you actually identify yourself as hackers? If so, why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> No, of course not.

And, of course, Hacker News is a really bad name for a community of software entrepreneurs, for a number of reasons.

First, it encourages people who understand the correct meaning of the term to associate this place with the art of computer programming, leading them to submit articles about Haskell as though they belonged here. There are a lot more people who care about that sort of thing than people starting software businesses (startup or otherwise), so we get a bit lost in the noise.

The big one, though, is that "Hacker" doesn't mean what computer folk know it to mean. To anybody but us (meaning roughly 100% of people), it means "Criminal Who Breaks In To Your Computer". That's what we associate ourselves with by naming this site the way we do.

I'd much rather go back to being "Startup News". At least then our only concern would be convincing people to stop posting general tech news here.

<comment><USER3> Wow that's news to me I thought this site was for tech news and Haskell was welcome

<comment><USER4> I think he's being a little bit reductive, probably because there's a dearth of more interesting startup-relevant topics here these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I saw people saying stuff like "hacking a salad" I considered this term lost forever. Putting food together is not hacking a salad people, it's literally making one.

<comment><USER6> I concur: the term ' _hacking_ ' has become hopelessly diluted by wannabe use applied to unrelated activities that are only very weakly analogous.

A ' _hack_ ' is a self-deprecating description of a quick and dirty programming job, anybody who proudly self-describes something they've done as _hacking_ has totally missed the point. It used to be that one could not self- style oneself as a _hacker_ but rather became one when others who are recognised as such begin referring to one as such.

(I used to be referred to as being one, but I gave up my fascination with computer security and exotic computer science concepts in the mid 2000s.)

<comment><USER7> Hacking doesn't need to be self-deprecating. I'm proud of some of my work that I consider a hack.

When I worked in finance, I hacked together a bridge between an FIXML order pub/sub service and a proprietary exchange server. Was it my best work? Obviously not. Was it ugly as sin? Hell yes. Did I slap it out in a few weeks? Yup. Did it prop up the business for the 18 months it needed to develop a "real" solution? Yeah.

That ugly hack probably earned the business millions in revenue.

Though I also concur; the term hacker is overused, diluted and twisted in meaning, and I have no interest in bringing it back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1) I like to think of myself as a hacker, because as tnecniv says, in many ways it's really an attitude.

2) I don't self-describe as a hacker in public however, because as znpy says, it's a title that other people ought to give you first before you call yourself that.

3) I especially don't self-describe as a hacker when non-techies are around, because they'll just think I'm calling myself a cracker ( _not_ the effect you want ;-) )

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it's a pretty stupid word and I avoid having anything to do with it. It also tends to be overused as well as misused.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have been thought that 'hacker' is a title that other people give to you, but you do not give to yourself.

The only exceptions are people that "created" the hacker culture: people like Stallman, Sussman, esr, etc.

Just my two cents.

<comment><USER11> I think to some degree, it's really an attitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think this post needs some context. For example, this is what I think of when I think of a "hacker": [http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker- howto.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html)

It might be different for someone else.</comment>


Valve has just started the PC games race to zero - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamesbrief.com/2014/03/valve-has-just-started-the-pc-games-race-to-zero/ <comment><USER2> >There is an issue with Bertrand Competition: it excludes the impact of marketing; it assumes that one pair of shoes is as good as another pair of shoes; it doesn't factor in the cost of comparison, or the cost of switching, all of which are real.

Well that's an understatement. There's definitely a race to the bottom and it saddens me. At the same time, games aren't commodities. Shoes is a pretty laughable analogy.

I've been excited about some devs recently fighting against the race to the bottom:

 _868-HACK_ \- $6 on the App Store. [http://indiestatik.com/2013/09/11/868-hack- sales/](http://indiestatik.com/2013/09/11/868-hack-sales/)

 _The Castle Doctrine_ \- $16. No sales ever. [http://thecastledoctrine.net/seedBlogs.php?action=display_po...](http://thecastledoctrine.net/seedBlogs.php?action=display_post&post_id=jasonrohrer_1389812989_0&show_author=1&show_date=1)

 _Democracy 3_ \- $25 for an indie game and I think has only had one 50% sale. [http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2013/11/19/lessons-from- lau...](http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2013/11/19/lessons-from-launching- democracy-3/)

 _Minecraft_ is a similar example (~$27) but people tend to blow that off as not relevant to the conversation because any other game _isn 't Minecraft_.

<comment><USER3> >> Minecraft is a similar example (~$27) but people tend to blow that off as not relevant to the conversation because any other game isn't Minecraft.

so true

<comment><USER2> People have no sense of history. When Notch announced he was doing an increasing pricing model, Minecraft _wasn 't Minecraft_. He had only been working on the game for a few weeks, it wasn't popular, and it had almost no features (e.g. no crafting). Now when someone suggests the same kind of model, like Rohrer is doing with _The Castle Doctrine_ , gamers are outraged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To be fair, Steam has been in a race to zero for quite some time. I know multiple people to refuse to buy games unless they are hugely (80%+) discounted. Their new expectation of price is "cheap". This seems to be regardless of what the regular retail price is. $60? Wait until it is $10. Oh it is normally $10? Wait until it is $3.

Steam helps this along with its nice email reminders when a game on one's wishlist is on sale.

That said, Valve's earlier policy of "we can put you on sale whenever we want" was interesting. A lot of developers objected, but from what I read (admittedly not much more than a handful of blog entries) Valve's knowledge of how to do pricing meant that their seemingly chaotic sale methodology (generally? always?) resulted increased revenue for games which had been put on sale.

<comment><USER5> Is it not possible that this is just market segmentation? Like, the people you are referring to would never pay for those games otherwise. With the discount mechanism in place Steam gets to take their money too. People who are more flexible regarding game prices are not going to wait months for a discount and just pay the full price.

<comment><USER6> When the price drops enough, I sometimes buy something because of the "ooh, that's a good deal, I might play that someday".

And... sometimes I don't get around to playing those games, because something more interesting comes along before I get around to it.

So yes, the developer isn't making as much per user, but I believe the increased volume would often make up for it.

<comment><USER7> I love Steam sales but I feel pain for the developers.

The number of AAA titles in my steam library that I've barely played is pretty high. I could go without buying any games for at least a year before I would consider buying another one.

