New DuckDuckGo design - <AUTHOR> https://duckduckgo.com/whatsnew <comment><USER3> That's awesome! I've been using the beta for a while and it's been much better than the old site.

A bunch of ideas/complains:

\- It's awesome that you're showing me a nice map when I search for places/address, but let's be honest, I'll probably need to load it into an online map (OSM, MapQuest, Google Maps) to get directions. So a "open in map" button would be great (yes, I can copy/paste the address and !bang it, but it's not exactly a great experience)

\- Sometimes I just want to search for images or videos. Yes, I can search "Images X" or "Videos X", but it's not nice. Also you get the minimized image/video box. I'd add two bangs, !i and !v (those right now alias to Google Images and Youtube, which have !gi and !yt anyway) to search for images/video and that will auto-open the images box.

\- Auto-suggestions are neat, but please add an option to remove the "select- on-hover" behavior. It's really annoying to casually move the mouse and select something else.

That's mostly it, otherwise I'm really, really happy with DDG. Thanks, and I wonder what the future will reserve!

<comment><USER4> So the maps did work for you? I looked up a few places just to test it out and most of them were not found or not identified as places. I am living in New Hampshire, so perhaps they just haven't done much with NH addresses yet. I love duckduckgo and I am glad that they are making improvements but I currently can't use the map feature reliably.

<comment><USER5> Also not working for me if I search for some random street address (which works well on Google), even if I add a zip code to the end. Even if it isn't possible to be confident enough to show the map first thing like Google does, at least adding a map tap on any search that looks like it could possible be interpreted as a map would be cool (though I could fairly easily just add !map, so it isn't that important).

Edit: tried a few more and some of them work. It seems like intersections may never work and some addresses don't work.

Other suggestions for DDG:

Speaking of !bang!, did you consider making the tabs !images, !video, etc.? That might help more people discover that really cool feature that I didn't know existed until folks here mentioned it (and is why I switched to DDG as my primary search engine). Similarly, the "try these other search engines" section at the end could have !g, etc. in parentheses.

I'd also suggest keeping the X in the search bar visible all the time, at least if the page is wider than some minimum width.

I like the few orange lines at the top of the page as the only header to make it easier to identify the page. I just noticed the up arrow off to the right when scrolled down, which is helpful too.

I really like that you just show the site rather than the full url until I mouse over that result.

The one thing I miss is the longer text list of meanings; only being able to scroll three at a time isn't fun if I'm looking for number 11, but before it was easy to pick out #11 even if I had to click once to expand the results.

Edit: I just noticed the result site favicons, which is nice too. I don't remember if that was there before, but I hadn't explicitly noticed it. I use the FaviconizeTab extention on Firefox so I appreciate wider use of favicons :).

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I think it's not DDG's fault. It looks like they are using OpenStreetMaps, and OSM is not finding the address that I look up either. It's definitely an admirable project that I look forward to using eventually.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, that seems to be the case for me as well testing on openstreetmaps.org. In one case I tried openstreetmaps.org is returning two options (one of them being what I entered :/), so it seems like in that case DDG also just doesn't show a map tab.

(this reminds me why I never try to use OSM more than once every year or two; I hit too many cases too easily where it doesn't work; maybe I can just use DDG results to determine when OSM is worth trying :) ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the announcement I just posted on our blog: [https://duck.co/blog/whatsnew](https://duck.co/blog/whatsnew)

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback to us during our public beta period! Please keep the feedback coming so we can quickly iterate. We really do listen to it all.

<comment><USER7> [http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/](http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/)

<comment><USER8> Ironically, that page fails with JS disabled.

Related: I've spent more than a few minutes on sites unwrapping carouseled content to just display stacked on the page. It's fucking annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a really amazing direction in terms of design. Like most people probably, I've pretty much ignored DDG because it didn't seem to be doing anything more than Google already did, but this design is really interesting for going in a new direction.

The only thing that stands out to me as less useful than the equivalent Google search at this point is the hiearchy of the results. Google uses a link-like blue color for the titles of each result, which seems like a leftover from a past age of the web, but is actually useful for scan-ability because the text of the headers stands out.

Compare the current DuckDuckGo... [https://i.cloudup.com/vrwZgUkOty.png](https://i.cloudup.com/vrwZgUkOty.png)

...to Google... [https://i.cloudup.com/eFCFEE5TYG.png](https://i.cloudup.com/eFCFEE5TYG.png)

...to an adjusted version of DuckDuckGo... [https://i.cloudup.com/jluIYZWtzz.png](https://i.cloudup.com/jluIYZWtzz.png)

Having an extra color for the headings lets you scan the page much more easily, which lets you get to the result you wanted faster. The downside is that since their brand color is red, it feels "best" to have the highlight color red. But then that has some negative emotional connotations. Tried green as well, but it didn't stand on it's own enough since there's so little green on the page.

Anyways, I've switched to DDG as my default and will try it out for a while again. I also love those favicons that show up next to the domain names.

<comment><USER10> Love that design suggestion! It looks _so much better_!

Btw, you can make it your default today by playing with the ddg address parameters:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?k9=%23b02900&q=melanie%20laurent](https://duckduckgo.com/?k9=%23b02900&q=melanie%20laurent)

This solution is preferable to changing colors in the settings screen if you regularly delete your cookies (and with it the custom colors) - just change your browser search engine shortcut.

More info: [https://duckduckgo.com/params](https://duckduckgo.com/params)

<comment><USER11> Actually there is a "Cloud Save" feature that helps you save (and restore) your setting without using cookies. Scroll to the bottom of the settings page and you'll see it.

As the page says, "The benefit of [Cloud Save] over using the URL parameters bookmarklet is that when you change settings, they will automatically be saved in the cloud."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Honestly, I don't care how clean or nice the page design is, until it can't give me good results. Here is an example:

The other day, I was searching for a Django core developer's contact. I knew his exact name was Baptiste Mispelon so I searched that directly.

On Google [1] after his Twitter and Github accounts, the first picture is correct, and I did not have to do anything else, the contact infos are there, his picture is there, great.

On DuckDuckGo [2] the picture is not even close, and the first couple of results are not as useful as on Google [1].

I think it is a mistake to concentrate on clean design on a search engine until the searching algorithm is not that good. AFAIK Google's page ranking algorithm is well known, when I were in university I even heard stories that a student (going on the same class as me) reproduced the algorithms only on his own!

TL;DR: I want to search relevant information with a search engine, not to look some nice webpage.

[1]: [https://www.google.hu/search?q=Baptiste+Mispelon](https://www.google.hu/search?q=Baptiste+Mispelon)

[2]: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Baptiste+Mispelon](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Baptiste+Mispelon)

<comment><USER13> When I search "Baptiste Mispelon" in Google, the first three results are:

(1) Ad for Christianity

(2) GitHub Profile

(3) Twitter Profile

When I search the same thing on DuckDuckGo, the first three results are:

(1) Twitter Profile

(2) LinkedIn Profile

(3) GitHub Profile

I definitely think that the first couple of results on DuckDuckGo are as useful as those produced by Google, if not more so.

<comment><USER12> Strange, I don't see any ads at the top :O on Google. I have no ad blocker enabled.

<comment><USER14> I didn't get an ad either. With my search order being Github, twitter, photos, linkedin.

<comment><USER15> I got the same results. The images are quite random.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Instead of putting a large box at the top of some search results with what you think I want, why not put it to the side (the way Google does) and make use of the large amount of waster whitespace. I have tonnes of horizontal space available, not much vertical.

<comment><USER16> This would also mean that the results don't suddenly jump position when the top box loads. Many times I've mis-clicked because of the page flow change.

<comment><USER17> Yes, this always seemed like a gross usability faux pas to me. If you don't wait for some unknown period after you see the first result, you risk clicking on an unwanted link that unexpectedly appeared under your cursor.

Maybe this is fixed with the redesign?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for almost three years.

It's improved fairly steadily in that time (as measured by how often I end up falling back to appending "!g" to my search), but this is the single biggest improvement I can remember in my time as a user.

Aside from the auto-complete (which is nice), it feels significantly faster, and it's also easier to parse visually.

I'm really excited about seeing DuckDuckGo evolve, and it seems more and more people are as well: [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html)

<comment><USER19> My need for !g has certainly decreased, but I also find that when I do use it I often feel that the DuckDuckGo result was actually closer to what I wanted.

DuckDuckGo seems to be getting better, while Google is getting worse in some areas. The results that I get from Google is still impressive, but more and more it seems that they are making wrong assumptions about my wishes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> [https://duckduckgo.com/tty/](https://duckduckgo.com/tty/) = better

<comment><USER21> New home page for me, thanks!

<comment><USER22> It still has a keyboard bug (tabs switching doesn't work with Ctrl+PgUp / Ctrl + PgDwn when there).

<comment><USER23> seems to hijack a lot of browser keys in fact. I don't like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I use <alt>d to select the text in my address bar. If I am on a duckduckgo search results page, it seems this keyboard combination is intercepted and I'm bounced off to one of the results (well, the 'd' on it's own does this too). I can also use <ctrl>l, but I've gotten use to using <alt>d.

[edit] I have bug reported this. They have a very good feedback system on their website.

<comment><USER24> There's also "F6", which is just a single key. Maybe that will be easier to get used to.

<comment><USER25> There's also ^L, a chord which I find much easier to type than reaching up three rows to an F key (especially with my caps lock mapped to control).

Regardless, he shouldn't have to change his shortcut because a website (a search engine, no less) hijacks his keys. That's bad UX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've never really bought into DDG, especially for its lack of features. It still can't match Google, but this is certainly a step in the right direction and gives me pause to think about using it at least once in a while now. Glad to see progress in search outside of Google for a change.

