DuckDuckGo Traffic - <AUTHOR> https://duckduckgo.com/traffic <comment><USER2> The results are good enough at that I use it exclusively now.

In case y'all didn't know, DDG does some neat things like this:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=beautify+json&t=h_&ia=answer](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=beautify+json&t=h_&ia=answer)

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=qr+hello+hn&atb=v123-2__&ia=answer](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=qr+hello+hn&atb=v123-2__&ia=answer)

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=url+unescape+Hello%2520HN&atb=v123...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=url+unescape+Hello%2520HN&atb=v123-2__&ia=answer)

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=crontab+0+0+*+*+*+%2Fbin%2Fsh&atb=...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=crontab+0+0+*+*+*+%2Fbin%2Fsh&atb=v123-2__&ia=answer)

<comment><USER3> They can also do cool stuff like currency conversion:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=10+cad+in+usd&atb=v123-2__&ia=curr...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=10+cad+in+usd&atb=v123-2__&ia=currency)

And generate passphrases:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=7+word+passphrase&atb=v123-2__&ia=...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=7+word+passphrase&atb=v123-2__&ia=answer)

My killer app is the bang commands: [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

!hn for hacker news !a for amazon !w for wikipedia !imdb for imdb !reddit for reddit !wa is the best for calculations and other weird stuff (ex: type in a date and find out what day of the week it was)

<comment><USER4> When it comes to password, you're better off using some offline tool.

<comment><USER5> Why? Because some high powered adversary is spying and decrypting all your internet traffic to find a passphrase you may or may not use in its entirety?

<comment><USER4> DDG should be fine to be trusted but you don't know what kind of code produced it.

You need to worry about where the produced password is stored, how random it is and you can't prove any of it.

Generally, you can't just decrypt your traffic... there are other attack vectors.

<comment><USER6> Our instant answers are open source. You can see the Perl used for the passphrase Goodie here: [https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo- goodies/blob/mas...](https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo- goodies/blob/master/lib/DDG/Goodie/Passphrase.pm)

We're not storing these generated phrases anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have recently switched to Firefox, and have been using DDG now for some time both on desktop and mobile.

In my experience Firefox + DDG _is_ a viable alternative to Chrome + Google Search.

Occasionally I still need to go for google, but for about 98% of the time I'd say DDG is a no-op drop-in replacement for Google. I highly recommend this browser & search engine combo - DDG is great now, and Firefox is now decent again after a while in the wilderness.

Firefox also has some neat extensions like Google Container [1] that sandboxes all google cookies so you can still login to Gmail etc, but the cookies are not available for tracking elsewhere (e.g. analytics). I've recommended this add-on a lot recently - I've got no connection to it, just a satisfied user.

1 - [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google- contai...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-container/)

<comment><USER8> I have a very serious question about privacy that I dont want to be judged for.

Should I switch if I do nothing wrong? I stopped downloading illegal videos and my porn is tame.

What bad things can google do to me if I'm a user that doesnt care about privacy for myself?

<comment><USER9> I think there are a ton of very well-spoken arguments for why everyone, yes even those who "do nothing wrong," should care about privacy, and I would encourage you to look at those. Mostly because the people who publicly speak about this are much more eloquent than I, and have thought much more on the topic.

That said, I think it boils down to this: we all want privacy, but digital privacy is a hard problem because we are not "wired" to understand it. Humans are not good at interacting with systems with perfect memory, huge computational power, and extremely insightful statistical modeling capabilities.

This affects us differently than interacting with a person. Now, a machine can categorize you automatically based on political beliefs, religious beliefs, friend networks, conversational style, etc. This can be used to target you for (arguably unethical) influence via surgically targeted propaganda, or to retroactively mark you as a dissident in a tyrannical regime based on a comment you made off-hand years before the regime took power.

Left unchecked, these invasive tracking systems could be used for a myriad of unethical purposes. And even if you "do nothing wrong," it's important to remember that in most legal systems, it's very difficult to lead a normal life and never break _any_ laws. Add to that the very, very long records these systems are capable of keeping on you, and I think it's clear why many people, myself included, wish to minimize our presence on platforms such as Google.

<comment><USER10> I think, especially with regards to your opening paragraph, that some references would've been great here. Anything in particular you could point to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using DuckDuckGo for more than a year now and barely use other search engines. It's the default on all the devices that I use.

I am so happy to be a user and be part of their growth as well.

The only thing that could improve it would be searches in other languages, I still don't get a good result when I search in other languages such as Russian, Persian, Arabic, etc..

Thank you DuckDuckGo for the great service <3

<comment><USER12> Same, very happy using DDG. I hope they're becoming profitable.

The one thing that I have to go back to Google for is when I want to search just one specific site (usually Stack Overflow, I guess). Google has the `site:example.com` feature. I don't think that's possible with DDG.

EDIT: Apparently it does work! Thanks, I'm pretty sure it didn't when I started using DDG. Maybe I'm just an idiot.

<comment><USER13> !so searches stack overflow, !im images, !g google, !w wikipedia etc. Take a look at bangs: [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang) there's thousands of them.

<comment><USER14> For me, bangs are the actual killer feature. Because when I set DDG as my default search engine in my browser, I get to use bangs at the address bar.

So for example rather than having to use Wikipedia's or Stack Overflow's search bar to find something, it's just Ctrl+t and "!w <term>" or "!gi <term>".

On Windows this is quite 50-50 -- you're likely holding the mouse anyway. On Unix machines with more keyboard-oriented UI, with say a tiling WM, things like bangs at browser address bar are a godsent. Of course it is nice on mobile too -- direct queries rather than hoppping around using clumsy touchscreen.

There are likely browser extensions for this though, but none of them set DDG as their default search engine -- so just doing that manually also gives you the bangs so in my book DDG wins here ;)

<comment><USER15> Firefox lets you set up search keywords, which to match the same thing. They used to be hidden away, but more recently they've got promoted a bit and are quite easy to set up.

<comment><USER16> Firefox search keywords are awesome! They can be much shorter than bangs because there's no need to avoid name conflicts with thousands of sites you aren't using. Plus, no exclamation mark, and you can use them for sites at work which aren't publicly visible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, I set Firefox to use DDG rather than Google as its default search engine a little while ago. And, reading this discussion, I realised that I'd like to see a complete list of "bang" searches DDG knows how to do.

Putting "duckduckgo bang" into DDG itself produces results that are ... not helpful. At any rate, nothing on the first page looks like it has any chance of answering the question.

But "!g duckduckgo bang" gives me [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang) as the first hit (this is a high-level description of the bang feature), followed by [https://duckduckgo.com/bang_lite.html](https://duckduckgo.com/bang_lite.html) (which has the actual complete list right there), followed by someone's list of the 25 allegedly-most-useful DDG bangs. Most of the rest of the first-page hits are also informative -- they're things like Reddit and HN discussions of the bang features.

I think this is actually the clearest case I've seen since switching to DDG where Google had demonstrably more useful results. Which is kinda ironic.

<comment> Const-me I've asked that query. DDG showed a gray panel at the very top of the resut page, saying "Search thousands of sites directly from DuckDuckGo. Learn more about !bangs (or submit a new one!)"

<comment><USER17> Huh. It's there for me too, now I actually look. I guess I've learned to ignore banner-shaped things at the top of web pages.

[EDITED to add:] Actually, I seem to get it for "duckduckgo bangs" and for "bang duckduckgo" but not for "duckduckgo bang". But I'm not sure it's consistent from one search to the next. Anyway, I think the reason I didn't see it before is that it wasn't there, not that I'm banner-blind.

<comment><USER18> I actually do get it for "duckduckgo bang". Maybe they're hotfixing it, or maybe some self-learning algorithm decided that this was close enough to "duckduckgo bangs"? Shooting in the dark here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish this had better branding. You can't say "just DuckDuckGo it". It has to have a single, or at most a double-syllable name that is easy to remember. Like Google or Bing.