My time for playing games has become so small that I'm well behind the release curve, so games that I do want to play are frequently < $15.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article makes an analogy with shoes but in order for it to hold developers would have to be making identical games.

Many people wait for the next release in a series and many people buy on release day.

If you just want to kill a couple hours then sure, any game might be good enough for you as the consumer. But if you want to play Action Game 9: The Bad Guys Lose then that's your only option.

The authors big mistake is in equating a commodity good like shoes with a creative good like games. If you want to read the latest Game of Thrones, you aren't going to say, "That's 30 bucks! I'll just buy Harry Potter."

<comment><USER9> > The article makes an analogy with shoes but in order for it to hold > developers would have to be making identical games.

Shoes aren't identical.

Competing shoes may be closer substitutes for each other than competing games (or, maybe _not_ for popular cookie-cutter genres of games.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Race to zero? Well, games are an obsolete industry then, they should find something else to make money instead of complaining. Why not play their games live for an audience? Or sell game merchandize, like t-shirts.

Sarcasm off.

Yes, I'm making a sarcastic parallel to what people say about the music industry. My real opinion is that we should structure industries such that people who create value for us can profit from it.

I don't believe in the "invisible hand" and the market adjusting itself always better than with policy intervention (which is cargo cult economics, not to mention a historical impossibility, for there was never any market observed outside of policy intervention).

I also don't believe that just because some technology exists, people should adapt to it. I believe that people, or societies, should shapewhat technology they use and how they use it according to their will, and not the reverse (each new technology presented as inevitable fatalism).

<comment><USER11> It seems like more people are making music than ever before. Why is that the case, if the conventional wisdom is that it is a terrible industry in which it is impossible for musicians to make a living? Same question for free apps.

<comment><USER10> > _It seems like more people are making music than ever before. Why is that > the case, if the conventional wisdom is that it is a terrible industry in > which it is impossible for musicians to make a living?_

First, "making music" and "making a living from music" is not the same.

Second, the reason is that the friction to recording and publishing is lower than before.

<comment><USER11> I don't think I conflated making music and making a living from making music...

Your "second" point seems like a good thesis to me: the amount of musical recordings made is correlated with the ease of making musical recordings rather than with the ease of making a living off of them. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's all Steam's own dumb fault for having no refunds, turning Steam games into lottery tickets. My Steam library is made up of 90% junk I wasted money on and 10% good stuff I got a fair value from. That means I have to pay less for _every_ game just to get a fair value out of Steam as a whole. THAT is why people want to pay $20 for games that truly are worth $60.

<comment><USER13> Better reviews and player feedback would help; Valve recently started showing user reviews on game pages, which might be useful. Previously all you had was a metacritic score (nearly useless) and the utterly meaningless 'friends who own this game' UI, which has been broken and displaying incorrect data for years.

Steam also has virtually zero discovery features, which makes it hard to find games that actually fit your interests. The new tagging feature might solve this eventually, once it stops being complete noise.

<comment><USER14> User game reviews are pretty worthless due to the trend of angry users spamming bad reviews to punish the developer whenever they're upset about some small thing.

<comment><USER15> It shows how many hours the user has played, which is a very effective mechanism for filtering reviews. It was suggested on HN that this could be used for the mobile app stores as well and my own experience is that reading a review and rating from someone who has provably put a lot of time into a game is invaluable.

<comment><USER13> Yeah. In my opinion, Valve should be using statistics like time played and number of achievements to try and measure player engagement so they can at least get a rough idea of how popular a given game is (along with things like how long an average playthrough is, whether it has replay value...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord I'm not sure, but I think I do recall a rumor (from the recent Gabe Newell AMA on Reddit) that Valve are intending on phasing out the Greenlight system in favor of an all-inclusive model, similar to Desura.

This might just be the beginning.

I think it's a shame, because quite honestly, I've always seen Steam as a badge of honor for game developers. To get on Steam means you have a well polished end product ready for major distribution. Of course, with the advent of Greenlight, crap did start getting past the radar from time to time, but overall there was still an equilibrium maintained.

I'd hate to see Steam head the same direction as Google Play. There's plenty of other distribution platforms to pick from if one wants to instantly submit their games for sale.

<comment><USER16> I didn't read that as implying everyone would be publish to Steam. In the context of related comments from Valve, I believe they're considering allowing others to more easily use the Steam distribution system to build their own storefronts.

This would allow third parties to create their own Steam-like stores, built on Steam, collating games from whoever submits them - imagine Humble Bundle, or a store that exclusively sells 3d platformers, or a publisher with a storefront with only their own games. Valve could still pick games out of these to put them on the official Steam store front. Plus Valve still gets a x% cut of each sale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Obviously, this isn't going to happen for every single game.

If you look at either the Google Play or iOS App Store you'll see that there are plenty of well-known games in both free and PSID categories.

I myself was playing a riveting game of Kingdom Rush (a Tower Defence game) which I paid £1.29 for. Considering how much time I spent playing Tower Defence in WC3 as a teenager I'd say I got a real bargain to be able to play this for only £1.29.

I am not alone in my ability and in fact desire to pay. Just look at those charts. People still do and always will pay for games as long as this fact continues to be true:

 _All games are not created equal._

</comment><comment><USER18> This article is sensationalism dressed up as economic reasoning. In the opening paragraph, the author fails to make the distinction between _profits_ trending toward zero versus _prices_ trending toward zero in a free market. This undermines his argument even without the very real and substantial caveats he waves away later in the piece.

Second, while the _marginal cost_ to sell one copy of a game is effectively zero in electronic marketplaces, the _gross cost_ of making a game is never zero, not even for indie developers, because if nothing else it costs them their time. What we should then expect to see is a situation where, assuming a game is successful, a game sells at some non-zero price the market will bear until it earns its costs back, with steep discounts following. Of course, it is more than possible the game will simply lose money.

We should expect this to be true even in a world where games are sold purely in electronic form and those markets are flooded with free content (which is to say, developers willing to sell their games at a loss). Come to think of it, that's pretty much precisely what we observe in the games industry today. Where's the beef?

<comment><USER19> Gross cost is basically irrelevant when you are talking about pricing in a perfect competition. The point is that producers cannot set their price because if they set it any higher, somebody else will undercut them.