<comment><USER27> This post made me finally create an account here. I do admit that personalized searches improve result quality a lot, at least for some topics. But after using DDG as my main search engine for about a year, > especially for its lack of features just sounds wrong. On the contrary, I tend to feel really helpless when using Google because of the lack of DDG bang syntax. For me, DDG is like my perfectly customized search engine with all the features I need - <USER2> actually customizing anything. This enables me to have the same, good search experience wherever I am (notebook, desktop PC, tablet, some else's machine...)

So to conclude this: Not relying on the search engine to guess your intention based on personalization takes some time to get used to, but for me it definitely payed off.

<comment><USER28> any good resources for learning how to effectively use DDG?

<comment><USER29> Why is kermitdance's reply to this post dead now?

<comment><USER30> Probably because they used a url shortener.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've tried DuckDuckGo a couple times before. Today I decided to give it one day and see if I felt more comfortable with it. I was having a really hard time parsing the results so I did a search side by side in Google and DuckDuckGo. I looked at Google and thought "yeah, I know I want link #3" then I looked over to DuckDuckGo and saw that the same link was result #2 but I couldn't identify it as the page I wanted just by looking at the results page. Further analysis helped me to understand the process I use for parsing search results. It turns out that the most important part is the URL and I've trained myself to look for that in the format Google renders it (right after the link). When I realized that this was what I was actually looking for, it all became much easier.

<comment><USER32> > Today I decided to give it one day and see if I felt more comfortable with > it.

I tried that myself several times, and never quite managed to do it. It only stuck when I forced myself to do it for an extended period, at which point I finally started being able to reliably differentiate between "good results" and "results that feel like Google". I found it disturbing to realize how much I had conflated those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> White text over white images on [https://duckduckgo.com/whatsnew](https://duckduckgo.com/whatsnew) \- not very readable!

(Edit: How odd; a reload caused the page to be displayed differently, with the images below the text and icons.)

<comment><USER33> Personally I am not a fan of horizontal navigation that breaks scrollwheels.

People get through websites with scrollwheels. Forcing people to use non- standard scrolling (left right) AND forcing them to do with click handles... I wonder if they're keeping data on how many people see the main preview and quit out versus how many actually see the other 5+ slides...

<comment><USER34> I clicked on "press" at the bottom (which happened to be at the bottom left of the screenshot on my device). Thinking it meant, "press me to continue" (which seemed a bit weird). Nope. It's their press page.

So, yeah, the "what's new" page is real clunky, but I haven't, so far, been offended by the changes to their actual design. I haven't used it much since the changeover, but DDG is my primary search engine, so I'll probably have opinions on it soon.

<comment><USER33> I did the exact same thing. "How does this work? What am I supposed to do? Oh I'll press the press button!"

<comment><USER34> I felt kinda dumb after finding myself on the press page. I feel better knowing I'm not the only one similarly fooled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What changed since the preview was announced? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7700192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7700192) The contrast on the main page is still too low.

<comment><USER36> We have implemented a bunch of the feedback from the original discussion. Detailed release notes were posted in the forum: [https://duck.co/forum/thread/5747/duckduckgo-beta- refinement...](https://duck.co/forum/thread/5747/duckduckgo-beta-refinements) [https://duck.co/forum/thread/5851/duckduckgo-beta- refinement...](https://duck.co/forum/thread/5851/duckduckgo-beta- refinements-2)

We also added themes (in the side menu) to address some of the feedback on contrast. Classic theme reverts to the color scheme of the old site. And you can fine tune the individual colors further in Settings.

<comment><USER35> Thanks, the 'dark' theme seems to have the best contrast, better than both the classic and default themes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Small but surprisingly annoying thing about DDG: I have to hit TAB too many times to start cycling through search results, on google one TAB takes me to the first search result, on DDG it's an unintuitive series of links.

<comment><USER38> Why tab? You can just use arrow up and down to navigate the search results directly.

<comment><USER37> You've just made me very happy.

<comment><USER39> For fellow vimmers, using j & k also works ;-)

<comment> vhost- Unfortunately, I use vimperator so j and k scroll for me. I'm glad to see some sites incorporating some good keyboard shortcuts, though! Maybe one day I can ditch vimperator in favor of common keyboard commands in my favorite sites.

<comment><USER40> You can disable vimperator on certain sites

:ignorekeys

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The fonts look messed up for me (Debian testing / Firefox 29.0.1). In some cases letter i has a shifted dot (see the word Wikipedia in the last search result in the image below):

[https://i.imgur.com/SsicEFJ.png](https://i.imgur.com/SsicEFJ.png)

The fonts come from here:

* [https://duckduckgo.com/font/ProximaNova-Sbold-webfont.woff](https://duckduckgo.com/font/ProximaNova-Sbold-webfont.woff)

* [https://duckduckgo.com/font/ProximaNova-Reg-webfont.woff](https://duckduckgo.com/font/ProximaNova-Reg-webfont.woff)

<comment><USER41> This is due to patents. I blogged a solution some while ago, but since then removed my the entire blog, here is a raw paste of the original commit: [https://gist.github.com/klrr/73ce6da0fb6947ed92a5](https://gist.github.com/klrr/73ce6da0fb6947ed92a5)

<comment><USER22> My settings already include antialiasing and hinting (with medium level). The only difference I see is that in your configuration autohint is true across all fonts (not in mine). I enabled it for a few fonts only, since it's recommended not to use it for all:

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration#Auto...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration#Autohinter)

 _> The Autohinter attempts to do automatic hinting and disregards any existing hinting information. Originally it was the default because TrueType2 fonts were patent-protected but now that these patents have expired there's very little reason to use it. It does work better with fonts that have broken or no hinting information but it will be strongly sub-optimal for fonts with good hinting information. Generally common fonts are of the later kind so autohinter will not be useful._

Anyway, I don't think it's related to the shifted letter "i".

By the way, how does fontconfig translate to the Web fonts? Is there any way to affect them through it on the individual basis and not with global configuration?

UPDATE: Just found this: [https://necoro.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/matching- web-fonts-w...](https://necoro.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/matching-web-fonts- with-fontconfig/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I tried DDG about six months ago and went back to Google, but I recently tried it again. The gap is closing fast. As of now it's my default search. Google still does a better job seemingly "understanding" queries sometimes, so occasionally I go over there, but I'd say I'm only doing that about 5% of the time.

One of my favorite things about DDG is that I do not have to worry about "search bubbles." I don't have to worry that DDG is profiling me and de- prioritizing results it doesn't "think" I would want to see. I know Google thinks search bubbles are a feature but I think they're a bug. I don't want some algorithm trying to reinforce cognitive biases for me so I don't experience the shock of a dissenting opinion. I've observed a few times that DDG seems to do a better job finding really obscure things, and I've wondered if this might somehow be related to profiling algorithms or lack thereof.

I also find the level of data mining Google (and Facebook) engage in to be creepy, invasive, and to hold a high potential for abuse. I'm certainly open to alternatives whose business model does not revolve around that kind of intrusive personal profiling. I'm aware that DDG does have an ad-and-analytics business model, but they seem to be taking the high road with it.

Prediction: "privacy is dead" will in the future be regarded as an idea that greatly harmed several multi-billion-dollar companies. I think it's firmly in the realm of utter crackpot nonsense, and anyone who thinks this is either hopelessly naive or delusional about the political, social, and economic realities of the world. A full-blown user revolt is underway.

</comment><comment><USER43> Interesting to see that many of their "whatsnew" examples use Yandex[1]. Is that a new partnership?

[1] [http://imgur.com/3tBrS7h](http://imgur.com/3tBrS7h)

<comment><USER25> Nice catch -- this is interesting.

Has Yandex ever had any privacy concerns? How did this partnership come about?

Why is DDG leveraging Yandex?

<comment><USER44> I imagine it all still goes through DDG, so it would be very difficult for Yandex to disambiguate more than a short stretch of a stream of search queries (let alone associate them with a person) even if they wanted to.

There's still the issue of individual queries revealing something that the user doesn't wish revealed. It would be interesting to see how exactly DDG uses these other search engines as sources (and if they are able to make demands with regard to logging), but it's worth noting that DDG logs search queries itself (just not associated with a person), so that may not be possible to ask for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The new design looks pretty slick. I really dig the bootstrappiness of it. I do, however, have a couple of nits. I couldn't figure out how to make the weather in centigrade, so I tried searching for this:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=weather+palo+alto+in+centigrade](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=weather+palo+alto+in+centigrade)

It came up with some interesting results. The images opened automatically for me (not sure why) and were a little off the mark. Ideally there would be a link to switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit, with maybe even a cookie to save your preference, although I don't know if that's very anti-DDG (does DDG store cookies for anything?). Yahoo "solves" this by having you go to weather.yahoo.ca to default to metric. At any rate, given that 95.5% of the world's population uses metric, it'd be a nice feature.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think I found a bug. I'm using the dark theme and customizing the colors. If I set my background color to #000001, all of my text will turn blue (#0202FF).

Also, setting the Header option to Off is the same as On With Scrolling. This is on ff29.

Other than that, I think I'm finally switching over to ddg.

</comment><comment><USER47> Good design but disappointing that the search and Menu option disappear when the browser size is shrunk to tablet or mobile phone resolution. Not responsive.

</comment><comment><USER48> I feel like this hasn't been really tested in Chrome on Windows. The gray, detail information on search results is pretty hard to get past. I kind of just give up using it halfway though, looks like it might be better on other browsers though.

<comment><USER49> You can change the default theme using the menu icon in the right hand corner. We have a couple of themes preset, you can try implementing your own color scheme by selecting the "Settings" option.

<comment><USER48> In all cases, the font size makes it hard to read. Seems like increasing the font size just helps. Thanks though!

<comment><USER50> The detailed descriptions on DDG and Google are both exactly the same size, 13px. I think the people complaining about these visual issues are imagining things.