But maybe it's part of some sort of strategy where in the early years the branding is weird in order to gain notoriety, and then change it when the timing is right.

I think right now this is probably slowing growth. I wonder how much would duck.com cost.

<comment><USER20> "Just duck it"?

<comment> wes-k "let me just duck that for you"

I'm in!

<comment><USER21> \- Can you duck it for me? \- Go duck yourself!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A really underrated feature of DuckDuckGo is the number/quality of search cards[0]. A lot of Google's search cards just kind of pull from whatever the top result is -- but DuckDuckGo's all have specific algorithms which makes them more predictable.

With Google, I have to take an extra second to think about _why_ they're showing an answer at the top. But if DuckDuckGo inlines an answer from StackOverflow, I know what the algorithm is --> Get top-rated StackOverflow result, get highest rated answer, inline the first X paragraphs, give a button to expand.

I still occasionally use !g for some searches if I strike out finding answers on DuckDuckGo, but I'm at the point where I generally prefer DuckDuckGo's answers. It's really tough to explain what's different about them, it feels like DuckDuckGo has a different "style" of search results or something. Even when I'm using Google, I usually have DuckDuckGo open next to it, because Google and DuckDuckGo feel like they cover different ground.

It's just that by default, the ground that DuckDuckGo is covering feels more relevant for just very quickly getting information and then getting out (especially with the better search cards).

[0]: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=javascript+char+codes&t=canonical&...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=javascript+char+codes&t=canonical&ia=answer&iax=answer)

<comment><USER23> > I know what the algorithm is --> Get top-rated StackOverflow result, get > highest rated answer, inline the first X paragraphs, give a button to > expand.

Google couldn't do that due to past court decisions about the maximum they can show being 'snippet length' without getting further into disputed copyright territory.

I expect they're working on AI tech which can read the whole web and directly answer your questions rather than having to use an extract of a webpage at all.

<comment><USER22> > I expect they're working on AI tech

But that's exactly the problem. Google already will try to auto-answer some questions that you ask. But the way they do it is completely opaque.

So I have no idea a) when they'll suggest an answer, and b) why they'll suggest an answer.

When I see an answer on DuckDuckGo, it's consistent. I immediately know how much trust to put into it. I don't have to look for the source and try to figure out where it sits on that scale. What's even better is that over time with DuckDuckGo, I get better at phrasing queries in a way that I know an instant answer will pop up. With Google, because they probably already use a bunch of weird AI in the background, I have never been able to predict whether or not a query will pop up a card, so I can't actually rely on getting an answer quickly in advance.

These are tiny things that shave time off of my searches. I often use DuckDuckGo's StackOverflow cards as language references -- to be able to say, "hey, jog my memory with a really quick example of this syntax."[0][1] I want to know details like the source of that answer before I search it.

AI tech will _never_ be as good as having a consistent algorithm for this -- because even if it got to be as good as a person going out and looking up the answers for me, a person is never going to be as good as a consistent algorithm. This is what people don't understand about natural language interpretation -- they think that there's some theoretical end-point where a computer will be as good at interpreting commands as a human is. But they forget that giving a human commands is _already_ slower and less reliable than giving a computer commands. Having a digital assistant be ridged and predictable is a strength, not a weakness.

[0]: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=js+send+a+network+request&t=canoni...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=js+send+a+network+request&t=canonical&ia=qa)

[1]: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=stackoverflow+linux+find+filename&...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=stackoverflow+linux+find+filename&t=canonical&ia=qa&iax=qa)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> DDG, if you're reading this:

I _want_ to make the switch.

But typing "!g" when a search does not return what I want is too clumsy. It requires 7 touch-events on mobile (including focus and space).

Please make that simpler, and I _will_ switch.

(My suggestion would be to have a "!g" button at the bottom of the search results. Perhaps make it optional, depending on user-settings; I don't mind a cookie for just that.)

<comment><USER25> Why make it Google-specific? What if DDG could suggest from a range of other search engines that might give you better results based on the nature of your query?

<comment><USER26> Having buttons for "try this search on [Google] [Yandex]" could be useful data to collect for improving the search results.

<comment><USER27> Yes, however Google's results would be different for everyone, based on what Google knows about you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine for almost a year now. I still need to resort to !g for about 1/3 of my queries, which is less than it used to be, so the quality is definitely improving.

One weird thing that I noticed is that every so often when I'm in a Google SERP (e.g. in a friend's phone) and I'm not fully satisfied with the results, I add in !g, only to realize that makes no sense. So I wonder if there's a subset of queries that DDG produces better results for, or if Google's search quality is declining.

If anyone from DDG is reading this: Please add the ability to (voluntarily) personalize search results via a cookie, just like you do for the interface theme. Something like "Programming Language: JavaScript". That way ambiguous queries (e.g "array reverse") can be associated with the specific context without having to type it every time (e.g. "array reverse js")

<comment><USER29> DDG cannot provide personalized results, because the service they are using to get results (from Bing) does not provide that feature.

<comment><USER28> That's not necessarily true. They could use a classifier to figure out the subject of the query (e.g. programming, cooking, travel) and then modify the query sent to Bing or whatever backend they use. Bonus points if they actually expose this on the UI, in a way that allows you to remove the personalization

"array reverse [JavaScript x]"

"camping sites [Near Lake Tahoe x]"

<comment><USER29> That's not personalization, that's query classification. Of course Bing already does this.

What is the personal, private information they could be monitoring for, that would allow them to rewrite better than Bing ?

<comment><USER28> They wouldn't be monitoring. You'd explicitly tell them what personalizations you want, and that would be stored in your machine via a cookie that you can delete at will (just like the color scheme/font)

It could either be a power user setting hidden away (like color scheme currently is), or it could be exposed on the SERP interface via a prompt: "Set JavaScript as your default programming language?" "Set vegan as your default diet?" etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I use DDG on my phone, still Google on my desktop.

While there are a lot of things to like about DDG, the searches are still pretty rubbish.

What's worst about DDG is that it is absolutely useless at location searches.

The one that really bugs me is "Nottingham Weather". Location set to UK, yet it returns the weather for White March, MD

Nottingham, population 700,000, but somehow a road in White Marsh, MD, America, population 9,513, is the result it shows.

If I'm searching a venue, pub, club, etc. with United Kingdom set, it usually returns US bars or venues with the same name.

Anything technical Google is also much better at filtering the dross and returning something meaningful, though that might be because it's learnt the programming languages, etc. I use.

<comment><USER31> The UK location came up first for me. Have you tried it recently?

<comment><USER30> Yes, do you have quick answers turned off?

<comment><USER31> I was just using the default mode. I've only used ddg once, so I should have no settings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Alright, I'm going to give it another go. Tried a few years back and ended up !g to the end of almost every search

I liked all the other functionality a lot, but the results themselves just didn't work for me.

<comment><USER33> Why does google allow !g? They are competitors after all?

Edit, ok, I see it redirects the user to Google.com

<comment><USER34> This isn't really any different than StartPage. What I find a good search-flow is that instead of doing a !g [search] I just use !sp [search], instead. That way you don't land on Google for the search at all but you get the entire list of results and StartPage has a better stance on privacy.

Regarding DDG on general, I've been using it exclusively as my first search provider and it has ramped in quality searches at a nice clip. I find myself bouncing through to the above search-flow less and less over time and I'm now in the process of deGoogling other things.

Keep donating to those privacy focused services where you can! DDG is a prime example of showing how these services can exist without an agenda, other than customer oriented features.

<comment><USER35> > Keep donating to those privacy focused services where you can!

As good a moment as any to publicly express gratitude to the donations DDG has provide to us (Terms of Service; Didn't Read) and several other privacy- focused projects, which has been of great help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I changed my default from Google Search to DDG in February. Surprised by how little I've noticed the change, after nearly 20 years using Google.