I think the correct mainstream economic interpretation is that games are highly differentiated, meaning that no game can completely undercut another game because they are never the same. This means that the perfect competition model and argument do not apply and thus MC != MR in the game industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good articles to read on this topic:

[http://stratechery.com/2013/open-source- apps/](http://stratechery.com/2013/open-source-apps/)

[http://www.marco.org/2013/09/28/underscore-price- dynamics](http://www.marco.org/2013/09/28/underscore-price-dynamics)

[http://tapity.com/yep-paid-apps-are-dead/](http://tapity.com/yep-paid-apps- are-dead/)

</comment><comment><USER21> One thing I don't think many people have realised yet is that in addition to the cheap games and freemium model, Steam is selling other goods too, under the guise of giving away virtual goods for free.

These goods are given away for free - trading cards, for example. However, in order to actually trade them you have to transfer your money into Steam to buy them from another player. That money cannot be withdrawn, it can only move around the ecosystem and eventually get spent on games. Effectively, they have already made the sale, it's just a matter of waiting for you to redeem the money - or not.

I find it interesting that people are willing to pay other users real money for these goods, when (I assume) they wouldn't be willing to pay the money directly to VALVE - even when this is effectively the end result. It's an extension to the freemium model in my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER22> I buy a lot of shoes and games and it is NOT the same thing. I go crazy when shoes go on sale because as a woman I can never have enough shoes but I have learnt not to spend money on games that I will never end up playing or play for a few hours and get bored - just because they were on sale.

Games have been experimenting with pricing models for a while and subscription based models are tricky, unless you are WOW/EVE. As a developer your cost does not diminish once the game has been published, specially if you are doing this as a longterm business. Pricing integrity and a model that generates revenue through virtual and in-game economies would be a good mix, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER17> Obviously, as the author alluded to at the end, this isn't going to happen for every single game.

If you look at either the Google Play or iOS App Store you'll see that there are plenty of well-known games in both free and PSID categories.

I myself was just playing a riveting game of Kingdom Rush (a Tower Defence game) which I paid £1.29 for. Considering how much time I spent playing Tower Defence in WC3 as a teenager I'd say I got a real bargain to be able to play this for only £1.29.

I am not alone in my ability and willingness to pay. Just look at those charts. People still do and always will pay for games as long as this fact continues to be true:

 _All games are not created equal._

</comment><comment><USER23> Then how about humble indie bundles with steam keys then, where you can get game bundles for $1 and even bigger game bundles for an average of $4.50? The price of the games end up being less than $1.

</comment><comment><USER24> But there's no limit on fixed costs for games. Presumably production could cost as much as a Hollywood blockbuster and be priced accordingly. Marginal costs aren't always everything.

<comment><USER25> Games are already priced _much higher_ than hollywood blockbusters. To see a blockbuster in the theaters costs about $10 per person, to buy a AAA game on release date costs $60 or more. And it's not as though the market is rejecting these prices, GTA V made around a billion dollars in revenue within its first week of release, games are already some of the biggest entertainment launches in history.

<comment><USER26> GTA V is also a game that easily costs a dollar an hour for play. That's much less than $10 for 2 hours.

When looking at the price of games, you have to remember you're normally going to be spending much more time playing that game than you are watching a single ticket's worth of a movie.

A similar argument could be made for physical movie media vs movie tickets. You pay $30 for a dvd, sure; but, you and 5 of your friends can all sit down and watch that DVD in the comfort of your home. 3 years later, you can watch it again, and again. The cost per hour of that DVD can easily, if you're an avid, repeat movie watcher, drop down to the same price per hour that you're paying for a game.

On the other hand, if you're buying a modern FPS for the story only and hate multiplayer, then you're getting about 6 hours of play for $60; and that's about the cost of a movie.

<comment><USER27> Coincidentally, there are many story-based single player games that in practice (and IMHO deliberately) are just that - consumed like movies; where the pacing, player input, difficulty and choice-options are tweaked so that for the things that most players will do, they in fact get a reasonable action movie on their screen for those 6-10 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if the final, low price here will end up empowering consumers more or instead just reduce quality. HN often laments the rise of free-to-play games with IAP, and I wouldn't be surprised if even more of the industry tends towards that with this change.

That said, hopefully I'm wrong, and this change will decrease prices for consumers, increase sales and revenue for developers, and make everyone happy :) (But that doesn't seem likely, IMO.)

<comment><USER29> > That said, hopefully I'm wrong, and this change will decrease prices for > consumers, increase sales and revenue for developers, and make everyone > happy :) (But that doesn't seem likely, IMO.)

I very much hope that would be the case instead of turning Steam into something akin to App Store with thousands upon thousands of "free" games and their cheap clones riddled with advertising, boosts and so on.

<comment><USER30> Nah, gamers deserve that hell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> 4 typos in the opening paragraphs. Credibility of author/editor/article has been shot.

That being said, it's thought provoking.

<comment><USER13> I'm not even sure the premise is accurate. I'm pretty sure developers have been setting pricing on Steam for a while; we have control over the price of the game we're about to release.

<comment><USER32> True, the developers/publisher has always been the one to set the discount during steam sales too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I bought a game last week on sale from Steam that used UPlay DRM and the CD key was found to be "already used." Opened a ticket with Ubisoft Support after Steam said they could do nothing for me and it took a week for Ubisoft to say "sorry we can't get you a new key" and yet Steam is still selling it.

</comment><comment><USER34> Man. I had to re-read the title of this article five times, before I understood the intended meaning. What a terrible wording.

</comment><comment><USER35> I would pay 20 bucks for an awesome game any day over 2 dozen f2p pieces of garbage.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hardly. Most people just have completely no understanding of the concept of consumer surplus and the difference between per unit revenue and total revenue. People will still pay a lot of money for games for the foreseeable future, but they'll also sometimes pay less money for games, and the result will be more total revenue than if there were just one fixed price.</comment>


The Gates-Funded Toilet Of The Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680926/the-gates-funded-toilet-of-the-future#1

<comment><USER2> This doesn't seem to have any advantages over a simple composting toilet which is pretty standard technology. Surely this article is missing something out?. Otherwise this is a massively overcomplicated solution to a problem which could be solved with local skills and a bit of training rather than a computer controlled nanotech which needs to be shipped half way round the world.

</comment><comment><USER3> Solar panels, sublevel required under toilets, multiple tanks, electrodes.. It will need to be simplified and miniaturized dramatically to be viable - but it seems possible.