<comment><USER48> Font size isn't exactly comparable across different font families. In the case of DDG they are using DDG_ProximaNova, while in the case of Google they are using Arial.

Arial is much easier to read on Chrome for Windows over DDG_ProximaNova.

I also just noticed that we can change the font on the settings page, just feel like it shouldn't be necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Unrelated UI nitpicking: I feel like I should be able to scroll on this page. Just seeing the top of the virtual screen is annoying.

<comment><USER52> Yes, I couldn't concentrate on content because I had an urge to scroll it down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Really like the new update, but I still don't like how there is a dead click space between the results, and I find the background hover to be unnecessary.

</comment><comment><USER54> Wow DDG, you guys are on fiyah! I just rebooted Firefox and saw the new new look; love it. What I noticed:

* Someone looking to search immediately may be confused/frustrated as the text entry field is currently not visible until the slideshow ends.

* Consider relocating the "press" button away from bottom right; I almost missed it and only saw it because I'd been on the page for a few minutes, finished the slideshow and was looking for more.

* Also, when I saw that button, I thought it meant "press this to see something cool", so I was disappointed when it only took me to the company press page.

* I really like the background colour scheme on the front page but you might consider switching it off as it doesn't carry over to other pages. I.e I found the visual discontinuity a bit jarring when the search and press pages didn't reflect it; that's when I realized that the biggest message I got unconsciously was that my default DDG pages would now be in this colour (with ability to change it). I see now that the pages depicted on "inner" screen were the usual white, but I honestly didn't see/process that against the bolder background.

</comment><comment><USER55> Not sure if anyone at DDG would ever read this, but my comments on the preview are still valid.

The contrast is way too low, it prefers vertical over horizontal (I, like any people, have a widescreen monitor. Displaying 3 search results by default is a little absurd), a couple other issues.

It feels like a mobile interface.

Oh, and there's no way to revert to the old version. The options merely change the color scheme, as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER56> I don't get this contrast thing everyone is saying. My eyes are shit, and the "light grey on white" pops out fine. Any darker and it would be annoying. I really like the current color scheme.

My 'puter is a mac with retina screen - so maybe it's a monitor thing? Are there any "progressive desaturation" or "color calibration detection" tricks available to web devs in these situations?

<comment><USER53> I agree. The text color is #595959, and that's quite far from the #ffffff background.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The first time I saw that (so called) design I literally hit refresh 5 times to hopefully get that missing CSS file. Having all in just light grey and white doesn't really help finding anything quickly and why hide the path of the url onMouseOut is beyond me.

DDG is my search of choice and the pain induced yesterday is not enough to swap back to google but still, not happy at all :(

<comment><USER36> Try selecting the Classic theme in the side menu. It has blue/purple links, darker description text + full urls.

<comment><USER57> Thanks! That fixes a lot of my concerns. I hope they do some A/B testing cause I don't believe they win many friends with this contrast-free version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Your intro says:

      Smarter Answers

      Answers to your questions from the best sources,
      developed by our open source community.

Where is the open source repository located? I would like to browse the templates/recipes/sources. Found nothing on [http://duckduckhack.com](http://duckduckhack.com)

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo- goodies](https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies) and [https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo- spice](https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice)

I agree that there should be a link on duckduckhack (or, if there is, it needs to be more prominent and I couldn't find it too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> On the page layout: one very positive sign is that my custom stylesheet appears to make no difference whatsoever to how the page displays. Which means that either the CSS classes have all been changed or my suggestions (recently here on HN) were all adopted.

I noticed the change, and it didn't annoy me much ( _any_ change is a bit discombobulating), which is actually high praise. I haven't stumbled into any "woah, that's cool!" features yet (though I'm noticing a few things and nodding appreciatively).

Just checked the "what's new" and I'm pretty much liking.

I'd still love to see time-bounded search provided. That's one of the very few uses that will draw me back to Google for general Web search (Google's special collections: books, scholar, news, etc., may bring me in more often).

I've been using DDG off and on for a couple of years and solidly since last June. It's definitely working for me.

</comment><comment><USER59> In the old version, the instant answer box would usually load after the results and with some delay. Very often it would materialize the very moment I click on a result, causing the content to move, leaing me to a place I did not want to visit. That was my biggest issue actually.

I can't seem to trigger it now. So I guess it's an improvement.

</comment><comment><USER60> Adding images makes DuckDuckGo now a legit competitor for Google for my usage. The usability has also dramatically improved as well as load times. Their mobile javascript needs to recognize gesture swiping and other minor UX improvements. But this is a leap forward for them.

</comment><comment><USER61> The main thing to me is they still do not have driving directions. That to me is really needed to make it useable to the mainstream public.

Also searching for say chicago, IL does not show the maps tab. We need to search for Chicago IL for that. Not sure why the comma is throwing them off.

</comment><comment><USER62> The "Meanings" feature is a great thing, semantic and ubiquitous at the same time.

It works well with "orange" as in the example, but searching for "Apple" directly shows result for the company without displaying the "Meanings" panel. We can't see the fruits' search results using that term, which is quite disappointing.

It gets more puzzling when you search for "Apples" and are displayed with the meaning tab

try: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=orange](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=orange) vs [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=apple](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=apple)

Edit: apart from that this redesign is very pleasant :)

<comment><USER63> Apple shows the "Meanings" panel for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> More search results than layout, but as a friend pointed out, "open source office suite" produces notably and significantly different top results in DDG and Google.

Specifically: the DDG results _don 't_ rank the arguably top-rated open source offic suite (LibreOffice) at the top of the results page, instead showing an order suspiciously similar to that of Bing. Google (both logged in and out) puts LibreOffice at the top of results, as does StartPage.

Some argue a bias against free software by DDG. I apply Hanlon's razor, but this is one example where improving results would be a bonus.

Screencaps of results:

[http://imgur.com/a/XAb1F](http://imgur.com/a/XAb1F)

<comment><USER64> My Google isn't the same as yours, so you should stop reading so much into this. Besides, it's really the same results, just ordered slightly different. For me, Google shows pcworld->libre->open. DDG shows pcworld->open->libre, e.g. #2 vs. #3.

<comment><USER8> I'm aware that Google targets its responses.

I've got my search history disabled (when logged in), and ran the second search in a logged-out session, to see if the results differed (that they don't is ... curious).

StartPage, however, claims to proxy its results anonymously, which makes the similarity with my Google search results ... interesting.

That said, for DDG _not_ to return the leading open source office suite as its top result (similar to Bing's response) strikes me as a less-than-optimal situation.

SERP is the new Tarot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> All the more power to competition and diversity of choices. But I see these reinventions and makeover campaigns and I really wonder if things are going well or not.

I use search engines for a niche blog, and I have a need to keyword search certain specific terms which are not common words. I have consistently tested all the available search engines (there aren't many). And I have always arrived at the same conclusion: there is no better search engine out there then what Google maintains.

I am no blind Google lover, but when it comes to practicality of effective and useful products, you have to have the best, in order to make your case.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't like the low contrast and drab grey of the result page. It makes it much harder to jump between results with the eyes.

Luckily, there is a "classic" mode. Please Gabriel, make classic mode the default mode again.

</comment><comment><USER66> The UI is super slick. Bravo!!

I miss some of the simplicity of the old DDG but after adjusting the only thing i find missing is the StackOverflow integration. It may totally be there, i just haven't had the right query yet...

<comment><USER67> It's there

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=apache+nginx](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=apache+nginx)

<comment><USER66> Awesome! Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I really like the new design, but I'm still hoping for better discovery of bangs. Perhaps DDG could include links to suggested bangs alongside Images and Videos based on the search term. With the final link being a dropdown of all other available bangs (sorted by potential relevance maybe). Another possibility would be to include the list of bangs (or a shortened one) in the pull out side menu. For me, bangs are one of the best features of DDG, and it's disappointing that they aren't more discoverable.

</comment><comment><USER69> I used DDG as my main search engine instead of Google for two weeks just now, but ended up going back because very often DDG just couldn't find the results I'm used to finding with Google in that amount of keywords.

Usually I had to add "github", "npm" or some other word that would narrow it down for DDG, while Google just knew what I wanted and/or already visited.

Maybe it's the lack of personalized search results or Google is just smarter. Either way non-personalization is a double-edged sword.

<comment><USER70> Instead, add !github or !npm to the beginning of the query to use those site's internal searches. For a specific fulltext site search, "site:" works.

<comment><USER71> But that isn't the point. The point is that in Google you don't need to do that — it just knows what you're searching on (possibly) due to the personalisation.

<comment><USER72> That is, of course, true. I personally prefer it this way, though. Now I know where I end up by triggering the right mechanics, instead of Google knowing where I end up becase it just keeps track of me _that_ much. I can live with prepending !gh to my search. Most of the !bangs I use are two or three letters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> When it loaded, it failed to load the CSS etc. I saw the typical white page with black text and thought maybe this was their way of chiding those critical of the redesign.

</comment><comment><USER74> Very good job DuckDuckGo team! I was just thinking that I'd have to switch back to Google because of the poor results... but this new experience has given me some hope.

What saddens me though is that we (as in "the users") still don't have a strong guarantee on the respect of our privacy. We still have to trust the DDG team. I know there is no easy technology to do it, but still, the whole thing is only marginally better than using Google.

<comment><USER75> Actually, the alternative exists already for a while. It is free software and not even in beta anymore. Check out [http://yacy.net](http://yacy.net)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I never really gave DDG a shot until now. I tweaked the link color as suggested above to the DDG orange #C9481C (surprised blue was the only option.. had to use custom color and dig into your CSS to find that) and I think I'll give it a shot for at least a week. !bang seems to make up for any deficiencies (I'll probably be using !gm the most, for when I need directions).. right now things are looking great. Keep up the good work!