It feels more like the old Google that wasn't stuffed with ads, and I find it superior for programming queries (aside from Angular 2+ docs).

I still type in google.com and perform queries there a few times a week. I also turn to Google Images for copyleft photos, as DDG doesn't seem to support filtering by license yet.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm really amazed by the adoption of DDG by HN crowd. It's totally unusable for me. I can barely find stuff and I have to resort to google in 95% of cases. Do I have to relearn how to goo.. scratch that, duck duck go stuff?

<comment><USER38> _Do I have to relearn how to goo.._

Sort of, yes. See other comments around here as well. It's like Google without the backend which knows your habits and bubble and tries to be smart (and succeeds, often) and figures out what you want to search for despite you being a bit vague. DDG doesn't do that so, like in the old days, you have to be specific. Like if you talk to a person and ask a question: you also don't ask 'pasta?'. You ask 'where can I buy pasta' for instance.

<comment><USER39> I am with you on this. I find DDG completely unusable. The kinds of things that I search for are generally daily or weekly recent items and DDG never gets this stuff indexed quickly enough. Not even from the largest papers.

I am sure it's fine for more evergreen content like SO, but for current news it's awful.

<comment><USER38> _I am with you on this. I find DDG completely unusable_

Ha but my point was just to explain how it works. I've been using DDG for years and find it extremely usable :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think where Google really shines (in addition to its personalized results) is tackling _vague_ searches with ease.

The other day, I couldn't remember what the title of a food-y documentary show I had watched on Netflix was - so I googled "netflix food show asian host." It's the first result on Google and a direct link to its Netflix page (as opposed to a blog or something). On DuckDuckGo, it's not listed at all. There's definitely room for improvement.

While 20m searches per day is impressive in a vacuum, it's more or less a rounding error on Google's numbers.

</comment><comment><USER41> I've tried it, and wasn't pleased with search results. I'd consistently try vague searches, not find it on DDG, but it'd be the top result on Google.

I'll give it another swing, we need some viable alternatives.

<comment><USER42> [https://jivesearch.com/](https://jivesearch.com/). I run it and made an update this week that greatly improved our search results. 100% open source, has all the !bangs and tons of instant answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I've switched all my devices to ddg and Firefox. Automatically logging me into Chrome was just emotionally too much, even if it did not send a single extra bit to Google.

I miss the summary responses at the top of search results because they made Google much more of a reference. For example, defining words, quick view of Wikipedia results, etc.

I do still use maps, for now.

<comment><USER3> On the maps side of things, !osm searches open street map, which is not perfect but decent enough for many cases.

(Satellite data + reviews are lacking, but if you're like me and look up cities you see named in the news it gets the job done)

<comment><USER38> _it gets the job done_

and for usage like you mention it's also way faster than !gm

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think it's absolutely fascinating how different people's opinions of DDG are.

Personally I find it perfectly adequate and I literally never resort to searching on Google.

Lots of people in this thread agree, but lots of others totally disagree.

What is so different about different people's search habits that make it good enough for some but not for otherS?

<comment><USER40> +1. It's overall adequate for the average query but it falls completely flat too often where a similar Google search returns exactly what you're looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Still use google for "150 usd to cad" conversions. Use it for translation. Use it for relevant news. Use it for accurate localized searches. Use it for finding relevant sourcing of companies. Calling DuckDuckGo a replacement of google is no where near right. Bing is more relevant. And people seem to hate on Bing. The only reason people love DuckDuckGo is because of the perceived privacy. But the NSA blows that right away.

<comment><USER46> > 150 usd to cad

Works in DDG :-)

<comment><USER45> Never seen it work on mobile. Just tested it on Pc and it does work.

<comment><USER46> Works (for me) on mobile and I used it frequently in last couple of months. Firefox for android with ddg set as default search engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> My son saw me using DDG instead of Google, asked me about it and one week later I saw he had installed it on his laptop. He also tells everyone at his school about DDG.

</comment><comment><USER48> About six months ago, Google began presenting unsolvable Captchas on iOS/Safari while using a VPN (Private Internet Access). DDG just works.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'd tried DDG a while back and Google seemed massively better, but I've been more impressed lately.

The "bangs" feature never appealed to me much because I already have ~25 custom search engines in Firefox that I have keywords set to.

I've been trying Qwant (Lite) recently as a Google alternative, and it's pretty good, but I find myself searching for the things like "500 mxn in usd" or "30 days from 29 sep 2018, and Qwant doesn't answer these. It looks like DDG's "instant answers" does do this, so I'm going to try it again.

I also like the appearance options, such as setting your own font, so I can use Source Sans Pro, and that it shows a MapBox/OpenStreetMap map, but you can set it to open directions in Google (or Bing or OSM).

</comment><comment><USER50> Google claims 3.5 billion queries per day, so approaching 1% of that.

<comment><USER51> How can DDG make a living at 350 queries per second?

<comment><USER29> 260 qps to be exact. That is not negligible.

<comment><USER51> Well, it's pretty small. I'm just multiplying though here the CTR and the CPC and the QPS. I guess they can probably serve DDG from a handful of machines, since they don't own the search stack.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, but they pay for the web results

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I hope its another sign of rising privacy awareness ...

<comment><USER53> Probably a stupid question but am I correct in assuming that you might as well use Google as use ddg on chrome?

<comment><USER54> Only if you are logged into Chrome and sync your browsing history. Even then you still gain the non-privacy benefits like ddg not constructing filter bubbles (at least not to the extend of google)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> A combination of Google's results degrading so miserably in the last few years and DDG's improvement to image search results (more pages of them and better filtering options) led me to use it much more regularly.

At this point it's less that DDG has noticeably better results now but rather Google's results for enough queries are useless to me that some alternative may as well be used.

Edit: edited out digression on the quality of Google's results since it's hardly anything that hasn't been written about prior.

</comment><comment><USER56> 20 years ago Google Search was met with similar enthusiasm. I like DDG, but I don't see any reason why they would not pursue profits increase path once they become No 1 search engine.

<comment><USER57> I mean, it's not like "find a new favorite search engine every 15-20 years" is _that_ bad a situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> A while ago I switched to duckduckgo.com for a while until I applied for an ESTA visa and wasn't paying attention. I shouldn't have gone for the top result, I know... On my flight to the US my bank received already three fraudulent creditcard transactions. Banks from my country are very quick though and froze everything. However, it makes me realize personally that ranking algorithms are important, especially if you're in a hurry.

PS: The governmental site is now at rank 1 on duckduckgo.

<comment><USER59> Unfortunately, I would advise against not paying attention. The amount of scamming sites on Google's ad-based front-page is much larger than DDG.

There is really no place to run, the internet is a dangerous place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Explain? Graph looks like you could say that at any point in time

<comment><USER61> If you change it to a 7-day average instead of 365-day average you can see it clearer (click the "365" text box)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Except for searches on Google Scholar, ddg is my primary search engine. Very few times have I found that I get better results in Google.

</comment><comment><USER63> I've been using DDG for 8 years now based on Salvatore Sanfilippo's (of Redis fame) recommendation, but unlike him I hardly ever resort to !google

[https://usesthis.com/interviews/salvatore.sanfilippo/](https://usesthis.com/interviews/salvatore.sanfilippo/)

</comment><comment><USER64> I switched a week ago! But I must say I still have to hitup Google quite often, the search results are not as good.

</comment><comment><USER65> Since this is a DDG thread, I just wanna highlight a thing I did in vim recently

Using vim you may know you can define the `keywordprg` to use when pressing `K` on a word (in command mode). This is going to, if able, show you some form of documentation

Python is already using `pydoc` in this case.

I wanted something for the other instances, and I wanted to try getting DDG to be an ok solution, since it has that Q&A view.