It sounds like the solar panels are oversized, and mounting it on a motor is particularly gratuitous. They mentioned batteries, but I don't know why they would be necessary. Couldn't the waste be queued up until daylight to be processed?

However, it's clear they're simply proving the technology. The question is, can it be manufactured and packaged efficiently and compactly.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a problem worth addressing but it seems to be overly engineered, expensive and out of touch.

As noted in the comments, composting toilets have already solved the problem and are much cheaper and more reliable.</comment>


Show HN: Can you tell me what's wrong with this idea? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I'm thinking of releasing a public beta real soon, but I have a small fear that things won't be as expected, so can you just point a finger on what's wrong? what could be done to get some traction? is it worth it?
here is the link: http://www.sqardius.com
any piece of advice, suggestion, remark or critic is highly appreciated.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> This is a great idea. I built something similar at a hackathon a while ago. The whole idea is using both location and time to create an interesting locative media experience, which is something none of the incumbents do well right now.

You need a copywriter though. The language on your homepage is vague and needlessly wordy. Here's an edited version of one of your paragraphs describing a use case:

"Lots of fun things happen at school. Share them with Sqardius, and leave memories for the future."

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing wrong with the idea, just that it's not a new one, I can't remember any of the names but social geo tagging / location based photos / shares are not a new thing. (I guess panoramio is one example)

but that said, who said that it should stop you from trying, the fact I can't think of any name for such an app might prove that it's not that mainstream yet and there is room for one more.

see how many todo apps we have, and we keep having more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your reply, and yes you are right, but I want to achieve is an app you could use on your smartphone that can show photos (and later videos) that have been taken in the place you are standing, in other words, you can see what happened when you weren't there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's an interesting idea. Better than a lot I have seen. It is something I can almost see myself using! I think it's an interesting way to see the history of visits to a place!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly why I thought about it in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I also think its interesting...maybe you can add a historical twist to it...let people upload their pictures and show them on a timeline or so...</comment>


I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7_reasons_i_switched_back_to_p_1.html

<comment><USER2> This is an old story. He eventually switched back to Rails [1] : _My former company (CD Baby) was one of the first to loudly switch to Ruby on Rails, and then even more loudly switch back to PHP… This book by Michael Hartl came so highly recommended that I had to try it, and the Ruby on Rails Tutorial is what I used to switch back to Rails again… Though I've worked my way through many Rails books, this is the one that finally made me "get" it._

Understanding a framework is a long and sometimes tough process. That's the only lesson to be learned.

[1] <http://ruby.railstutorial.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Can we change the headline to mention that this article was written in 2007? I'm quite sure both PHP and RoR have come a long way in a little over five years.

</comment><comment><USER4> Please note that this article was written in 2007.

<comment><USER5> thanks! i didnt realize this!.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> He is comapring apples to oranges here.

The language PHP to the _framework_ Rails.

He didn't find the language (ruby) unsuitable, but rather the framework (rails) too heavy. This might of been exactly the same if he tried PHP with Zend/Symphony/etc.

His bottom line should of been: "Sometimes its better to work without a framework".

<comment><USER7> Or rather just a different framework. I wasn't a Rubyist in 2007, but certainly now Sinatra (especially with Padrino) is worthy of consideration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If ruby is such an amazing language, why not ditch rails and rewrite it in 2 months with pure ruby ?

<comment><USER9> Because Ruby isn't designed purely for making websites. You at least need to use Rack (or a similar API) to hook into a server.

PHP has a lot of features built in which make it almost comparable to a framework. This is because it is designed for making websites out of the box, Ruby is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> And the great cycle begins again...

</comment><comment><USER11> You can tell this article is old when it reads: "...opened a new empty Subversion respository".

</comment><comment><USER12> No mud-slinging or hyperbole, just solid reasons why PHP works better for him in this case.

Coding in different languages definitely does make you look at coding from different perspectives, and you can often apply those lessons back to other languages.

</comment><comment><USER13> This article was on HN 6 months ago. PHP sucks.

<comment><USER14> If you're going to act like a jerk in all your posts, which I actually have no problem with, I'd suggest removing your full name and bio from your HN account 'about' section.

<comment><USER15> I was actually just reading through his comments now and noted that a few of them had been offensive.</comment></comment></comment>


Google has added DuckDuckGo as a search engine option for Chrome users - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/13/google-has-quietly-added-duckduckgo-as-a-search-engine-option-for-chrome-users-in-60-markets/ <comment><USER3> As noted in the article, apparently Google is presenting the top four search engines used in a given country. So presumably this means they're seeing a lot more DuckDuckGo searches in the data they're collecting from Chrome users.

It's also a solid choice for them to hedge against antitrust claims, if they can point to having just added them to their browser, regardless of the fact that Google is the default and they do not present a choice screen like Microsoft had to in the EU.

<comment><USER4> > So presumably this means they're seeing a lot more DuckDuckGo searches in > the data they're collecting from Chrome users

There's a lot to unpack in that statement... Is there any recent analysis on the usage stats that chrome is reporting back that someone could point to?

<comment><USER5> It need not be chrome users, Google could (ironically) get relatively good metrics just by how many times ddg has been googled.

<comment><USER6> Or from how many times, people have shebanged their way to google from duckduckgo.

<comment><USER7> Shebanged or banged?

<comment><USER8> Banged, shebang is #!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fun facts:

* DDG in 2018 has served similar amount of search queries as Google in 2000.

* DDG growth rate is accelerating

* Google search growth rate is negative

* Google's share of global search is shrinking

DDG stats: [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic)

Google stats: [http://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search- statistics/](http://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/)

<comment><USER10> One argument to be made is that Google Search can only go downwards from here, as it is currently a clear market leader, and the remaining segments are not easy for them to break into. For example, Baidu has a stranglehold on search in China, and that's not likely to change drastically, with Google facing internal opposition to entering China.

<comment><USER11> This is true, but Google is also adding more search surfaces (e.g., google home, assistant etc.). So, it's possible that they might attract proportionately more users using these surfaces.

<comment><USER12> I don't have any Google home devices, but I'd be curious to know how many of those queries are simply commands "Google play my music" and how many are actual internet searches "Google what is the capital of Alabama".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think this really changes anything. It's more important to Google that DuckDuckGo users don't disable Chrome's prediction service, that way they can still collect search data on them. Adding DuckDuckGo as a search engine option whilst they leave the prediction service option intact means that this is nothing more than a publicity stunt. It's actually quite deceiving for many users who do not realise they are still sending data to Google.