<comment><USER77> Just a heads up, !m also leads you to Google Maps

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Still not totally in love with it, but it's still my primary search engine. While looking for ways to alter the UI, found the Dark theme -- so that was a plus.

<comment><USER79> Thanks for that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Just switched my default search engine to DuckDuckGo for a self-initiated 10 day trial. All the work you've put into the new layout / results look great.

</comment><comment><USER81> Looks good, but they really need to weed out some spammy websites from their index.

For example, all the <domain>.<something>stats.com sites that try to get traffic when people search for various brands, or this strange one: [http://www.loginto.org/<domain>-login](http://www.loginto.org/<domain>-login) (apparently it tries to steal login credentials, or I don't see the point).

<comment><USER82> eek--thanks for the heads up. Not to subject you to that again but do you remember what the subdomain was? Was it content from [http://stats.com/](http://stats.com/) ?

<comment><USER81> There are a bunch of these subdomains that somehow get a high ranking:

clearwebstats.com pandastats.net cubestat.com allwebsitestats.com

(all in the top 10 results for one particular domain)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I'm loving the new version. I tried switching some time ago, but found the results lacking and the experience just annoying enough to not help me get to where I wanted. Now with this new version it's a whole different ball game. I've been using the beta for a while, and it's just so good .

I'm loving it – excellent work!

</comment><comment><USER84> I am a not a big fan of all the results being down the left hand side of the page. Considering how the top fancy gadget thing seems to extend well past the right of my page with silly right arrow buttons it seems a lot of the screen is just being wasted and it would be nice to have the results at least centred.

<comment><USER85> You can move the results into the center by going to Settings > Look & Feel > Placement, and select "Middle".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This looks absolutely gorgeous!

And thank you so much for not including the large(-ish) _position:fixed_ header/banner that we saw in the preview last week. Vertical screen estate is so precious on today's widescreen netbooks.

</comment><comment><USER86> Is there a way to filter results by time, like on Google? I can't find it.

</comment><comment><USER87> Dear Gabriel Weinberg, after so many posts on HN, I am still missing the point behind DDG.

Can you tell me, the end user, what are other benefits of using DDG aside _privacy_ (given I am using chrome/incognito by default)?

<comment><USER75> I guess, first of all, believing google in terms of incognito mode is a strange thing. Especially on proprietary browser. I suggest to check out, what is free software and why it is important [1]. [1]. [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html).

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> This looks pretty awesome! Good to see them doing well. Sad realization: 'what rhymes with orange' did not give a cool response. I expected it to at least try according to smart responses, haha.

</comment><comment><USER89> I've started using ddg instead of consistently skipping it by using g! since the new design came out. I didn't really grok how much the design played into my trust of its results until now.

Big improvement imo.

</comment><comment><USER90> This is really neat. I played around with the site awhile back and I found it particularly displeasing due to its layout and design, but now I'm really liking this modern and more minimalist look.

</comment><comment><USER91> I hope a setting gets added to make the images and videos tab always display fullscreen results. The default display of only 4 images at a time is pointless to me. Good work otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER92> Horizontal scrolling on a desktop is FAIL.

I also hate the way results have no apparent division between them, not even a prominent title; it makes them all blur together when I am scanning the page.

</comment><comment><USER93> Wish they'd add pronunciation to their definitions [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define+duck](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define+duck)

</comment><comment><USER94> First I'm the founder of Fotoblur.com, a creative photo community. I just went to check out the site. What I'm concerned with is when I search for fotoblur ([https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fotoblur](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fotoblur)), and go to images, it looks like you've slurped the image source and not the source page the image comes from. You're also providing a link to download the image. Don't you have any thoughts for user's copyrights or even content providers of which you've swiped content from? Boooo.

</comment><comment><USER95> How to turn off auto-scroll and turn pagination on?

<comment><USER36> They can both be configured in Settings: [https://duckduckgo.com/settings](https://duckduckgo.com/settings)

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Nice. first thing I tried was to scroll down.. (I was on my Mac). I think because of the cut iPad(?)/Screen... Was it just me?

</comment><comment><USER97> 'Sorry, this page requires JavaScript'

<comment><USER98> > This page requires Javascript to function. If you want to use DuckDuckGo > without JavaScript, please use our HTML[0] or lite[1] versions.

[0] [https://duckduckgo.com/html](https://duckduckgo.com/html) [1] [https://duckduckgo.com/lite](https://duckduckgo.com/lite)

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> A question for DDG or anyone who might know: How does DDG plan to monetize this without storing any data?

<comment><USER100> By selling adverts based on the current query. It already does so.

<comment><USER99> Thanks. That is sort of like going to war with knives amongst machine guns, but what do I know.

<comment><USER101> I'd say it's more like harvesting with a sickle when the competition uses John Deeres.

Doesn't mean you can't make a lot of money with your sickle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> If I could change the name of two great ideas doing great stuff they would be Ubuntu and DuckDuckGo.

</comment><comment><USER103> Please. There's no need to have the non-descript hamburger icon on a page designed for desktop

<comment><USER104> It's the commonly known symbol for a menu button, and is used throughout the site. Don't see what the problem is?

<comment><USER103> I suppose given an assumption of who uses DDG it's okay to use the icon, but my core point is really that it's _not_ as common as one may think.

In general, solely using an icon instead of text (or a combination of the two) is poor from a usability standpoint. Within a mobile context, I can understand the general push towards more compact treatments, but an icon with three lines does not intrinsically have any definitive meaning. While the icon may be aesthetically pleasing, I always felt there were some more effective alternatives.

There's been some recent discussion and data generated related to this icon (1,2), some of which can obviously be debated, but I think it's safe to say it's not as ubiquitous as you may think.

Overall, I don't think the hidden drawer pattern (and the associated menu icon) are appropriate for the site when it's being used on a desktop. But, it's OK given the contents of it and understandable when the site seems to have been designed mobile first and responsive. I do think more time should be given to the final 'desktop' state for a lot of responsive designs these days, though.

[1] [http://jxnblk.tumblr.com/post/82486816704/an-update-on- the-h...](http://jxnblk.tumblr.com/post/82486816704/an-update-on-the- hamburger-menu) [2] [http://exisweb.net/menu-eats- hamburger](http://exisweb.net/menu-eats-hamburger)

<comment><USER5> I like the arrowed version that DDG uses; I haven't seen that elsewhere (that I can recall) so far. I think the arrows encourage clicking on it to find out what is behind it, and most folks will probably not want or need to access the information behind it anyway. I prefer less text clutter personally. My personal favorite menu indicator is a small triangle in the corner of the screen (that you mouse over to get to the menu), but that is even easier to miss if you aren't expecting it (the triangle needs to be large for touch interfaces but if standardized could be set to be tiny or not graphically displaying for folks who know it is there and have a mouse).

Also, even if not perfect, I would love if sites that use infinite scroll would standardize on something to get to the stuff that is usually in small text at the bottom, and that icon seems as good as anything to me.

Firefox just changed to the three lines menu icon for the main menu so a bunch more people who haven't noticed it before will be forced to figure out what it means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> I like DDG, but have to ask, what is the revenue model? Is it going to serve ads eventually?

<comment><USER22> DDG already serves ads, but without tracking. I disable Adblock Plus on DDG to allow those ads to appear. It's just a small text banner on top of the search results (marked as "Sponsored link").

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> I love the Forecast.io integration, by far the most beautifully done weather app out there.

</comment><comment><USER107> Wow this looks great. Just set it as my default search engine. Thanks Gabe and company!

</comment><comment><USER22> Is image search new functionality or I just missed it in the older UI?

</comment><comment><USER108> Awesome change, results are much improved too, using it as my default.

</comment><comment><USER109> Very cool duckduckgo.

A question. Where do ddg guys get this massive taste for color red?

Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER110> On my iPhone 4 browser, I don't find any way to close the DuckDuckGo web page. Until I figure that one out, this new DuckDuckGo is YuckYuckNo (ha ha, I made that one up myself, I'm so Ducking funny!)

<comment><USER110> I just lost an HN Karma point for my comment pointing out the DDG webpage is seriously broken on the iphone (because it disables the browser's back and close buttons and so is effectively a roach motel). What HN Karma god loves DDG so much that it can't take criticism?

<comment><USER67> In iOS 7, you just tap on the top bar and the Safari navigation buttons appear.

<comment><USER110> It works! Thank you, rsl7. I retract my DDG hate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> It seems to cause some problems with the WOT extension?

</comment><comment><USER112> _Love_ the recipe search! This is fantastic!

</comment><comment><USER113> doh! I kept trying to scroll down the page to see the rest of the image that looks like 1/3rd is cut off

</comment><comment><USER114> since when does noch rhyme with duck

</comment><comment><USER115> why duckduckgo instead of google?

</comment><comment><USER116> Looks good.

</comment><comment><USER117> DDG is my default SE. Once in a while i ave to go to other SE (Bing second, Google third) but it's a small price to pay to give them a shot.

Hopefully the market share will be more evenly distributed among SEs. Let's do our part</comment>


WhatsApp to unveil statically typed Erlang variant in November - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/CodeBEAMio/status/1304094514005630977 <comment><USER2> Every language at FB ends up getting static typing: \- PHP => Hack \- JS => Flow \- Erlang => this new thing

It might just be FB's greatest contribution to the developer community.</comment>


Hands on with the CODE keyboard - <AUTHOR> http://www.jorgecastro.org/2013/09/04/hands-on-with-the-code-keyboard/

<comment><USER2> It seems like he can only name three mechanical keyboard manufacturers and doesn't even know anything specifically about Cherry. Hardly a keyboard snob, and hardly an appropriate review for today's keyboard market. From ABS keycaps to plastic (and ABS to top that) casing, the CODE is far from worth the hype it's getting.