Here's what I ended up with (for now, surely evolving -- not perfect)

note: you could put this in a ftdetect/javascript or whatever directory, but this is to be generalized for my case, and so I use an autocmd:

      autocmd Filetype * if &ft!="python" && &ft!="vim"
        \ | let &l:keywordprg=fnamemodify($MYVIMRC, ":h") . "/search.sh " . &l:filetype | endif

Sorta ugly but hey, I don't want to overwrite the keywordprg used by python and vim (if you're parsing a vim plugin you did not write, you may want to press K on a thing to understand what it is)

And in your your vimrc's root you'll need `search.sh` with these contents:

      # searches the filetype & keyword
      # in case of multiple filetypes (javascript.jsx) we just use the first

      firefox "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=$(echo $1| cut -d'.' -f1)+$2"

Cool, now press K on a thing and assuming you use firefox, hopefully the results are OK, heh. It could be improved.

As an example I just pressed `K` on the word `import` in a `javascript` file:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=javascript+import&atb=v132-3_j&ia=...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=javascript+import&atb=v132-3_j&ia=qa)

If you're using another browser, you could probably just use `x-www-browser` in place of firefox, to launch your default browser (in the case of linux)

</comment><comment><USER66> I love that they make their traffic numbers available. I have been using ddg and graphing/predicting the next days traffic since March here: [https://qunc.co/ddg](https://qunc.co/ddg).

Definitely a different trajectory since late summer.

</comment><comment> raffael-vogler I would like to switch but the search results for German language queries are too subpar as of now.

</comment><comment><USER67> Yesterday my dad mentioned off-hand that he had switched to duckduckgo. While they are still less than a rounding error of all search traffic (this site says Google itself has 3.5bn daily searches [https://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search- statistics/](https://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/)), it interested me to know that someone I know outside of the technosphere had learned about it and decided to change due to its privacy merits.

Also makes me wonder if the implication is that DDG may be poised to become the choice among older, conservative users and whether that will influence the way it markets itself.

</comment><comment><USER68> As a search alternative I've really enjoyed using searx [ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searx) ] instances for the past 6 months or so. Searx, like DDG, aggregates from search providers including Google, Bing, (Wikipedia, DDG, etc.)b ut you can customise it to control exactly which search providers it pulls from. And it has !shortcuts to quickly specify individual search providers, like !ddg for DDG. Source code available: [https://github.com/asciimoo/searx](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx)

</comment><comment><USER69> It's good for everyone that DDG usage is increasing, however, the lack of any kinks, sudden slope increases in the graph tells me weren't any particular set of events that caused people to switch. Rather, they got "fed up with google" at their own pace, and it wasn't any one particular thing that Google did that caused a mass exodus.

That's sad, really, because it means people as a large group don't care about any particular anti-privacy thing that Google did. I would be interesting to see in a few months whether the current Chrome fiasco will have had any effect, but I doubt it.

<comment><USER70> Don't think so. Lately Google has really messed with the trust of their Chrome & Chromium users.

I switched to Firefox + DDG recently, and I don't think I'm alone with this action. Switching takes only a few minutes and is really worth it IMHO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> DDG is the default search engine in Tor browser, which explains at least my personal DDG usage. Google is also becoming less likeable as a whole, and people in general are more concerned about their privacy than before.

</comment><comment><USER72> Wrote this before and writing again, but DDG is abysmal when it comes to non- English language searches, at least according to my experience with using it in Japanese. I've switched to StartPage in places where I can (unfortunately SP isn't in the default search engine list of many mobile browsers). Perhaps in English it's good enough to not prepend every search with !g, but it's still quite far from that point in JP. I keep wondering what kind of staffing they have for improving non-English language searches, if any at all.

</comment><comment><USER73> Is there a way to exclude results that don't actually contain all of the search terms? For example, results for +chicken +neutrino should not include this [1] because the word chicken isn't there. Quotes and plus signs both fail this everywhere I know of in 2018.

[1] [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/06/once-again- physicist...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/06/once-again-physicists- debunk-faster-light-neutrinos)

</comment><comment><USER74> I just encountered this as I was having issues with google results. I thought maybe something is wrong with google and people are switching yo duckduckgo.

Seriously I just searched something on google and second page of results are total crap. When I switch to duckduckgo with same keywords I get relevant results.

For the record, keyword I was searching for was "first man curiositystream", on Google I get a bunch of fake websites on second page of results, sited with lots of random words in description for seo hacks.

</comment><comment><USER75> I was using Duck Duck Go exclusively on all of my Macs, but I'm back to Google.

The reason for the change is that Duck Duck Go disabled its tracker blocking in Safari.

I read the explanation from DDG's web site, and it seemed to boil down to something like the new version of Safari would require people to opt-in to DDG's tracker blocking, and since that would be confusing for people, it's gone.

Well, anti-tracking is the whole reason people use DDG, both the search engine, and the privacy plug-in.

I hope someone else steps up to the plate.

<comment><USER76> >and since that would be confusing for people, it's gone.

Not sure what text you've read, but they've removed the feature because Safari 12 disables the entire extension when it discovers the API calls related to that function.

Furthermore tracker blocking is not part of the search engine and definitely not the reason why people switch to DDG, but the extension only. And it is redundant on browsers that offer it themselves or when other extensions include that function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I've been using DDG for a couple of years now and never feel like using any other search engine for "better" results.

Bangs are a really cool feature. [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

Not to mention instant answers. [https://duck.co/help/features/instant- answers-and-other-feat...](https://duck.co/help/features/instant-answers-and- other-features)

</comment><comment><USER78> Thanks for the reminder, just realized that iOS on Safari offers DuckDuckGo as a search engine option, and that !sp can be used to proxy Google searches via Safari.

</comment><comment><USER79> I decided to switch to firefox and DDG this week after seeing post on Chrome's new cookies policy. The post helped me be more aware and affected my choice.

</comment><comment><USER80> DDG works well for me in 90% of cases. Sometimes when I am searching an obscure technical issue I revert back to Google. However the biggest feature that is missing for me is custom date range searches. Google has a "1 year search" and a "custom range" search while DDG only goes up to 1 month. It would be helpful when I am searching for more current information but need a bigger range than 1 month.

</comment><comment><USER81> It's really the best display of what gifted modern developers can do with Perl and why Perl is actually still a uniquely powerful language.

<comment><USER78> Any reference on DDG's use of Perl, e.g. which Perl version/VM, libraries and frameworks they use?

Edit: 2009 architecture blog post, [https://web.archive.org/web/20130225033410/http://www.gabrie...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130225033410/http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/03/duck- duck-go-architecture.html)

<comment><USER82> A little searching and reading on /r/perl yielded this.[1]

1: [https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo/wiki/DuckDuckGoPerl](https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo/wiki/DuckDuckGoPerl)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I also suggest trying searx: [https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/](https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/)

You can use one of the online instances (with no guarantees on privacy), or just host it yourself. I set it up on my PC recently and it's "good enough" for me. Furthermore it likely has more features than DDG and startpage.

<comment><USER42> Another option to self host is [https://jivesearch.com/](https://jivesearch.com/). Has !bangs and instant answers, etc. I run it and am happy to answer any questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Serious question: why does everyone trust DuckDuckGo?

<comment><USER85> Trust is not a boolean (trust / no trust). We trust DDG more than Google and that's enough. Also, their official privacy policy says they do not track: [https://duckduckgo.com/privacy](https://duckduckgo.com/privacy) while Google admits permanent tracking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I've been slowly switching over. It's now the default search engine on both my phone, laptop, and desktop. There are still certain queries where I instinctively use google because I have a feeling they will be better for what I need.

I was looking to make the switch for a while but had trouble breaking the habit. I found slowly switching each device over was the best way.

</comment><comment><USER87> And people trust XYZ website because? Okay, whatever reasons you have, I deny. They want money, and they'll take it as it comes like anyone else. Quit being a sap.

But in any case it's really creepy how every time this website is mentioned its whole marketing department seems to show up. "I use DDG exclusively now..." Good for you.