<comment><USER14> Eh? "Use a prediction service" is about whether you send data as you type _to your default search engine_, not to Google. If you change to DuckDuckGo as your default search engine, toggling "use a prediction service" on and off will not send any more or less data to Google, because omnibox typing is never sent to Google in that case regardless.

Source: I am the former Chrome omnibox owner. You can find the relevant code for this starting at [https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/components/omnibox/brow...](https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/components/omnibox/browser/search_provider.cc?rcl=84aa37ed3a2f13288c93c4ad90fe00513d84d77c&l=613) ; look for how GetDefaultProviderURL() works and when that query is sent. You can also watch packets with your favorite network analyzer.

<comment><USER15> Was playing around with the omnibox debug tool (chrome://omnibox) the other day, pretty cool how it inter-ranks literal search, search suggests, history into one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm on my second attempt to use DDG instead of Google. As time goes on, my percentage of searches I use google for ticks higher and higher. I'm starting to intuitively recognize when search results will be garbage with DDG. It's tough because I really want to take back my privacy, but it seems that for 50% of searches, DDG just doesn't get me anywhere near what i'm looking for.

The other day I searched for the website to check a restaurant gift card balance. All of DDGs results were obvious scam webpages. I often search for ElasticSearch documentation. DDG always returns very old versions for these docs, while google returns the most recent version.

<comment><USER17> DDG has a "retry search in Google" mode if you prefix !g to your search query.

I usually try in DDG first, and then in the small cases where it's not found, I just prefix "!g" and re-execute the query.

<comment> move-on-by Even better is the !sp bang, which is for StartPage (a google search proxy). This way you can get the Google results and still retain some privacy from Google. I also use !w (wikipedia) and !so (stackoverflow) bangs regularly. Finally, the search doesn't have to be prefix with these bangs, it just needs in to be in the search somewhere - I find it quicker to just append it to the end personally.

Full list of supported bang queries: [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

<comment><USER18> You can save one keystroke and type !s for Startpage.

I too just type the bang command somewhere, and usually it's at the end of the search term or phrase.

<comment><USER19> Nice, thanks for pointing that out! It seems like a small think but typing !s only is more convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I started using two browsers + search engines:

1 - I use Chrome + Google for work stuff 2 - I use Firefox + DuckDuckGo for personal stuff

I sync my passwords with Bitwarden.

<comment><USER21> @wintorez, I started using Brave browser[1] and DuckDuckGo for work and personal. It's based on Chrome but with privacy in mind.

Also, I currently use 1Password, but have been thinking about using Enpass[2] because you can sync with any cloud drive. I like the idea of syncing to a third party cloud drive in case my password service is compromised.

[1]: [https://brave.com](https://brave.com) [2]: [https://www.enpass.io/](https://www.enpass.io/)

<comment><USER22> My concern with Brave is them being beholden to the direction of Chromium - <USER2> am wrong about that?

I used Brave for awhile then switched to Firefox+uBlock Origin, hoping to do my teensy part in decreasing the market share of Chromium-based browsers while still being privacy-focused.

<comment><USER23> At the same time, having the same base as Chrome means you won't be left behind when people start only developing for Chrome (which is a problem right now).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _Disclaimer: @yegg, if you 're reading this, I'm posting this rant with love._

I am so disappointed with DDG recently, it has adopted Google's strategy of returning searches that have nothing to do with your query if not enough results were found [0], and dialed it up to 11. If "I" "don't" "put" "each" "word" "in" "quotes," the results I get have nothing to do with my search... but if I do that (apart from the inconvenience of it all) it means (presumably?) that stemming isn't done on the search terms.

Maybe I'm old school, but I expect search results to match the search terms. Fuzzy matching (stemming, synonyms) is an added bonus, but silently dropping words which don't appear is decidedly not. Moreover, a search result returning "only" two results should be taken as a _good_ thing for someone with confidence in their dataset (DDG naturally doesn't have that, because their coverage is far from 100% of the web) - it means the search terms were extremely precise and the results are highly relevant, with irrelevant results filtered out. _Decreasing_ the signal-to-noise ratio by willfully ignoring my search terms may increase the _quantity_ of search results but - and I don't know about you - for me I don't care about quantity and would choose relevance as the more appropriate metric to benchmark against.

(All that said, I still use DDG as my main search engine even if I am turning to appending !g far more than I ever used to because I firmly prefer DDG's respect for my privacy and person over Google's treatment of the same. But I'm disgruntled and, frankly, very disappointed. Sorry, @yegg!)

[0]: [https://neosmart.net/blog/2016/on-the-growing-intentional- us...](https://neosmart.net/blog/2016/on-the-growing-intentional-uselessness- of-google-search-results/)

Edit: actually the situation is even worse. DDG doesn't seem to even always respect "quoted" terms. Here's literally the first search I did after posting this [1]. The quoted term "CFF2" doesn't even appear in the majority of the results DDG pulls in - not just not in the page summary displayed, but literally not on the result page at all. For comparison, here's the Google equivalent:

[1]: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=windows+10+%22cff2%22&t=ffab&ia=we...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=windows+10+%22cff2%22&t=ffab&ia=web) [2]: [https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=windows%2010%20%22cff2...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=windows%2010%20%22cff2%22)

<comment><USER25> Your rant is misdirected. This is a problem with Bing (the underlying search engine of DDG).

<comment><USER26> Seriously: Where do you get the idea that DuckDuckGo is just Bing? I can't find a single source for that claim. What I can find is a post from Gabriel Weinberg that says that DuckDuckGo is not Bing.

It comes up VERY times DuckDuckGo is mentioned, yet there's not a single source that suggests that DuckDuckGo is just a frontend for Bing.

<comment><USER25> [https://duck.co/help/results/sources](https://duck.co/help/results/sources)

<comment><USER27> I hope people click through, because this contradicts rather than supports your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It looks like in Jan 2019, Google Analytics finally started classifying DDG as an Organic Search engine instead of lumping it into "Referrals" category.

Although the change has the awkward effect of splitting ddg reporting into the two groups based on date of traffic.

<comment><USER29> This might explain some GA reports I've recently looked at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> For those that don't know 'quietly' is newspeak for something that happened that no press release was issued. [1]

[1] Because in the world of the press everything should be announced so they can broadcast it and sell advertising by running stories. And not have to find it out by other more laborious methods.