<comment><USER3> The fact that the CODE keyboard is virtually identical to the Ducky Shine, and apart from the backlight is virtually identical to other nearly unbranded keyboards like Filcos and Leopolds, is a grievous omission that would almost certainly be included by any author familiar with the "snobby" mechanical keyboard market.

[http://tigerimports.net/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detail&p...](http://tigerimports.net/sunshop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=13772)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Razer makes some nice mechanical keyboards (BlackWidow series) with optional backlight, Cherry MX Blue or Brown switches, extra macro keys (that can be bound to any action), along with keyboard mapping software that works very well on Win/OSX.

For $50-70 less than this, depending on if you buy on sale.

I'm failing to see why this is a good option.

<comment><USER5> The build quality of the razer keyboards is rather bad. That's why.

Also this features Cherry MX Clear switches and standard profile keycaps so you can easily get a set of replacement keycaps if you need or want to.

<comment><USER6> I have a blackwidow, no build problems.

I even spilled alcohol on it (scotch) and it's still working as expected.

<comment><USER7> Did you expect it to continue working? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I fail to see how this keyboard improves on other mechanical keyboards in any significant way.

<comment><USER5> It's already sold out but it was the only backlit mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Clear switches on the market.

Unless you don't mind soldering and/or building a custom keyboard from scratch that's a huge selling point.

<comment><USER9> If you need a backlit keyboard it means that you (1.) are working in an environment that's way to dimly lit to be healthy and (2.) really need to learn touch typing.

<comment><USER10> "Because that's the only reason I would want one, and obviously anyone who thinks differently from me is wrong."

<comment><USER11> Someone who comes up with reasons for things but doesn't think they're good is automatically narrow minded?

Do you have better ones?

<comment><USER3> He missed the obvious (3.) you like backlit keyboards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Finally someone that actually got their hands on it talking about

<comment><USER13> Not only that but it's a guy who has used more then just the default Dell and Apple keyboard that their computer came with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> >[K]eyboards like this are not cheap and people who buy these kind of keyboards do for the same reason that Geddy Lee doesn't play a $500 bass.

I think keyboards are like shopping carts. Get one with a sticky wheel, and you'll find it terribly annoying and distracting. Get one that rolls smooth enough and you don't think much about it. The difference in return between "passably good" and "extremely high quality" is incredibly small, so let's just be honest here -- this is a luxury, not a career requirement.

But then to put it in Gladwell terms, it's been my experience that keyboards are pasta sauce. Some like theirs chunky, others like theirs... low profile? Oh well, at least my first metaphor stood up...

<comment><USER15> > I think keyboards are like shopping carts. Get one with a sticky wheel, and > you'll find it terribly annoying and distracting. Get one that rolls smooth > enough and you don't think much about it. The difference in return between > "passably good" and "extremely high quality" is incredibly small, so let's > just be honest here -- this is a luxury, not a career requirement.

That about sums up my attitude perfectly. Often I'm tempted by posts like this to get a good quality keyboard, but my current one (a standard DELL usb keyboard) works well enough. Heck, the one I had before was some generic one found on the side of the road, and I only replaced it because a few keys were getting sticky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It would have been nice if he included a video/sound clip of how it sounds.

</comment><comment><USER17> Until Jeff Atwood tries an ergonomic keyboard or layout other than QWERTY, I cannot take his keyboard cult seriously. I've owned three MS 4000s and have used QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts. Ever since I purchased a Kinesis Advantage a month ago on Colemak, going back to an MS 4000 noticeably _hurts_ my hands. I don't type any faster, but it is far more natural to use my thumbs (our strongest fingers) for common keys like Ctrl/Space/Del/PgUp/PgDown/WinKey, especially as a climber.

I find it hard to believe a Model M could be easier on the wrists than my abhorrent Macbook Air 2012 keyboard, due to its equally straight, unnatural angle. Compared to my old Acer C312 tablet with a 5-degree angle, typing 90wpm+ for more than an hour is not sustainable.

Either Jeff types really slowly, or has golden wrists of the gods. After a few months of Colemak, I am up to 90% of my accumulated 15-year QWERTY speed, but my hands feel far more relaxed.

Could this be a medical condition on my end, or is there a real ergonomic case to be made for the aging Model M? Right now, I don't buy it.

<comment><USER18> > I find it hard to believe a Model M could be easier on the wrists than my > abhorrent Macbook Air 2012 keyboard, due to its equally straight, unnatural > angle.

I find ergonomic keyboards pointless, but I also don't have (or have ever had) wrist problems.

> Compared to my old Acer C312 tablet with a 5-degree angle, typing 90wpm+ for > more than an hour is not sustainable.

Who types 90wpm+ when programming? We are programmers, not typists, we spend most of our time thinking and debugging, with only some intermittent spurts of typing activity. For spurts of typing, the Model M is perfect. If you had to write a lot continuously, I'm sure there are better solutions, but even when I'm writing a paper, the thinking/typing ratio is high.

> Could this be a medical condition on my end, or is there a real ergonomic > case to be made for the aging Model M? Right now, I don't buy it.

Given that your work sounds more like stenography and not programming, it is probably just that this keyboard is not meant for you.

<comment><USER17> Sean, have you tried any of the ergonomic keyboards which you find pointless? Unless you have, your argument seems a lot like my ol' man's arguments against <Internet/Facebook/YouTube> a few years ago.

Atwood specifically addresses the fallacy of "thinking vs typing as the bottleneck for programming" with the statement [1]: "What I'm trying to say is this: speed matters. When you're a fast, efficient typist, you spend less time between thinking that thought and expressing it in code."

It's not about averaging 90wpm in code. No programmer I know does that. It's about _not_ averaging 10wpm once you've finished thinking and want to materialize your thoughts or revert a mistake.

My work is typing, primarily code and email. Every minute I spend typing my thoughts is a minute of thought wasted.

[1]: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/11/we-are-typists- firs...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/11/we-are-typists-first- programmers-second.html)

<comment><USER3> > Sean, have you tried any of the ergonomic keyboards which you find > pointless? Unless you have, your argument seems a lot like my ol' man's > arguments against <Internet/Facebook/YouTube> a few years ago.

If my wrist/hand/arm/etc. comfort level while using my non-ergonomic keyboard is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level, why would switching provide any useful data?

<comment><USER17> @baddox, my fingers' comfort level when looking up a contact and phoning them on my Nokia 3100's is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level. Why should switching to a smartphone provide any useful data?

Sidenote: the question for any new technology should always be "Why not?" Not "Why???".

For this particular anecdotal case, I am not claiming I have _the_ answer, but please consider trying it before raising an indefensible argument. I have tried a bunch of keyboards and layouts. Surely my derivations are fallible, but empirically, they should carry more weight than a "keyboard enthusiast" who has not even tried a different keyboard layout or _any_ of the well-known ergonomic keyboards.

<comment><USER3> > @baddox, my fingers' comfort level when looking up a contact and phoning > them on my Nokia 3100's is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level. > Why should switching to a smartphone provide any useful data?

Because the promise of a smartphone is not to remove discomfort in your fingers. As far as I know, that's the only promise of ergonomic keyboards.

> Sidenote: the question for any new technology should always be "Why not?" > Not "Why???".

I agree, and in the case of ergonomic keyboards, the answer to "Why not?" is "Because I don't suffer from any stress injuries or musculoskeletal problems."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I bought one of these and posted impressions and unboxing pictures on Twitter. ([https://twitter.com/jcurbo](https://twitter.com/jcurbo)) I had a Filco before this and have some Model M's laying around that I used for years, so I fall into the same camp as the OP in terms of being a mechanical keyboard user.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Thanks for making the Super Key OS-agnostic!

Except for its placement, which is exactly where the Windows key would be. ⌘ is next to the space bar in a Mac layout (<strike>easy enough to swap the key caps, but the key binding probably needs to be changed in software like most Windows keyboards</strike>).

<comment><USER21> The DIP switches allow you to do this right on the keyboard instead of using software.

<comment><USER22> And I'm assuming you can swap the keycaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nobody pines for the ASR33 keyboard :-) Now _that_ was a mechanical keyboard.

I've been typing on my CODE for about a week now, its nice and the feel is good, and I do like the look of the backlight (and no I don't look at my keyboard while I type). I do wish I could get a keycap for the caps lock key that said "CTRL" but I am OK with it just being control.

On the multi-media keys, one enhancement that would really rock would be to have those 6 keys be programmable. By default they could come up as multi- media keys but its pretty conveneient to use thumb on the 'fn' key and then press one of the 6. So being able to load macros into them would totally rock.

<comment><USER19> WASD sells extra keycaps, but I don't think they sell the clear ones for the CODE.

Also, the multimedia keys just emit another keycode so you should be able to reprogram them, depending on your OS. (e.g. xmodmap on Linux, as detailed here: [https://wiki.debian.org/Keyboard/MultimediaKeys](https://wiki.debian.org/Keyboard/MultimediaKeys))

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I use a Filco Ninja Majestouch 2. I looove the side-printed keys: they'll never wear out, it looks pure-black from the top, and it just looks great.

[http://www.amazon.com/Filco-Majestouch-2-Keyboard- FKBN104M-E...](http://www.amazon.com/Filco-Majestouch-2-Keyboard- FKBN104M-EFB2/dp/B004Z0XR2O)

<comment><USER25> I used to use a Filco Majestouch 2 tenkeyless, but had always wanted to try a Realforce. I hesitated because of the cost, the unique switch type, and the uneven weighting of the keys. They do make evenly weighted keyboards, but the uneven weighting was both appealing and worrisome. It happens that I received a Realforce 87u tenkeyless silent 10th anniversary edition as a gift. Within a week, I bought a matching (the normal edition) one for work. I've been hooked.