<comment><USER88> I know why you're being downvoted, I am sure it's a pure conicidence this website is being shilled very hard in Reddit and HN over the past 24 hours :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, I posted this because I saw it on Reddit and realized nobody had posted it on HN yet. I wish I was getting paid to shill companies, that would be fantastic!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> If you have not used it and are a developer, you should check it out. It integrates stackoverflow answers which I have found to be very helpful. The results have been good enough about 90% of the time. In rare cases where they are not you can add a !g to your query and it will return the google results.

</comment><comment> pi-squared I'm happy to switch to DDG from Evil Google, but what stops them from becoming as "evil" as Google at some point? It's a for-profit organization relying on ads and sure - its selling point now is privacy but other than the word of the author, what else is there that at some point when it grows enough it won't start to slowly break that promise? Why is it not open source/federated? Why has it stopped the DuckDuckHack project (which was the bit that was open source)? This is probably the one search engine that has been able to gain a lot of privacy-centered/hacky individuals mostly (I think, may be wrong) through marketing/PR. If the causes are really that privacy centered, why not restructure it as non-profit + open source + decentralized? Not saying it's easy, but the marketing part (which I consider equally or even more difficult - see Bing with all MS budget and efforts), has already gathered a lot of interest for such a project.

<comment><USER42> I'm with you! I've been developing [https://jivesearch.com/](https://jivesearch.com/), which is basically an open source version of DDG. Has all the !bangs and tons of instant answers. The best part is that if you are paranoid about privacy or don't trust me for some reason you can leave me out of the equation and run it yourself. Would love your feedback on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> I use DDG as my daily driver.

Shamefully I don't make extensive use of the features though (e.g. bangs etc), mainly because I forget them. It's a great search engine though and just gets out of the way to the point where I don't really think about it.

</comment><comment><USER91> What is DDG's business model?

<comment><USER92> As we, on HN, were song for the ride to done extent I got the impression that Weinberg (sp?) was doing it for idealistic reasons rather than having a business model to start with.

Anyone know what headcount they're working with now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I love DDG! It's been my main search engine for some time now. But sometimes when I am searching for a solution for complex problems, I fall back to google by using `g!` because that, time and again, seems to take me to the answers faster.

</comment><comment><USER94> I sense this is a general trend away from big tech and back towards the earlier days of a less centrally driven internet.

It's kind of a nice reminder of how competitive and dynamic the internet really is. I hope it can stay that way with Net Neutrality.

</comment><comment><USER95> The strength of privacy on DDG is also its weakness. Since everyone gets the same results on all searches, there is no localization to any of it. I gave it a try earlier this year but just couldn't make it work and switched back to Google.

<comment><USER96> I found that setting the country in the top left corner helps a lot.

<comment><USER95> I didn't realize there was a setting like that, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Why not StartPage?

<comment><USER98> StartPage is barebones Google without the tracking.

<comment><USER99> DDG is barebones Bing without the tracking.

<comment><USER100> I think a lot of the people here raving about how great duckduckgo is do not understand that it's just a layer on top of Bing results. You could run Bing (or Google for that matter) in an incognito window and get the same effect.

What I'd like to see is an ad-free search engine that is open-source or subscription-based. DDG doesn't solve any of the fundamental problems with the search ecosystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> "DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources,[45] including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); and others.[3][45][46] It also uses data from crowdsourced sites, including Wikipedia, to populate "Zero-click Info" boxes – grey boxes above the results that display topic summaries and related topics.[10]"

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Overview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Overview) \- [https://duck.co/help/results/sources](https://duck.co/help/results/sources)

<comment><USER99> From your link:

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

So in other words all the traditional link results are from Bing and Yahoo. The other 400 sources and their own crawler are only for things like Instant Answer boxes at the top (which are great btw).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> The chart should either have a title with "Number of Direct Queries" and Y-axis numbers such as "20M", or keep the title "Direct Queries in Millions" and have Y-axis numbers simply be "20".

</comment><comment><USER102> I've heard the same complaint about the results a lot, but I've never understood it. I have never noticed much of a difference. Does anyone have concrete examples of search queries that Google returns more accurate results for?

</comment><comment><USER103> I use DDG almost exclusively now. I do a lot of search and find on various tech and political topics and It has served me well.

However, I wish the search engine space evolves into a more diverse set of competing companies.

</comment><comment><USER104> I've used Google to search for as far as I can remember, but recently switched to DuckDuckGo completely. Sorry, but the politicization of Google and the privacy issues are too much to ignore anymore.

</comment><comment><USER105> The bangs I use most often are !az and !w

For a long time I used !img a lot, but they've incorporated native image search so I use it less.

I never used !g much, (not counting !img), but I can't remember the last time I used it.

</comment><comment><USER106> Aww this is such great news. Didn't know how I missed it. Really nice to see privacy being relevant to more people. Been using since 2016 and the results have improved tremendously!

</comment><comment><USER107> I too made a switch a week ago to Firefox + DDG, working well so far.

</comment><comment><USER108> I have been using ddg for a long time and I can't be happier with it, at first I used !g a lot but now I search it all on ddg with the ocassional visit to startpage.

</comment><comment><USER109> Google is becoming very much anti-anonymous. Its not possible to create gmail account anymore without phone number. Wish there is something like DDG for gmail.

</comment><comment><USER110> Cool. I am rooting for them to become even more successful.

</comment><comment><USER111> I was using DuckDuckGo for a day or two due to Google latency issues. I'm would check again in a couple days to make sure it's permanent growth.

</comment><comment><USER112> Curious how much data they are covering and what kind of stack is powering DuckDuckGo? Anyone knows in-depth except highscalability article.

<comment><USER99> None, they get all their results from Bing. Stack is Perl though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> I'd use it daily if there wasn't such a lag after each query. Google works instantly ddg takes about 2 seconds to return results

</comment><comment><USER114> I've been using DuckDuckGo for almost a year now and for most of the cases, it's almost as good as google

</comment><comment><USER115> I like how the stats are numbers and just that.

No creepy segmentation or deep analysis of the privacy-invading kind like Google and Facebook.

Go DDG!

</comment><comment><USER116> Inspires hope :) I realize I'm unsure what DDGs main source of income is? Still ads but not personalized?

<comment><USER24> At least they seem to have more monetization options than Wikipedia, which has no ads at all.

Also, ads related to the current query can be considered personalized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> just installed it on firefox. searched for myself, not really impressed with relevancy of the results but it did surface pages that I had not seen on first two pages of google. so im guessing its not really a replacement to google but a decent alternative

</comment><comment><USER118> It would probably explode more if they would add the ability to search within the past year.

</comment><comment><USER119> I had no idea that DDG was Perl based. This gives me a whole new level of respect for DDG.

</comment><comment><USER120> Yeah, I would use it if they change their name. IT feels like kid came up with it.

<comment><USER121> > I would use it if they change their name. Sure, the name might not be the > catchiest one, but shouldn't be things like ethics, usability/functionality > and so on way above this? Dropping something because it has a bad name seems > odd. Even if it has a ""bad"" name, people would come up with a catchy > phrase for it sooner or later. It just has to get rolling - for which the > name might be contra productive, that's right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER122> I like how none of the events called out on the chart had any noticeable effect.

</comment><comment><USER123> DDG has been waiting for this moment for quite a long time.

</comment><comment><USER124> When can I get my privacy first @duckduckgo email address?

<comment><USER125> At protonmail.com

At least, DDG themselves recommend it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> Love it. It's on all my devices.

</comment><comment><USER127> Nowhere on the page does it say "exploding", OP is exaggerating what is roughly linear growth. I think the title should be edited.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying this is not worth posting or should be taken down, just "exploding" does not even remotely describe DDG's traffic. The post was interesting, only OP's fabricated title is inaccurate.