<comment><USER31> It is also often followed with a statement that the real authority on the issue didn't even bother responding with any comments, when in all likelihood the journalists also didn't try very hard to reach anyone. As it is in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> No way! I'm a Firefox user. But the fact that Chrome didn't have DuckDuckGo as an option for the search engine is funny!!

</comment><comment><USER9> My impression Google helps DDG to become a popular alternative to its own search engine. Why? Just funny fact: In 2018 Google transferred ownership of the domain name Duck.com to DuckDuckGo.

<comment><USER33> Antitrust and PR.

Look, you know that Google in an act of benevolence gave them duck.com last year, that's PR.

Antitrust angle is obvious. They want to appear they aren't the only game in town. Esp when you have people like Warren making (hollow) antitrust campaign noise.

<comment><USER34> _They want to appear they aren't the only game in town._

Microsoft did this with Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> DuckDuckGo is pretty much just Bing with a duck taped over it though.

<comment><USER36> Except for all that privacy and functionality and stuff that Bing doesn't have (like bangs, or cursor down + enter to directly go to search result without using your mouse, etc. etc.)

<comment><USER35> Yes, this was mentioned as referenced by the "tape" and the "duck" added on top of the actual search engine that is Bing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Isn't DuckDuckGo just a white label of Bing?

<comment><USER38> No:

> DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include > hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot > (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer > indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search > results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Oath > (formerly Yahoo) and Bing.

[https://duck.co/help/results/sources](https://duck.co/help/results/sources)

<comment><USER25> No? Your quote basically confirms it. All organic search results are from Oath and Bing. The other 400 sources are just for fluff like widgets.

<comment><USER39> It's worse.

AFAIK Oath / Yahoo has switched to using Bing under the hood since 2009: [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/technology/companies/30so...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/technology/companies/30soft.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> sneeze-slayer With some of the huge anti-trust fines levied against Google by the EU, this seems to me like Google trying to support that they are not a monopoly in search.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'll be honest, DDG is my default search on chrome. But I !google half my queries... Google is still just better.

</comment><comment><USER41> Purely from a search quality and end user experience stand, I'd choose Google or Bing over ddg. I have given ddg a shot for over a couple of months. But I found myself using other search engines more often than not for the lack be quality results.

<comment><USER42> Can you give some specific examples of search queries in which Google had better results?

<comment><USER18> Not the parent, but many searches on technical topics have better quality results on Google (or Startpage, which is a proxy to it).

DDG also doesn't have searching by time for longer than the last month, whereas many a times when I look for technical stuff I also tend to look for things in the last one year, which Google and Startpage provide.

<comment><USER42> It would be great if you could provide some concrete examples. I use DDG for technical searches almost daily and never encounter this problem.

<comment><USER43> Here's one I encountered today with an obscure debugging tool. Google gives me a bunch of relevant and useful links, all in the first few results. DDG has one semi-relevant page that links the actually relevant page and the rest are useless. That single result isn't even the first link.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=bare+metal+arm-none- eabi+spr...](https://www.google.com/search?q=bare+metal+arm-none-eabi+sprite)

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bare+metal+arm-none- eabi+sprite](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bare+metal+arm-none-eabi+sprite)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I started to use Chrome only for Google services (gmail, youtube, maps, etc) and Firefox with DDG for everything else. With this setup Goggle can send home only the data they already know.

<comment><USER18> As someone who supports Firefox, I would say that it's important to signal Google that there are Firefox users using its services. People have been reporting about issues with some of Google's services on Firefox. Skype from Microsoft was recently discovered as not supporting Firefox. Every signal users send to these companies matters.

<comment><USER45> If you don't send back crash reports and statistics to a company, you shouldn't get upset when they stop supporting your usecase or won't fix bugs you encounter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Probably so that they may track which searches people are performing on DuckDuckGo

<comment><USER47> Genuine question, if I configure DuckDuckGo as my default search engine, would my key strokes still be sent to Google?

<comment><USER48> Yes. URL prediction & malware blacklisting "services" send keystrokes regardless of chosen search engine.

<comment><USER49> > malware blacklisting "services"

If you're thinking of Google Safe Browsing (used by both Chrome and Firefox), you're wrong.

It works the other way around: Google sends you the list of undesired domains, and your client prevents you from visiting domains found on that list.

Nothing needs to be shared with a third party for that functionality.

<comment><USER50> I seem to recall reading it can be a mix of both, though generally the way you mentioned. A Bloom filter that filters locally, and if it's a hit then it sends over the URL to double-check. Would be nice if someone could confirm though.

<comment><USER51> Older versions were Bloom filters, but newer versions have moved away from that (and to a list of hash prefixes) because Bloom filters are hard to update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Qwant as well it seems:

> Another pro-privacy search rivals, French search engine Qwant, has also been > added as a new option — though only in its home market, France.

</comment><comment><USER53> Not sure if this is good or bad for DuckDuckGo, as others have pointed out, this can be used to track DuckDuckGo usage. Interesting though :D

<comment><USER54> I would expect to see a small bump in the stats [1] which given this is DDG's main source of revenue is absolutely a good thing.

"Duckduckgo is one of our main rivals." Is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy for Google. They need to amp up DDG's legitimacy to ward off accusations of antitrust. Credibility, legitimacy and awareness are really the only things DDG needs to reach a wider audience and gain greater adoption.

[1] https:/duckduckgo.com/traffic

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I am a bit curious, how the name "DuckDuckGo" was chosen? "Google" comes from Googol i.e. 10^100.

<comment><USER56> It's an abbreviation of Duck, Duck, Goose. They don't really explain _why_ they chose to name it after that game.

[https://duck.co/help/company/name](https://duck.co/help/company/name)

<comment><USER57> Maybe it's their ranking algorithm.

<comment><USER58> DDG is an anonymized wrapper for Bing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Most likely they have found another way to get the same data. If not, it will be interesting to see how long it takes until there is a "bug" that reverts the search engine back to Google once they've lobbied enough that they feel safe against antitrust claims.

</comment><comment><USER60> Is the interface between browser and search engine not explicitly defined? Why can't I add an arbitrary web application as a search engine for chrome?

(I know ... for business reasons ... but isn't Chrome open source? How is this in practice prevented?)