The switches have a nice balance between the way they feel and the level of sound output. The uneven weighting is great, but it is slightly to switch back and forth between normal keyboards and the Realforce. It's not bad to move from a Realforce to a regular keyboard, but it's a bit difficult to switch back. Sometimes, I'll get distracted, look up and find "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" on my screen. This only happens when I move back and forth between different keyboards, and the minor hassle is worth it.</comment></comment>


Fox squirrels use 'chunking' to organize their favorite nuts - <AUTHOR> http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/09/12/nut-chunking/ <comment><USER2> They also pretend to hide them to fool possible thieves

[] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science- news/3322101...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science- news/3322101/Cunning-squirrels-pretend-to-bury-their-food.html) [] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347207...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347207004988)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think chunking is the answer to remembering my passwords.</comment>


The Gremlins in the Machine - <AUTHOR> https://www.eetimes.com/the-gremlins-in-the-machine/ <comment><USER2> The real problem here is that convoluted UX allowed a smart-tv to be turned into a radio.</comment>


Show HN: RowStack – Streamline your team task management - <AUTHOR> http://rowstack.com <comment><USER3> Hey folks, founder of RowStack here. We'd love your feedback on our product. We've been working hard on it for a couple months. It's got a few rough edges but we think it's usable and have been using it ourselves. Would you use this for your team? Why? Why not? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Looks cool!

Having a list of integrations somewhere on the marketing site would be huge.

Any plans to integrate with github and/or gitlab issues?

<comment><USER3> Would you be interested in actually using it and being one of our beta testers? What we need most right now is a small group of people to get feedback from so we can improve the product. We'd be shaping the product from your suggestions and pain points. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like how it feels like excel - super intuitive and easy to use. Best part is moving that from a spreadsheet to a "stack" view is super easy - <USER2> convenient for my todo list and creating a sales/project pipeline as well. Kudos to the team!

<comment><USER3> Contact us at email@example.com. We'd love to have you as a beta tester and incorporate your feedback into the product over the coming weeks. We are working hard on it.</comment></comment>


Epic Games banked a $3B profit in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/27/epic-fortnite-3-billion-profit/ <comment><USER4> I don't really like Fortnite, but I'm really really happy for Epic's success. PUBG was a flaming dumpster heap that only caught on because the Battle Royale mechanic is naturally fun and people were clamoring for that type of game. But it was an unqualified mess from a subpar developer, and that always annoyed me because gamers deserved better. Now Epic has been rescued from sliding into obscurity _and_ they've got massive coffers to continue working on Unreal 4. Couldn't have worked out better.

<comment><USER5> While I agree that PUBG is a dumpster heap technically, it really is a legitimately fun game. I enjoy it much more than Fortnite, and if it performed halfway decently it would be one of my favorite games of all time. I think Fortnite's success is great and it is very clear why it is more popular than PUBG could have ever hoped to be, but I will always be partial to the slow, suffocating, horror of feeling alone in that giant world. Not seeing someone for 10 minutes, but always wondering who is around the next corner is thrilling to me and it's something that Fortnite intentionally lacks.

<comment><USER6> I'd like to add gun mechanics. PUBG has the best gunplay I've ever played. For me PUBG fights are thrilling, like I was there getting shot at, while Fortnite's (or any other game for that matter) are plain old arcadey. I dislike the building mechanic too.

I'd genuinely love for a developer to step up and do a better milsim BR but so far PUBG is king in that niche.

<comment><USER7> cod blackout is significantly better mechanically, and just as much of a 'milsim.' twitch has largely pivoted already.. CSGO has a BR now, too.

PUBG doesn't have much special left, and its new peers haven't been very successful at unseating fortnite for popularity.

The building mechanic you dislike, seems to me to be a crucial ingredient that makes so many love it [0]. The continually evolving meta-game and diverse game modes also help elevate it above the chaff.

[0] At the time of writing, fornite has ~10x as many twitch viewers as pubg.

<comment><USER8> Fortnite is free, pubg isn't. Keep that in mind when comparing.

<comment><USER9> Tell that to anyone who has a kid playing Fortnite. They're either spending money or declining to spend money constantly. Fortnite is free in the sense that it's free to walk into a bar.

<comment><USER10> I've really enjoyed my 20hrs+ playing fortnite without spending any money through the platform. I'm happy for other people to pay for useless items and subsidise my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fortnite's pivot from failed co-op zombie game to... well, _this_... is incredible.

I would love to have experienced that office environment over that year. I can only imagine that the pivot was a "well, we already have most of the game. What can do we do with it?" hail Mary as they considered what to do short of closure.

I may also be misremembering how dire their situation was. But I thought it was quite dire.

<comment><USER12> Fortnite may have been dire as a product, but Epic was surely not in any kind of trouble as a company.

<comment><USER13> It's really odd to watch people see them as "the Fortnite company" and ignore/discount the Unreal engine, etc.

<comment><USER14> I actually see them as the ZZT company.

<comment><USER15> Oh man, for some reason Epic Games and Epic MegaGames were distinct in my head. Two companies, one which made ZZT, Jill of the Jungle and Jazz Jackrabbit, and the other which starts with Unreal.

I loved ZZT back in the day.

<comment><USER16> > Jazz Jackrabbit

Wow that's a name I haven't heard in ages. Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was one of my favourite games growing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it is commendable that Epic used some of this profit to change their Unreal Engine Marketplace rates in favour of the developers. Similar to their store that is mentioned in the article, the revenue split is now 88/12.

This change will be applied retroactively to all past transactions [1]. My understanding is the split was previously 70/30 as common in other online stores—those should be some hefty payouts for some developers. In my opinion this is going above and beyond and would make me feel good about supporting Epic through purchase of cosmetics in Fortnite if I played the game, for example.

EDIT: I previously mistakenly referred to the UE Marketplace as store, which is now at best misleading since they did launch a proper game store last month. Thanks to jsnell for catching this.

[1] [https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-announces- unrea...](https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-announces-unreal- engine-marketplace-88-12-revenue-share)

<comment><USER18> Eh, that move is definitely nice for developers, but it's still self-serving. They're in an uphill battle against steam's moat, and increasing rates is a way of attracting more developers.

<comment><USER17> The UE Marketplace is targeted at developers only and sells assets and such for use in UE games. I was not aware that Steam is competing in that area at all and a cursory search didn't yield any such results.

Of course other marketplaces selling assets exist, but I am not aware that one has a dominant market position that Epic are trying hard to surpass. Please do let me know if that is, in fact, the case.

Or are you implying that better rates in the Marketplace will also make it more likely for developers to publish their games on the Epic Store (disregarding the better rates there)?

<comment><USER19> They are talking about the Steam-competing store Epic launched recently:

[https://www.epicgames.com/store/](https://www.epicgames.com/store/)

It's pretty empty now but I'll be shocked if it doesn't have thousands of games within the next 3 years.

<comment><USER20> The store is closely curated by Epic, and that - the quality of game selection - was their main pitch for the gamers.

It's still possible that they will exhaust a pool of good games and start listing random junk for $100 like Steam does, but that's not likely to happen that quickly.

<comment><USER15> Seems like Steam could pretty much fix that problem if they changed the fee to $200, and doled out $@-$5 credits to random people that reviewed similarly tagged games along with a copy of the game that's good for 5-10 hours before needing to be purchased (or until a certain date), as long as they give a thorough review of what they were able to see.

Steam already tracks time played in the game, so it's not like they would have to add a bunch of mechanics to track extra stuff, and this would allow for some fairly good initial reviews to be seeded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The interesting part of this article was that Epic intentionally circumvented Google Play Store and required Android users to download the launcher from its own website. Hopefully this leads to more app developers skipping Google Play and launching solo. Of course most apps won't have the name recognition of Fortnite, but I can't imagine discover-ability inside of the Play Store is any better.

I got a new phone recently and had to re-download some apps; Imagine my shock when I opened Google Play and saw that it had become like Google search; crawling with ads for some of the worst, lowest-rung "apps", all of which appear to be some variant of Candy Crush and Clash of Clans. Who honestly wants to fork over 30% to Google for _that_?

<comment><USER22> The Apple store is just as bad. I tried finding an app that just takes a photo every n seconds until I press stop.

I could find endless pages of apps that claimed to do this - but had 1-star ratings because they couldn't actually do the single thing they were supposed to do.

Ugh. I remain pretty convinced that there's an app like this out there, but discovering it is just plain impossible.

<comment><USER23> I've given up on searching the App Store, but I've had a lot of luck searching the web. This article looks relevant and useful: [https://iphonephotographyschool.com/iphone-time- lapse/](https://iphonephotographyschool.com/iphone-time-lapse/)

<comment><USER22> IIRC none of those just place the photos in the iPhone gallery. They only give you the finished video.

I tried looking into making this myself, but it's an insane rabbit's hole of Cocoapod compilation problems and general yak shawing. A kingdom for a bash shell and a few good cli tools..

<comment><USER24> Why not just make a Siri Shortcut? This took five minutes: [https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/7b14ee82c76d4d64902b5e26a69...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/7b14ee82c76d4d64902b5e26a6960c28)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Shame none of that is going towards UT development and Epic scrapped that project. Considering the state of the new Quake game I guess that's the end for Arena shooters.

<comment><USER26> It's too bad, but arena shooters have been dying as a category ever since around UT3. I'm hopeful they'll make a resurgence in the future.

<comment><USER27> Arena shooters are "dying" for the same reason chess isn't as popular as online poker. Back in the day arena shooter popularity was because there was no low hanging fruit alternative like modern military shooters or Fortnite of today. But it turns out most people don't _want_ to either participate in or watch games of absolute skill. The former requires a lot of commitment to get good at it, and there is no randomness or luck to make you feel you are better than you are - just your own ability. The later is reflected in the former, in how complex interations and difficulty make watching really skillful games harder because there is so much to account for deterministically.

