Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyway - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/story/nothing-can-stop-google-duckduckgo-is-trying-anyway-718eb7391423 <comment><USER2> Back in the day, before I just defaulted to using Google, I remember checking multiple search engines to find the thing I was looking for. You'd check Yahoo/Google/Lycos, try a couple of different phrasings, and then if that didn't work try searching on a few other search engines. Somewhere along the way, Google had won me over, because I almost always found my answer. I had stopped even considering other search engines.

Now that I'm on DDG, I find that I'm following a similar pattern of searching DDG, then searching google, and I'm finding that most of my searches work great on DDG. What's surprising to me is that when I move on to using Google, I'm considering widening my search even beyond DDG and Google. It feels like, by considering different search options, I'm going back to how I used to explore the internet, rather than defaulting to taking Google's results as truth.

And now, seeing a variety of options from DDG, I am surprised at how irrelevant some of the links are on Google some times. It feels like when I search on Google, Google is telling me 'No no, you don't care about JsonAPI parsing performance, you care about parsing json, because we know best'.

I'm glad that DDG is alive and doing well. I love using it and I don't notice any difference for most queries, and falling back to google hasn't really been as painful as I thought it would be.

<comment><USER3> I think it's very much search topic related:

* DDG is atrocious for anything other than English * Programing/IT searches often yield garbage on DDG while on Google a good result is within the first 3.

I have it as my default now too, but "!g" is a constant companion.

===

Regarding Google and Amazon being unstoppable... it seemed the same once for Microsoft.

Once they get too big/powerful (which they arguably already are), they could be broken up or severely hamstrung by legislation.

They can also start to stagnate and be out-done by new competition based on new technologies.

All of those seem unlikely right now, but 10 years can change a lot.

Of course both Google and Amazon both enjoy large network effects and are pretty capital intensive. Which is typical for mono/oligopolies.

<comment><USER4> > "!g" is a constant companion.

May I recommend an alternative bang? "!s" (for startpage.com) is my companion.

It doesn't always work perfectly, but in theory [0] Startpage offers the same (edit: non-bubbled[1]) results as big G, while retaining your privacy.

!s usually works for me. I always use !s before begrudgingly doing a !g. I have no other affiliation to Startpage or DDG. And to be fair, I think we have to simply accept Startpage's assertion that they preserve your privacy.

[0] [https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...](https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/158/0/what- is-the-relationship-between-startpagecom-and-google) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble)

<comment> eipi-1 When I decided to move away from Google Search I went with DDG for some time, since it seemed to be the more independent / open approach, compared to Startpage. I found myself switching back to Google way to often, for either performance and / or relevance of results. I then switched to Startpage and used it as primary search for well over a year - only switching back to google for image search. I still feel like DDG would be the philosophical superior option and with !s in mind I will give it another try, to see how far it came.

I'd be interested in more concrete reasons to use DDG over Startpage. First thing that comes to my mind is that with Startpage, Google still "reads" your search queries, which might leak info. What else?

<comment><USER4> Upsides:

1) I came to like DDG's grouping of results by site. See a result and think that page's site might have more results? Click the favicon.

2) DDG is faster now than it was a few years ago. (At least it seems that way, for me and the things I typically search for).

3) Extensive bang shortcuts: [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

4) Different, non-personalized search bubble. I like the idea of non- monocultures, which I guess extends to my search results.

Downsides:

-1) Some time ago DDG changed to requiring the same stupid quoting behavior Big G began mandating for required search terms, replacing +.

<comment><USER5> Upsides

5) might come in handy, if you're a keyboard person: you can use cursor down/up to scroll through the search results, and Return to select (go to) one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use and like DDG but I can't believe this article didn't mention Bing, which powers DDG's organic results. Like, yes DDG is a small company based "just east of nowhere" in PA because _Microsoft has spent literally billions of dollars on Bing_.

To the extent we have a choice in search provider at all, it's entirely due to Microsoft's huge investment, and I feel like it's remiss not to consider those implications. If Microsoft eventually throws in the towel and shuts off Bing, then DDG will cease to exist. It's not like this plucky little underdog of a company that people are rooting for has any chance on its own. The market dynamics of running a successful search crawler and engine are important to consider here and totally brushed under the table in this article.