Edit 2: Several comments mention the graph does show daily searches, and is therefore showing exponential growth. My reason for thinking it's cumulative and not daily, is because it says below that the daily record is 29 million searches and that the cumulative number is 22.569 billion. When hovering over the last value in the graph, it shows 22.2 billion.

For the record, the current title is "DuckDuckGo Usage is exploding right now".

<comment><USER128> +1

The submitted title "DuckDuckGo Usage is exploding right now" is editorializing and is against the HN site guidelines. It should be changed to the actual page title, "DuckDuckGo Traffic".

ETA: I emailed the mods.

<comment><AUTHOR> Woops.

<comment><USER128> Heh. I'm rooting for DDG, too. Let's just fix, forget, and move on. :)

<comment><USER129> Done! All's well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER130> I really want to love DuckDuckGo, but for programming things I search for the results are simply to weak.

<comment><USER131> I am inclined to agree. I've tried DDG a few times for programming stuff and the results were less satisfactory compared to Google. And actually in general, when I do searches with abstract keywords, Google gets the meaning far better than DDG.

For example, earlier today I was thinking about the mess that is USB-C standards. I decided to search for Reddit articles through the search phrase 'USB C mess site:reddit.com'.

On Google all of the first 10 results were exactly what I want. But on Duckduckgo, only the second and fifth results out of the first 10 were what I want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> I prefer qwant

</comment><comment><USER88> Search "go vs rust" and set the filter to the "past month" in both Google and DuckDuckGo. I can go on and on, but this is just a simple evidence of how inferior DuckDuckGo is. Also DuckDuckGo is incapable of indexing client-side rendered HTML which has become increasingly important over the past few years.

EDIT: I would like to hear any logical response from those who downvote me

<comment><USER133> you actually do not provide evidence for this. Mainly because google's searching is subjective. Your result for "go vs rust" might be entirely different from mine on google. mind you i don't actively use DDG, but them being privacy first, i assume they do not apply your prefence to search results this way.

Duckduckgo seems very useful to getting out of the specific bubble google has created for in relation to your search history.

(ps, i did not downvote you btw).

<comment><USER88> >you actually do not provide evidence for this

I did, I listed 1 big evidence (the lack of indexing client-side rendered HTML), and also a simple example "rust vs go" that came to my mind. Take another example that I just tried, search "classical music only" in both engines and see the difference, this is a very popular youtube channel and has a website but nothing is shown in DDG for me.

As much as I want to join you guys against the big fat lazy monopolist called Google, I can't just make myself blind and claim that DDG is anywhere near to Google when it comes to accuracy or sophistication. If you really appreciate privacy, why not try something like Startpage instead of hyping another for- profit company?

<comment><USER82> > I can't just make myself blind and claim that DDG is anywhere near to Google > when it comes to accuracy or sophistication.

You don't have to, that's what !g is for. I start all my searched at DDG, and if I'm not seeing the results I want, I use !g. Somewhere around 80%-90% never require a redirect to Google for additional results, and that's a a number I can live with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER134> What is DDG's business model?

<comment><USER70> Advertising (MS Bing + Yahoo) and affiliate-linking (Amazon): [https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and- affiliates](https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates)

I hope DDG becomes smarter with AI-assisted searching, eg. by doing semantic sentence encoded searching, like Google Books showed a while back: [https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=best%20search%2...](https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=best%20search%20engines&)

</comment></comment><comment><USER135> ironically instead of just giving me a link, now dyckduckgo results list will track me to known which link I clicked.

this is the beginning of the end for duckduckgo :(

</comment><comment><USER136> hi google!</comment>


Ask YC:  Anyone know of a web site testing service where you can see a video of the user (not just a screencast)? - <AUTHOR>

Something like that would be quite useful to see how much confusion various parts of your site cause.  It would be even better if the user is encouraged to think out loud while using your service.<p>Also, I suspect many people would be willing to provide the video provided that they are paid something reasonable. <comment><USER2> you could try out robotreplay and 'watch' how they use your site</comment>


UberPITCH in Toronto - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.uber.com/canada/en/toronto-your-big-break-is-arriving-now-with-uberpitch/ <comment><USER2> Same in Montréal... [https://newsroom.uber.com/canada/en/uberpitch/](https://newsroom.uber.com/canada/en/uberpitch/)

<comment><USER3> And Vancouver, and Calgary. I assume it's across Canada.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't include Toronto in the original title. Seems a mod added it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is anyone else tired of these silly novelty Uber tiers?

<comment><USER5> They probably have the effect of keeping other silly delivery ideas from launching. That's a good thing

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They've done this concept in Miami before. Unfortunately they don't publicize them with enough advance notice to get good size crowds (what normal person reads the uber blog regularly?)</comment>


Photoshop Facebook Template - <AUTHOR> http://stuartkent.co.nz/faceplate/# Just pushed out this easy to use template for creating facebook page designs <comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback would be appreciated, cheers :)</comment>


Introducing our "Tech President 2012" coverage - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/introducing-our-tech-president-2012-coverage.ars <comment><USER2> Must as I love ars, given that techPresident is an established brand (strike that: _the_ established brand) for this kind of thing, I'm trying to imagine the oversight that led to the same phrase being used for their coverage.

<http://techpresident.com/></comment>


Three Guys Trying to Bring Some Silicon Valley Mojo to Boston and New York - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2011/02/24/the-changing-face-of-boston-vc-a-chat-with-nextview-ventures%E2%80%99-david-beisel/

<comment><USER2> Great Article - Having grown up in the Boston area, I love the risk Beisel is taking to make moves on the east coast. Boston has the angels and VC's, hosts many aspiring entrepreneurs, but lacks the environment that really supports the startup stage. It's easy to get the support once you have 1M+ in sales but until then you are practically on your own. I'm sure its like this in most cities but the atmosphere Silicon Valley has developed has proved that there is a better way and I believe most investors willing to take the risk to change that will be greatly rewarded. Cheers to Beisel! Maybe someone can convince him to experiment with a super early stage fund too...</comment>


WHY AMERICA NEEDS A STOCK-MARKET CRASH - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/10/why-america-could-use-a-stock-market-crash.html

<comment><USER2> The market as a stabilizing influence on politics has a noble history going back to at least the Glorious Revolution in England, which was bloodless largely because the bond markets wouldn't fund a war.</comment>


A Short History of Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> http://www.atalasoft.com/cs/blogs/rickm/archive/2009/06/11/a-short-history-of-programming-languages-generations.aspx Programming languages are often spoken of in terms of their level of abstraction.  To this end there is a somewhat official classification system.  In said system, each generation in the hierarchy represents another level of abstraction away from the machine hardware. <comment><USER2> Well researched article. I love the corresponding and very appropriate quotations for each generation of programming language.</comment>


Sparks fly on Wall Street over Tesla's current valuation - noir-york https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/15/tesla-electric-cars-sparks-fly-wall-street-valuation <comment><AUTHOR> Why would a company that a lot of investors trust change/reelect directors every year if it's working well?

For Uber, it makes more sense, as the trust in the CEO has gone.</comment>


How a Tourist Can Help you with Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/07/12/how-a-tourist-can-help-you-with-your-startup/

<comment><USER2> Nice analogy</comment>


MDP: Minimum Delightful Product - <AUTHOR> http://blog.invantory.com/2012/02/mdp-minimum-delightful-product.html

<comment><USER2> We've discussed this before here, often.

A product can be _unbelievably crappy_ as long as it solves a real pain point. If your product makes or saves people money, if it saves them an arduous chore, if it gets them laid, then your product can be actively hostile to the user and still succeed. There's nothing "delightful" about the vast majority of consumer products or services.

It's when your benefits are less clear that interface becomes important. Invantory falls firmly into this latter category - their own homepage blurb essentially describes them as "a nicer Craigslist". Offering a nicer version of a commodity is potentially very lucrative, as Apple and Starbucks shareholders will testify, but it's inherently more difficult to bootstrap. The incumbent players have enough resources to crush you like a bug, so you're gambling that they're too dumb or too slow. That's a big gamble, certainly a bigger one than I'd be prepared to take on a product that's hugely dependent on network effects.