<comment><USER61> You can. In fact, Chrome automatically creates search engines for any site you search on. I can search Amazon by typing "Am<tab><query><enter>" in the address bar for example, and Chrome learned how to do that automatically despite not having any knowledge of how Amazon's search system works when I first installed it.

I guess the only difference is that with this change, DDG is available as a search engine by default with a blank install, even before you've actually used it.

<comment><USER62> Chrome uses open search for the amazon search. It's not some chrome magic.

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

<comment><USER63> Well, the automatically picking it up thing arguably _is_ some Chrome magic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I wonder if Warrens discussion of fair platforms had anything to do with this move.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm pessimistic enough now that my first thought wasn't anti-trust, but rather whether Chrome itself tracks my DDG searches and sends to Google anyway.

</comment><comment><USER66> I would like if duckduckgo had an easy way to google a search just performed there. It's good, but it doesn't replace google regularly enough yet

<comment><USER67> Just put "!g" at the beginning of the query (or !s for startpage, which uses the Google search engine)

<comment><USER36> (the bang can be anywhere in the search query, fwiw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I'm glad to see DDG in Brazil's list :)

</comment><comment><USER69> This is new? I could have sworn I saw it in there as an option like 5+ years ago? Or was it taken out, and now they are re-adding it?

<comment><USER70> You could always add whatever search engine you wanted in the settings. Maybe it wasn't one that was already setup as one of the drop down menus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Wonder if DuckDuckGo could request Google to be removed from the option and I kinda wished Mozilla can work the DDG.

</comment><comment><USER72> Huh, it's as if threats from policymakers can cause a change in behavior!

</comment><comment><USER73> Duckduckgo collaborate(d) with Yandex, it's a huge red flag for me.

</comment><comment><USER74> They have omnibar anyway, aren't they collecting data from it?

<comment><USER14> In the sense you seem to be asking, no; see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19381175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19381175) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19393019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19393019) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Market study for potential business dev. move

</comment><comment><USER76> that means DuckDuckGo is harmless to them, no real competition there.

just like Apple lets Pandora on Apple Watch and not Spotify.

</comment><comment><USER77> This is great

</comment><comment><USER78> Not too long ago, Google gave DuckDuckGo the domain name Duck.com. Now this. Are they preparing an acquisition?

</comment><comment><USER79> why does this make me nervous?

</comment><comment><USER80> Interesting

</comment><comment><USER81> embrace enhance extinguish

</comment><comment><USER82> Not on Chrome mobile though, where you still cannot add search engines manually.

<comment><USER83> I have been using Duck Duck Go on Chrome Mobile since the end of January. Do a search on the site first then it will show up in the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Is this the first of a wave of anti-anti-trust moves by big tech? It's a play that I certainly would advise. It makes sense to trade marginal revenue with low hanging fruit gestures like these to take the air out of folks like Warren and the European Competition Committee.

<comment><USER85> No, it is just an update to what they've been doing for years: showing the top 4 search engines per market as options.

Nothing new to see here.

<comment><USER86> But it involves DuckDuckGo!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Nice try G. I still won't have a byte of your code on anything I use. No data for you. I wish websites stop using your fonts and analytics and captcha too.

</comment><comment><USER88> Imagine if there was no "default" search engine or list of suggested search engines in the settings.

I keep a running list of "alternative" search engines -- not directly Google or Bing, not Yahoo -- that work without JS or session cookies. There are thirteen in the list at the moment.

Takes user a few seconds to type [https://www.google.com/?q=%s](https://www.google.com/?q=%s) or whatever into settings.

Would that produce more meaningful "choice"?

Would users choose a search engine based on advertising or word-of-mouth?

Looks like Qwant uses Bing for ads. No ads if Javascript is turned off.

e.g.

       curl -A "superagent/1.0"  https://lite.qwant.com/?q=example

If get no results, try this first

       curl -A "superagent/1.0" https://lite.qwant.com/verify

Can get search suggestions in JSON via Opensearch:

       curl https://api.qwant.com/api/suggest/?q=example

</comment><comment><USER89> 1 week since Elizabeth Warren published this: [https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up- big...](https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big- tech-9ad9e0da324c)

<comment><USER3> The change was committed in December, according to the article and the PR: [https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/98b2af784450beb2...](https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/98b2af784450beb20cdb26cbee60168891cec4ec#diff-3168db83d84c9efc4ee8e323bd0bf798)

<comment><USER90> Thanks, much more readable than googlesource.com and others.

Also quite interesting that they changed the default search engine for China to be Baidu.

<comment><USER91> > Also quite interesting that they changed the default search engine for China > to be Baidu.

It seems to be a logical move since I believe Google is blocked in China.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Devices can reduce fibers produced in laundry cycle by up to 80% - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-07-devices-fibers-laundry.html <comment><USER2> You can put a mesh bag on the washer discharge to catch fibers before they go down the drain. Some people use nylon stockings, but the mesh used as a sock around drain tile piping works very well. It can be bought in bulk at big box home improvement stores.

It's amazing how much fiber this will catch. If you have a septic system, keeping the synthetic fibers out of it is a must.

</comment><comment><USER3> That was a pretty vague and unfulfilling article. No mention of what these mysterious "devices" are or what they look like.

<comment><USER4> The graphical abstract on sciencedirect¹ lists some product names, so the 'devices' are apparently all available for purchase.

¹: [https://ars.els- cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S00489697203393...](https://ars.els- cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0048969720339346-ga1.jpg)</comment></comment>


Palantir is moving its headquarters from Palo Alto to Denver - <AUTHOR> https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2020/08/19/palantir-peter-thiel-alex-karp-headquarters-denver.html <comment><USER2> >"We haven't picked a place yet, but it's going to be closer to the East Coast than the West Coast," Karp said during the interview. "If I had to guess, I would guess something like Colorado."

Geography is apparently not his strong suit.

<comment><USER3> If you start from Holly, CO on the eastern border and measure to San Francisco, CA and Ocean City, MD he's only off by about 300 miles--300 miles if you take US 50 in either direction, and interestingly ~300 miles if you let Google Maps take you via the boring Interstate routes (interstates tend to be straighter than the old highways, making up for the more meandering north- south jogs of I-70, I-80, etc, as compared to US 50).

Of course, it's more like a 500 mile difference starting from Colorado Springs, or 600 mile difference from Denver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe Palantir top brass are tired of the human rights protests and bloody handprints being painted over and around the outside of their building.