Thats what gravitates people towards randomness in games, where skill is taken out of the equation. Then you don't have to practice or actually "be good", you could just get lucky, and thats enough for most people - they aren't looking for challenges in their games, just dopamine kicks, and we are wired enough to get similar effects to chance we get to perseverance and the former doesn't require the hard work.

Arena shooters are alive and thriving. Quake Champions Doom Edition[1] is a miracle mod that is incredible to see and play knowing its running on what started as the first breakout PC shooter of all time. But its not a commercial product. Its a fan game. But its just as good, or better, than what almost any big budget arena shooter could offer, because they are not about spectacle at all, they are about the tightness and responsiveness of the gameplay.

[1] [https://www.moddb.com/mods/quake-champions-doom- edition](https://www.moddb.com/mods/quake-champions-doom-edition)

<comment><USER28> Anyone with any sense of these games work would see that modern games like Fortnite or Overwatch take more skill than typical arena shooters. You still need to have the raw mechanical aim skill, but now there are a host of other mechanical, tactical and cooperative skills to master on top of that.

<comment><USER26> Having played shooters since the arena shooter days... no, I definitely disagree.

I like to compare arena shooters vs. Fortnite/Overwatch as chess vs. Settlers of Catan. Arena shooters were much more "open play" in the sense that there were few enough game mechanics that you could mostly guess your opponents' tactics and it often came down to execution and minute variations in the gameplay.

The newer shooters add many, many game mechanics that complicate and randomize the game. Overwatch's large stable of characters, for example. This creates a problem where part of your skill is reading matchups from an intractably large number of factors, then executing on it.

I don't consider either to be superior, but the games put emphasis on and reward different skills.

<comment><USER29> There was a lot of meta-game you could not grasp as a newb in arena-shooters. You heard the opponent grab the shotgun shells, you knew he could either reach door a or door b in 5 seconds. So you grenade launched into Door A and flung yourself at Door B.

For newcomers this resulted in dying horrible most of the time, all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is anybody else bummed how Fortnite's success has drawn development away from the new Unreal Tournament? I don't care about Fortnite, I just want UT to continue to be updated. I don't think it's had an update since June.

<comment><USER31> Not just drawn development away, but they are no longer developing it.

[https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/development-stopped- unr...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/development-stopped-unreal- tournament/)

<comment><USER32> Oh no, sad to hear this. Still regularly shoot around with my gf on classic UT2004...

<comment><USER33> A guy upthread is mentioning quake champions doom edition as an alternative

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Epic lied to Linux devs and stabbed us in the back. I have abandoned hundreds in marketplace assets and moved to godot because of all that money and still a refusal to address Linux as a platform for dev and shipping.

<comment><USER35> I see several people complain about Linux limitations in this thread. What are the Linux limitations exactly? A) Unreal dev tools can't be used on Linux, B) Unreal dev tools can't be used to purchase marketplace assets on Linux, C) Unreal dev tools can't use marketplace assets on Linux even if you previously bought them on Windows, D) Unreal dev tools on Windows can't make a Linux build if it uses marketplace assets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Tim Sweeney often complains about MS being a threat to PC gaming, yet there is still no Fortnite for Linux. Also, Epic store doesn't support Linux (yet?).

<comment><USER37> I mean come on, it has got to be a business decision. If Gamers were there, they would have made it. How much investment do you expect them to make when only 1% of the world wide Desktop uses linux and possibly less than 10% of that 1% are gamers?

I mean Mac Gamers don't complain as much when they have higher market shares.

<comment><USER36> If he is so threatened, his business decision should be to do something about it. Valve did, and push Linux gaming quit a lot. Epic do it very lazily. Good thing their Unreal engine works on Linux, but they didn't put a lot of effort in it. Lot's was done by third party and community developers to make it work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Hopefully this shows others that you can make successful games without pay to win mechanics.

<comment><USER39> Of course there are games that already have proven this, most notably League of Legends (which is also mentioned in the article).

<comment><USER40> Don't you need to pay for "champs" in LoL? That sounds very P2W to me.

<comment><USER41> All champions, including the free ones on rotation, are balanced with each other (in _theory_ ); there is no real-money-only-champion with blatantly- boosted stats as is often in more P2W variants.

See Jarwain's comment in a sister thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > Epic grossed a $3 billion profit for this year

What does this even mean? Net income? Top line gross profit (meaning minus COGS), which is normally like 80% GM for heavily software enabled businesses? Ugh, tech reporters.

<comment><USER43> Yes, gross profit is usually understood as revenue minus cogs. But it doesn't seem like the reporter is using it correctly here.

<comment><USER42> I'm about 63%* sure the reporter is referring to revenue.

* made up number

<comment><USER44> Revenue and profit are two entirely different things. If it says profit, I feel like it's more likely it's profit rather than revenue.

<comment><USER42> You must be new to TechCrunch articles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm really happy they're so successful. My son loves it, and from my perspective it's "healthier" than more realistic games like Call of Duty (for his age, I mean. nothing inherently wrong with CoD). All that said, I really don't get the appeal. Although I come from a gaming history that values deep and lore-heavy CRPG & ARPG games. From that perspective I don't see a lot of depth to fortnite, where success seems driven by twitch reflexes and very similar end-games for most matches. That said I love the temporary special features they do. My son & I had a blast jetting around, sniping each other when rocket packs were available, and The infinity gauntlet tie-in was really fun. Anyway, good on Epic!

</comment><comment><USER46> Tim Sweeney is a good person, good for him

<comment><USER47> I can confirm. We wrote couple of games together in 1995-98 (Fire Fight being the biggest). He is genuinely a good guy.

<comment><USER48> Fire Fight! That's a blast from the past. I remember being amazed by how cool it looked and felt to play when I was 12 or 13.

<comment><USER47> Yup, been some fun to write. We did it in Cracow Poland, no internet, barely any money, these were times!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Fortnite makes over a million dollars a day... ON iOS ALONE.

They've built a money machine.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm surprised it made so much money. The game is free. Do people really pay much for the skins/characters?

<comment><USER51> You can also buy something called a "battlepass", which gives you access to additional challenges every week. By completing these challenges, you can earn additional cosmetic items.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> $3B profit doesn't really seem consistent with $15B valuation. Tech companies these days seem valued at 20x revenue or more. Why would they bother raising $1.25B at that price?

I suppose Fortnite is a fad, so there is a pessimistic case to be made to cash in as much as possible.

<comment><USER53> The impression I get is that the video game industry is extremely hit / miss.

Hence the large graveyard of publishers and developers who at one time made excellent, well-selling games. (E.g. Interplay Games)

Money comes cheaply at times of hits. Money comes much more expensively at times of misses. So it behooves Epic to build up a war chest if they can.

<comment><USER52> It does speak to a pretty conservative mindset - when you just made $3B cash free and clear, selling some of that golden goose for $1.25B.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Guess everyone got a nice bonus this holiday season jeez

<comment><USER55> By "everyone" I assume you mean investors and upper management.

<comment><USER56> Eh its a tech company. Bonuses usually make their way down to the lower ranks too.

<comment><USER57> Meaning they will be provided with free beverages.

<comment><USER55> And my favorite perk - "unlimited vacation". Nevermind the social stigma is so strong against taking vacation that employees use far less than if they were just given a certain number of vacation days.

<comment><USER58> True story .. took 1 PTO per month.. took total of 3 in 4 months I was told I'm abusing it and no longer available to me

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Unreal Engine is honestly awesome. I recently purchased an AAA game called "DB FighterZ," built on UE, and the game experience is top-notch.

It piqued my interest in game programming once again.

</comment><comment><USER37> One of the best thing about Fortnite is EPIC porting back all the work and improvement to Unreal Engine, if any of those Unreal Engine Release note improvement seems crazy, since Fortnite it has been insane. And there are still many more to come.

At this stage Makes me wonder if Unreal Engine will ever get a major competitor for AAA games. Even Konami are ditching the Fox engine and moving to Unreal.

</comment><comment><USER60> > ...has popularized the battle royale category — think Lord of the Flies > meets Hunger Games — almost single-handedly...

Almost single-handedly? This is a bizarre claim and it's like rewriting history.

<comment><USER61> Besides PUBG, who else has done this in a successful way? Fortnite wasn't the original but it blows the success of PUBG out of the water at this point. I'm okay with "PUBG + Fortnite" ~= "almost single handedly".

I think the key word in that quote is popularized — even if earlier games did it, these are the two to demonstrate widespread appeal.

<comment><USER62> The order in video games, as far as I can make it was:

Minecraft (hunger game mod) > DayZ/H1Z1 > PUBG > Fortnite

At each step, the genre grew by 1 or 2 orders or magnitude. So while Fortnite is by far the largest BR game now, if you look at the log-graph, they each had an almost equal impact on getting to where we are today and are an important part of the genre's history.

<comment><USER63> I am pretty sure there was an Arma mod that directly inspired pubg in there somewhere. Maybe even older then then hunger games mod.

Edit: Oh I just looked it up. The mod was PUBG. I just realized it was the same guy who made it. It was released as a mod for Arma in 2015 by a player who went by the handle "PlayerUnknown". So I guess it was after the minecraft mod.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Now finish UT4!

<comment><USER65> UT4 got killed by the success of Fortnite :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> "Valve", not "Value"!!

</comment><comment><USER67> What does HN people think on the whole idea of stealing concept from PUBG? I am kind of divided on this topic.