<comment><USER3> I think it is about semantics and perspective, but a delighted user is someone that just saved money, or saved from an arduous chore, or got laid. Delight is the sensation derived from the usage of the product, not from any particular feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this post is confusing two stages of development. I would argue that MDP is a step _beyond_ and MVP.

MVP is not about marketing, word of mouth, promotion (although it's always welcome). MVP is about building the absolute minimum you can test against your target market to validate your assumptions.

I just finished a Lean Startup Machine weekend. You know what our team's MVP was? Us walking the streets of London, approaching our target market, explaining our offering and completing the service we were promoting (it wasn't a virtual goods or saas obviously!).

That's right, we didn't write one line of code! But we went through the exact motions that we would have done if a website existed i.e. attracting interest, taking details, fulfilling the service and receiving payment.

</comment><comment><USER5> An oft overlooked point of MVP / lean methodology is that companies should try to minimize time through the build -> measure -> learn loop. Spending too much time on the build phase (to get impecable design) can delay critical learning.

</comment><comment><USER6> The central point is that "viable" doesn't really apply to a huge class of products and things. There are times when a user wants a problem solved, but in other instances they are looking to add a little something inessential but pleasant/fun/nice/funny/beautiful/lovely to their life, even just a moment to connect thoughts or with other people, not because of a job offer or order pizza, but to add variety to life. In the morning do you just cover up, dress appropriately or love fashion? There are businesses placed at many points in Maslow's hierarchy. Software is going to be completely omnipresent and there will be fewer exciting startups tackling problems at the bottom of the pyramid. Look at the facebook valuation. For that business, they will have needed an MDP. Talking about minimum viability of social networking software is a muddled discussion. That is why I like the idea of MDP. Nice observation.</comment>


Tapjoy Puts up $5M to Help App Developers Port to Android - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20110616/tapjoy-puts-up-5m-to-help-app-developers-port-to-android/

<comment><AUTHOR> "Tapjoy said last month that a survey of about 500 of its developers found 54 percent of them have seen revenue decreases following Apple's effective ban on pay-per-install."</comment>


Lift iOS Install: How'd They Do It? - <AUTHOR>

For any of you who have received an invite to Lift on iOS, how do they do the install of the application from the web? <comment><USER2> I don't have an invite to Lift, but a lot of developers use TestFlight as a way to install applications over the web to testers. You sign up with TestFlight through a link the developer sends you, and you install a profile that lets your device install apps from that developer. You can then install the app from over the web. I've used several apps that way, it's a very handy little tool.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't have lift either, but I use <http://www.hockeyapp.net/> to deploy provisional apps via a direct install to iOS</comment>


Show HN: High memory Droplets - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/#memory <comment><USER2> I don't think this fits the 'Show HN' category. "Show HN is a way to share something that you've made on Hacker News." ([https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html))</comment>


Women view professional advancement equally attainable, but less desirable [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/09/15/1502567112.full.pdf <comment><USER2> So can this be used as an argument against the idea that women hold fewer positions of power (and in context of HN, fewer tech positions) not because of institutional/societal sexism, but because they just don't desire them?

I don't think many of the there-needs-to-be-more-diversity crowd disagree with that. Their position is more nuanced than that, and of course, to be fair, the we-can't-make-things-have-diversity crowd is unfairly pigeonholed as being shut-up-women.

But in my reading of the paper's conclusion, women have less desire for promotions and power, but it's because they see those things as causing them strife. The we-need-more-diversity crowd believes that having more women in power is one way of alleviating a positive feedback loop.

To put it another way, here's another study that could be done: Women view walking alone at night equally attainable, but less desirable.

edit: corrected mistake of "negative feedback loop" to "positive" via lexcorvus: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10272694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10272694)

<comment><USER3> As someone in the "we need more diversity crowd" I think the article is consistent with that position. At the end of the day, even if you can make it in an environment where you don't fit in, there is a level of pain and frustration that comes with that.

Anecdote: My wife and I have similar careers in the same field. We're not the world's most involved parents, but I go through life with people telling me I'm an awesome dad because I change diapers and my wife goes through life with nursery school teachers wondering why she didn't dress our daughter up as a pirate when they gave us notice it was pirate day two whole days in advance. Every time a grandparent notes that it's a shame she comes home so late (while never mentioning how late I come home) is another drop in the "is it even fucking worth it?" bucket.

But it would be erroneous to conclude that she "just wants it less" than I do. Rather, the social cost of her getting it is higher than it is for me.

<comment><USER4> Stop seeking social approval so much and do what you think is the best for you and your kids.

You are living a good life if your only problem is "someone wondering why you are bad parent". Seems a little narcissistic to think that people are analyzing/judging you so much. People are self obsessed, you can almost always be sure that they are thinking about themselves.

Also, interesting that people invent strange/vague/meaningless phrases like "social cost" to justify imagined slights against them.

You are product of society, you are "the society". Your thoughts/actions make up society. You cannot be in conflict with it. There is no evil society out there judging and analyzing you every move.

<comment><USER5> You know it's pretty childish to dismiss someone's experience right? He didn't say he was seeking approval, he said that when he does the most minor childcare thing he gets praise, while when neither he nor his wife do some completely asinine thing (dressing their daughter as a pirate) his wife (not him) catches flack from the teachers for not being "more involved". Dismissing this as "narcissistic" is completely misreading his comment.

<comment><USER4> >He didn't say he was seeking approval

>>is another drop in the "is it even fucking worth it?" bucket

I read that as seeking approval. Is it not?

What does "social cost getting higher" mean to someone not seeking approval?

He even invented a term for it. "social cost[1]" goes higher when someone judges you negatively and goes lower when someone commends your actions, like a carefully managed bank account.

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

<comment><USER6> When it's not happening to you it's very easy to tell someone else that getting told every day they are a bad parent is no big deal and they should ignore it.

But when it is happening to you, no matter how hard you try, it eventually gets to you. At least a little bit.

People aren't robots. It's hard work to ignore these things. And, in the case under discussion, it's work that falls more heavily on moms than dads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not sure where my Dad appropriated / paraphrased this saying before passing it along to me, but I think it relates to the "attitude" component with respect to career success and priorities in life:

"The C students run the world because the A students don't want the hassle."

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of the SMPY results: even extremely capable women don't desire professional advancement as much as their male counterparts but value other things like a work-life balance [http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/gender- differences-in-p...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/gender-differences- in-preferences.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> To me the most interesting part of this study is the equality of potential advancement. I cannot imagine that 10 years ago that would have been the case and goes to show some serious progress. Also, I appreciate the fact that this study approaches the discussion from an opportunity perspective. Taking a end- result perspective when discussing equality generally leads to false theses and confusion.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bigger, better, faster, more!

Some men also are not so motivated by this either.

I suppose it's slightly interesting that slightly more women than men say this. Maybe not though.

<comment><USER11> All of these come down to 200M anecdotes really, partially because we are talking about preferences and comfort levels.

In talking with the women around me, most don't really like working with men in the first place, they are more comfortable working with other women. I have male friends that are nurses, they miss working with other men, and kind of avoid working with women. In talk with my wife and her married friends, most of the wives would prefer their husbands not work with other women (and these women trust their husbands).

Now throw in the rest of the work and society. I just got done with sexual harassment training. To be fair, most of the stuff is pretty obvious and straight forward. But the undertone is "everything will be used against you when dealing with the opposite sex"; best bet is to avoid them as best you can, don't speak, don't look them in the eye, and no matter what, don't be alone with them.

TL:DR: In western society, I just don't think we are comfortable with the sexes working together, and I don't know how to fix it. I'm hoping I'm wrong on this.