Good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER5> Palantir still exists ? Are they even a tech company anymore ? I rarely hear anything about them or any hiring they do.

</comment><comment><USER6> a lot of square feet opening up on university</comment>


Web form usability: Better form submission feedback with jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://briancray.com/2009/07/28/increase-form-usability-replace-form-button-submit/ Browsers fail to give users effective feedback when the user submits a form. Users respond by clicking the submit button over and over. The problem compounds when users find out they've been charged 5 times or when you receive 5 contact submissions. Bummer.<p>The solution is to replace the submit button with a friendly message letting the user know the form is working. <comment><USER2> i might be missing something, but what is gained by using jquery? just use one line of jscript to replace the button with some text.

<comment><USER3> That was my thought too. Why would I import somebody's 3rd party library to save myself typing document.getElementById once on this page?

I'm sure jquery has its advantages for some things. Silly little javascript tricks like this don't seem to me like they qualify.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really great points about javascript everyone!

I guess I figured it was better to show how to do it with jQuery because many people are interested in jQuery, and this code snippet gives them an extra idea how jQuery works.

Thanks so much for your feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check TypeKit.com. They have an excellent implementation on a simple subscribe form.</comment>


Open source blog as another Backbone, Slim, Rails, Bootstrap sample app - <AUTHOR> http://blog.crowdint.com/2012/02/20/welcome-to-our-new-blog.html

<comment><USER2> I'm incredibly biased because I'm part of the WordPress community, but IMHO the static-posting model employed by Jekyll (and I guess fading-stalwart Movable Type) is fundamentally flawed for two reasons:

1) you are penalized for writing more and more content as your rebuild time will increase the more posts you have.

2) you cannot have any dynamic content that queries the database or dynamically builds the page other than at build-time.

I'm not sure whether the gem created by the OP is the holy-grail of Ruby based blogging, but it does seem as though Jekyll's current popularity is because it's the only decent Rails-based blogging tool out there, not because it's particularly well suited to the task.

<comment><USER3> I think you meant Ruby instead of Rails-based. Some alternatives that come to mind are Toto (Git-based like Jekyll) and Typo (Rails-based).

Frankly, I'd rather have a Rails blog with page caching than use Jekyll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After 60 posts Jekyll is slow to compile? I was just considering giving it a try but this is quite a turnoff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Worth mentioning that we were using 0.10, took around 1 minute on a brand new MBP. Worse on older machines.

Enabling LSI for related posts made it worse.

Maybe its fixed on newer versions.

<comment><USER5> Hey, we're using jekyll (0.11.x) to generate <http://dev.af83.com/> which is about 320 posts. It always takes less than 30secs on my laptop (Lenovo X220).</comment></comment></comment>


Mechanics of a Small Acquisition - <AUTHOR> http://quotidianventures.com/post/28411675934/mechanics-of-a-small-acquisition

<comment><USER2> _Believing that the finish line is just yards away and finding that it is actually miles is not going to be good for your company's morale._

I've learned this lesson the hard way. It's easy to get caught up in acquisition discussions, so be careful not to get ahead of youself. The cost for the acquirer to engage is much less. They are larger and sometimes have full-time staff devoted to M&A, while your startup's bandwidth is very limited.

<comment><USER3> It's also difficult to avoid getting so excited and consumed by the process that you lose focus on what your business is actually doing. The acquirer is sending their deal team but you won't have one working for you (even if you get a banker/broker, it still takes up a lot of the founders' time), so someone still needs to mind the store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting read, but for my part, I'm much more interested to learn _how_ to start the process. That is, tips on how to position your company to make it a candidate for acquisition. (Apart from a great product and name of course - got that). Ways to flag potential suitors? And ways to make it clear that you are looking for buyers? etc. Any pointers or text to look at would be much appreciated.

<comment><USER5> Ditto. I'd like to know if it is a process that really only starts once someone has noticed you, or if it is something an owner can push for. If so, what is the best way to do this?

Right now, my strategy is to pursue integration and use it as an avenue to acquisition. Not sure if it's the most viable method, though.

<comment><USER6> It's as with any negotiation: whoever needs the deal the worst is in the weaker position. There is such a thing as shopping a company around looking for an acquirer, but you're unlikely to get as good a deal as if they come to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is very reflective of the acquisition process my company went through when it was acquired(Priced at $13 million). However, one area that can't be emphasized enough is the distraction, time, and mental capital that this process entails. If you are not careful, it can hurt your business and its trajectory. Luckily, we had good people running the business for the founders while we concentrated on the acquisition process. One area not addressed very closely in this article is the difficulty of not sharing the possible acquisition with employees as you go through the process of gathering all of the due diligence data and having all of the meetings. Of course, keeping the acquisition process a secret from your employees isn't always required...but in our case it was. That added to the stress of the due diligence process for us.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's little public information about small acquisitions and how they happen -- thanks for sharing. Everyone would be better off if there more information and transparency around these processes.

<comment><USER3> I went through a small acquisition (single digit millions) and we're building a membership site that would help people understand this process (from the seller's perspective) and the potential pitfalls, what sorts of things do you think must be addressed? Or perhaps need greater attention?

<comment><USER8> What are the things that drive price? What does the diligence process look like? Managing telling employees vs secrecy?

<comment><USER9> I've written an ebook about the due diligence process and I could write a post that explains it if enough ppl are interested

<comment><USER10> Yes please

<comment><USER11> Me too. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I knew of one company that was, despite wanting to be acquired, made it as hard as possible. Someone showed up with the "accept no other offers for 90 days" and the company freaked out that they were being pressured. All discussion ground to a halt after that.

</comment><comment><USER13> Has anyone collected advice for after the acquisition? I'm thinking things like:

* Give yourself six months or so after joining before finalizing plans to sunset your original systems. It gives you time to work out the lay of the land re: political and software integration.

* If you expect more manpower in development or maintenance, get it down in writing.

Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER14> Off-topic:

I love the design of their page. The logo is just very attractive to me. It has a sort of mechanical-organic look to it. Great visuals.</comment>


1968, Douglas Engelbart gives the Mother of All Tech Demos - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs

<comment><AUTHOR> The description:

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals.

This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

</comment><comment><USER2> This was posted a few days ago, here's the link to the more thorough stanford page included in the original post:

<http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link, I missed the earlier post</comment></comment>