<comment><USER68> I don't really see it any different than stealing the concept of FPS from companies that came before, or from stealing the concept of video games from the original creators. I see no issue with it, much like I see no issue with all sorts of games borrowing from LOTR (or from other sources that eventually trace their way back to LOTR). Even PUBG stole the concept from others. It reminds me a lot of Hunger Games actual battles (not the teenage romance angst portions), and Hunger Games effectively stole the idea from elsewhere. (And likely I'm missing links in the chain of who stole what from who, and I don't even like the idea of calling it stealing.)

<comment><USER69> It's all literally the name of a film and novel, Battle Royale.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_\(film\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> All gaming companies could have made huge profits. Most game companies opted to be condescending and preach personal politics into peoples hobbies. It's not about fun but it's about education.

<comment><USER58> Instead of working on a game for few years and releasing something innovative they want to release new but really 1.2 version every year with 20 dlcs in between. We Map editor - <USER3>

Lan gameplay - <USER3>

In a way counter strike is better</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cheapest place to sleep in the Bay Area - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to visit the Bay Area in January, and stay around for three weeks or a month. Does anyone know of a cheap place (like a hostel) to sleep over?<p>I just need a couch or bed to sleep in, and some restroom to shower in. I don't really care about anything else -- so anything really dirt cheap would be fantastic! :-) <comment><USER2> For dorms there's a nice hostel called the Adelaide Hostel near the corner of Taylor and Geary St, it's clean and affordable. They also own a few hotels within a block or two of their hostel with cheap but basic rooms in the $80 - $100 range.

[http://www.adelaidehostel.com/](http://www.adelaidehostel.com/)

My friends and I stay in this hostel and hotels when we hit conferences.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did you try airbnb and couchsurfing?</comment>


Teaching Machines to Understand Us (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/540001/teaching-machines-to-understand-us/ <comment><AUTHOR> Being a Machine Learning noob, this article leaves me fantasizing about a future that would make my life a lot more exciting.

Based on this article, I would love to invest my time getting skilled at deep learning.

I would love to know what people with more experience with Machine Learning think about what Yann Lecun is trying to achieve?

Thanks!</comment>


Google APIs Down - <AUTHOR> https://downfor.io/apidata.googleusercontent.com <comment><USER2> Well, at least it's down completely. Not like the Google Webmaster Tools Search Console API where they just stopped updating / delivering correct data - without notice - any more. [https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1138355023245713408](https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1138355023245713408)</comment>


Show HN: my one-day project, Trnsfr - <AUTHOR> http://trns.fr/

<comment><AUTHOR> There have been many times when I wanted to get something quickly from my browser to my phone. A Google Map before heading out, or an app someone messaged me to check out on Facebook.

So I built Trnsfr. It's super-simple: click the bookmarklet and it'll SMS your phone with whatever URL you're looking at.

That's it. But it's made my life a little better already. Hopefully it'll improve yours too.

What do you guys think?

<comment><USER2> How about an option of email along with sms. Email is free for me, sms costs $0.20.

<comment><USER3> If you set your email client as the handler for 'mailto:' links (it's reasonably easy, at least on Firefox), the following bookmarklet creates an email ready to be sent (one click in Gmail) with the current page URL:

        javascript:(function(){var%20url=%22mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com?body=%22+document.URL;window.open(url);})();

Don't forget to replace 'email@example.com' with your own email address.

<comment><USER4> Right click on page, then select 'Send Link...'. (At least in Firefox)

<comment><USER3> Right, but that doesn't fill out the email address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Haven't tried it (not in the US), but it sounds neat: Having a bookmarklet makes invoking it painless, and opening an URL from an SMS should be easy from most phones. I'm assuming the SMS delivery is basically instant. It's also cross-platform on both ends.

That said, these days I just use Fox To Phone (or Chrome to Phone) to accomplish this. This platform-specific solution works better than sending an SMS would. It also does a few things in addition to just transferring URLs.

In the past, I had a browser extension that created a 2d barcode for the current page. It worked in a pinch, but scanning the barcode with the phone is relatively time-consuming and, overall, just a nuisance. FWIW, you could do the barcode thing with a bookmarklet, too, and end up with a solution that's cross-platform on both ends.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used SMS because it is a) ubiquitous and b) already used by almost everyone.

Scanning barcodes is (at least right now) neither.

<comment><USER6> here is a QR bookmarklet thing i built two years ago <http://miniqr.com/docs/bookmarklet.php> but yeah, i know the usage stats, and well the short version is: QR codes are doomed.

your sms approach sounds good, let's see if it takes off.

<comment><USER5> They seem to be pretty widespread these days as a means to transmit information (mostly URLs) from physical reality to smartphones. I rarely if ever scan them, but that's due to the context: why would I scan the URL on some kind of ad poster?

I saw a QR code that was printed a few feet tall the other day, letting you scan it from across the plaza; that's pretty cool. I still think you could build some pretty neat "worldly" easter eggs by hiding QR codes around cities.

<comment><USER7> I was passing by a museum last week, and they had some exhibit in the public space in front, and on the small board describing it, there was a QR code for a YouTube video of an actor narrating something related to the exhibit. The fact that the paternalist description of the QR code ("A kind of bar-code for the future [blah blah] go into the "APP store"[sic] and search for [blah blah]...") was more prominent than the code itself detracted somewhat from the feeling of being in the future, but that was the first useful application I've seen in the wild.

<comment><USER8> I was at a store opening on Friday and they had a small (4x4) QR code in the window. The caption was simply: Shop Online

I thought that use case was pretty compelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really liked the idea of Chrome to Phone on Android, so I built Send to WP7 for Windows Phone. I kind of feel that using SMS is really only a good fallback solution for phones without a good app (not to mention removing the need for cell signal, etc.). Cool project though, a great use for Twilio. :) Nice job!

</comment><comment><USER10> I personally don't care if your project took 1 day or 1 year. I feel like by mentioning it the subtext is:

"Look what can be accomplished in one day, isn't that neat?"

and

"Be nice, it was just one day"

But really only the latter is useful (e.g. we won't be too harsh on missing pieces) and I think you can convey it by simply saying, "Early version", "Quick MVP", etc. Those say something more useful, too! They say if you plan on iterating further or not, or if this is meant as a MVP or just a portfolio piece or what.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason I added "one-day" is that I get tons of emails that recommend I focus on one thing.

The thing is, I _am_ 100% focused on one thing. So a title like this when I hack together an idea I had in my downtime prevents the majority of those emails.

Thanks for your feedback though, I appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My friend and I developed something similar for a hackathon a few years ago.

There's a bookmarklet for the browser and an Android app.

<http://pagestackandroid.appspot.com/>

Ours only work on Android app while Trnsfr could work on any phone with SMS.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hi,

Good idea ( I use Chrome to Phone on my android, to do that kind of think). FYI : I tried the website and entered a random number I got a blank webpage with an error:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/_webapp25.py", line 703, in __call__ handler.post( _groups) File "/base/data/home/apps/s~trnsfrapp/1.354335415123281066/main.py", line 388, in post body=body) File "/base/data/home/apps/s~trnsfrapp/1.354335415123281066/twilio/rest/resources.py", line 1018, in create return self.create_instance(params) File "/base/data/home/apps/s~trnsfrapp/1.354335415123281066/twilio/rest/resources.py", line 295, in create_instance resp, instance = self.request("POST", self.uri, data=body) File "/base/data/home/apps/s~trnsfrapp/1.354335415123281066/twilio/rest/resources.py", line 195, in request resp = make_twilio_request(method, uri, auth=self.auth,_ *kwargs) File "/base/data/home/apps/s~trnsfrapp/1.354335415123281066/twilio/rest/resources.py", line 168, in make_twilio_request raise TwilioRestException(resp.status_code, resp.url, message) TwilioRestException: HTTP ERROR 400: 21401: +15555557777 is not a valid phone number [https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/AC36119600c07b44d...](https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/AC36119600c07b44d3954d611d19f446fc/SMS/Messages.json)

Good continuation

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, sorry about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those not in the US, there is <http://airlinkapp.com/>, it's neat. Just add the bookmarklet to both browser and phone.

</comment><comment><USER14> The War on vowels continues...

<comment><USER15> I think it started with Tumblr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This feature is built into android. Just install the chrome to phone app by google & the plugin for chrome or firefox (fox to phone). Good for non-android phones I guess though.

</comment><comment><USER17> I use Prowl on my iPhone <http://www.prowlapp.com/> and 2Prowl extension for Safari <http://extensions.dreamtbyphil.co.uk/> to easily push the page I'm looking at in Safari to my phone.

There are extensions for Chrome and Firefox as well <http://www.prowlapp.com/apps.php>

</comment><comment><USER18> OT: The first thing I thought of was the Discover card commercial with Peggy. "Transfer!"

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

Sorry, couldn't resist. Inspiration or coincidence?

</comment><comment><USER19> I use qr codes for this. A well placed Qr Bookmarlet (such as this[1] one), and barcode scanner, and I'm done.

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/qrbookmarklet/>

</comment><comment><USER20> What's wrong with just e-mailing link to yourself?

If your phone can view a website, it's very likely it can read e-mails too.

<comment><USER21> With this you don't have to navigate to your email client every time you want to send yourself something and you don't get a cluttered inbox. This is pretty simple and smooth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The page where you enter your credit card probably should be SSL?

<comment><USER23> Credit Card?

<comment><USER22> The account page to buy more transfer credits.

<comment><USER23> oh, didn't see it since I couldn't register (outside US).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So do QRcode extensions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a fan of QR codes. They're also not supported out-of-the-box by any phone with a browser.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you and I don't feel that QR codes are a good fit for things like this (it's just awkward), but just a small nit: Windows Phones actually do support QR codes (and other bar codes) out of the box. I'm sure there are others, but that is the only know I know of. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Fully integrate Facebook Comments in Wordpress - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/wpfb/

<comment><AUTHOR> pretty awesome!</comment>