<comment><USER12> I work in a lab which has approximately a 50/50 gender split. I personally have never felt uncomfortable with or been confused about working with people of the opposite sex, and I haven't heard any negative stories regarding inter- sex conflict or awkwardness from colleagues. As long as everyone acts like a professional, which isn't really that difficult, then I don't foresee many problems arising in a mixed gender workplace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even so, it can still be the result of life-long social conditioning, which determines what you want, part of which is gender role conditioning.

I think that playing with dolls is attainable (I could just go out and get me some), but undesirable for me. It has nothing to do with sex role stereotyping from a young age, honest. It's just a strictly personal preference, nothing more.

<comment><USER14> > Even so, it can still be the result of life-long social conditioning, which > determines what you want, part of which is gender role conditioning.

So what? Why is it important to know what force (cultural, biological, gravitational..) in the universe determines what you want? Why should the society be defined by some other metric than preference of its individuals? AFAICT, the article tries to measure the preference, as precisely as possible.

It strikes to me as unfair to the people expressing those preferences to say "your preferences are influenced by culture and therefore less valid". (If they are not less valid, what is the problem?)

<comment><USER13> > _So what? Why is it important to know what force (cultural, biological, > gravitational..) in the universe determines what you want?_

Because, for instance, you're a social sciences researcher and it's your job to figure it out and stick it in a paper.

We also want to avoid jumping to some bad conclusions like "female humans naturally lack ambition, and that's why they are under-represented in the top echelons of organizations".

The authors of the paper touch on this in the Discussion:

> _Identifying the origin of the differences between men's and women's > professional aspirations is beyond the scope of the current research. Our > findings may be the result of biological gender differences, learned > preferences that have developed in response to cultural norms and gender- > based discrimination, or both._

<comment><USER14> Maybe I misunderstand you, but:

> We also want to avoid jumping to some bad conclusions like "female humans > naturally lack ambition"

Why is it a bad conclusion? Maybe it's the truth (for arguably narrow definition of ambition). You don't want to get _wrong_ conclusions from the research (whether you jump to them or not), but you cannot pick in advance which conclusion is morally good or bad. Preferences simply are somehow.

I actually think we should consider psychological research into group differences to be unscientific, unless it is firmly based on biology. Ideally, these studies should be based on DNA rather than gender or race or religion or ethnicity.

You can research preferences of people if you need to know them, but you shouldn't correlate them to some social group. I don't think society needs that kind of results apart from dinner conversations, because these results cannot inform the policy, which should be to respect everybody's preferences equally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This might be a chicken/egg problem, where society doesn't expect women to gain high professional positions and so they feel less driven to achieve it.

<comment><USER16> No. It's for the fact that in order to climb the corporate ladder, one must sacrifice "empathy-potential" because one becomes conditioned to hypercompetitive behavior. Think of this as "learned winning"; it's cheaper to win because one is in "win-mode" than to actually always win through exhaustion of relevant skill (so, too, winning by "luck" or succeeding through luck, is better than succeeding through hard work — so being conditioned to a hypercompetitive attitude is like being on "luck mode" because others who are not in that attitudinal predisposition will essentially fail to maximize their relevant skills whereas someone in "win-mode" will already be in a conditioned skill-optimal (total maximalization) state.). The asymmetry here is that if you stress yourself out well before your menopausal stage, now you've risked it all only to sacrifice yourself — and you lose out on having a healthy body to support childbirth physiologically and psychologically.

Men do not have the opportunity to give birth, so they can weigh in more heavily on self-sacrifice without the contingency that their body could be used as a medium for life-production.

Basically, men are more like prototypal inheritance whereas women are more like classical inheritance, or at least we like to think that men are more "existential" while women are conservative in their "recreate the self".

Most men advance in careers that are inherently lethal; so naturally women are going to be less driven to advance themselves in careers that compromise their total contract not only as financial agents but as well as genetic agents.

<comment><USER17> Not sure I follow. If I die in war at 18 as a male, I can't pass on my genes either.

In addition, there's nothing stopping a successful female from having a child and handing it over to a team of nannies immediately upon birth like successful men do.

<comment><USER18> > Not sure I follow. If I die in war at 18 as a male, I can't pass on my genes > either.

Men, specially young men, are genetically programmed to not think about that. A typical 18 year old that goes to war does not think he's going to die. He thinks he's going to come back as a war hero and enjoy the... shall we say "admiration" of all his dead comrades' girlfriends.

> In addition, there's nothing stopping a successful female from having a > child and handing it over to a team of nannies immediately upon birth like > successful men do.

Successful men can sire offspring in 15 minutes (or less, but there's already a pill for that) and delegate. Successful women have to fight their body for at least six months in order to hold on to their position during pregnancy. Then comes the postpartum depression and a whole other array of nasties.

So, not the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm](http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm)

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop- blaming-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-blaming-me/)

The gender equality and feminism movement has been hijacked by corporate interests! The question is if ANYONE of any gender should bust their butt for someone else's company.

And if you really want to achieve gender equality at all costs, start with making the primary care provider for kids 50/50 men/women. Right now women are the ones expected to care for children which is where most of the salary inequality comes from!

</comment><comment><USER20> When will people understand that traditional gender roles were a part of human evolution? e.g. societies and people that didn't adopt them simply went extinct under the stress to survive and reproduce that they couldn't compete. The fact that we are in a transition from them because of modern tech shouldn't let us be ignorant of the past and what the past shaped us into our humanity.

<comment><USER21> The costs and benefits of things change over time and hence the stable outcomes can change a lot over time. It's only in the last few 100 years that anything resembling a "job" where you sit at a desk all day existed. 1000s of year so of human evolution is people moving around, people who didn't "simply went extinct under the stress to survive and reproduce that they couldn't compete". Obviously the claim that this means we can't modify this at all is completely ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So much better than the title of an article in a recent Time magazine issue: "Ambition is not working for women" Lame.

</comment><comment><USER23> tl;dr women are different than men.

<comment><USER24> Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN.

<comment><USER25> I cannot vote this up enough. There is no real evidence of significant differences between the sexes other than men are often physically bigger. Numerous studies have debunked garbage science about brain differences and whatnot because they are cultural not biological. Culturally, women are treated, raised and nurtured differently. Culture can, and does, change though so it cannot be really considered a persistent 'difference' when during my own brief lifetime things have changed dramatically in gender relations.

<comment><USER26> > There is no real evidence of significant differences between the sexes other > than men are often physically bigger

That's straight up false. Just because evidence does not accord with your ideology, does not mean it is de facto incorrect.

There are numerous biological differences between the genders, not least due to differing levels of sex hormones. There have been studies done on on pre and post-op transsexuals that support this.

One example I've seen here on the front page in the last few weeks: [http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is- the-...](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-oculus- rift-sexist.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Evaluate the veracity:

Poor people view professional advancement as unequally attainable, but more desirable.

</comment><comment><USER28> Fascinating results, I would only caution people before taking this article's results to apply to "all" women. IME, approximately 10% of women desire employment success way more than the others.

<comment><USER28> So what on Earth is objectionable in my comment? I speak from a moderate viewpoint, to take the study seriously, but not apply it blindly, apply my own small amount of experience, and get downvoted to -4?

Did this offend anyone? Please explain how. Otherwise I would perceive the downvotes to be the work of trolls.

<comment><USER29> Might be this:

> IME, approximately 10% . . .

How is this substantive?

<comment><USER28> Ah you're right. Thanks. That was driving me crazy. I should have learned by reading substantive comments found elsewhere. This one below, for example, struck me as exceptionally substantive and now I can see why it hasn't been voted below zero:

"I don't want to show up to work sweaty. And I want the utility of a vehicle if my plans change. So I'll drive regardless."

<comment><USER29> I didn't downvote you. You asked.

Don't be so worried about internet points.

BTW, that comment netted several magical internet points for whatever reason.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>