<comment><USER7> MS also invested a ton into Windows Mobile, I imagine, but market share only went down according to Wikipedia.

If DDG is simply a skin for MS Bing along with anonymous/little tracking, maybe that's what the people want?

<comment><USER8> I don't understand how this comment relates to GP. Whether people just want a DDG skin for Bing doesn't really address GP's points that (A) the article failed to mention this, and (B) failed to consider its implications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You know what can stop google? a search engine that assumes I want every word in my query, or even better a search engine that honors a string in quotes to mean these words in this order. When did google stop doing this?

edit: This wouldn't stop google, it would just make that part of my life as easy as it was 10 years ago.

<comment><USER3> I'm also annoyed by this.

Google tries to out-smart the user and often yields garbage or generic popular crap even when looking for something very specific.

I want my quotes back too!

An even bigger issue:

Due to SEO and ranking benefits for popular sites, it's basically impossible to discover quality content by smaller sites/blogs via Google. Unless you go to like page 10+, where you also get a lot of irrelevant stuff.

<comment><USER10> This hit me very recently when I was doing a crypto project [1] and ASN.1 DER came up. I'm german and "der" means "this" in German so google just treats "der someword" as search for "someword". So when I want to know e.g. how strings are being DER encoded, I google "DER string" and am getting results for G-string underwear and some duden.de website but nothing about ASN.1 DER strings on the first page :/. At least when you google for "DER integer" a post about ASN.1 values is the fourth result.

[1]: [https://github.com/est31/rcgen](https://github.com/est31/rcgen)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I started using DDG as my default search engine about 6 months ago, and for 95% of the searches I do it's totally fine.

I don't know why people think that DDG needs to "stop" Google; did people think that Lycos and Infoseek and Yahoo couldn't coexist back in the 90's? I think it's good that both companies have some competition from each other.

<comment><USER12> 95% just isn't good enough.

<comment><USER13> Search result quality is not a clear-cut issue. In my experience DDG/Bing even yield subjectively _better_ results sometimes.

<comment><USER14> Same, there's some personal preference too. I don't always want to be shoved into the extreme bubble that Google builds for people.

DDG is much better for searches that I don't want personalized results for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why must everything be a "company" killer? There's room in markets for choices. I think DDG is providing a good choice for folks. And having Apple data behind them isn't just potatoes.

<comment><USER16> I recently switched my homepage to be ddg. Most of the time it's pure annoyance, returning unrelated results and never giving nice top of page summaries. I really didn't want it to be this way, but most of the time (I'm pretty sure 2/3 at least) i have to revert back to google.

<comment><USER17> I've been using DDG for a couple of years now, and have a different experience. Usually when I'm frustrated by the the result in DDG, I try the same search in Google, and find that the results are no better!

Google image search and and local results are still better, but DDGs ! system makes it easy to switch search engines when you need to.

<comment><USER18> To further your point (I have switched a couple years ago, if not more; don't remember), I also found that the new Google layout (with this sort of bubbly cards) is really distracting and I cannot scan the results as fast as before, or as fast as DDG's. UX definitely took a beating with this iteration of Google's results UI.

<comment><USER16> I think this is a fair point but a major part of my complaint. The other day i tried looking up the hours of a hardware store and kept getting unrelated results. Today i tried to check the hours of a bar, and google returned what i thought were the wrong results, but in fact the bar had just changed its name...things like that are the polish that really makes the difference between one search and a mess of keyword mashing to get the result you're after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's an unusual amount of pro-DDG articles on Hacker News, half of them are PR fluff, and I don't understand why they keep getting upvoted.

<comment><USER20> People like underdogs ?

<comment><USER21> And privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I use DDG by default. If I am not satisifed I simply prepend !g to my query.

The bangs feature is really useful to me personally since it supports so many sites.

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

My only complaint is that it's noticeably slower than Google

<comment><USER23> id imagine speed isn't a current priority for Google as Gmail, calendar and maps have shown. It's probably a hold over from before, I'd give it a year before they roll out some improvement that allows it down.

<comment><USER24> This couldn't be farther from the truth. More speed means more page views means more ads seen means more revenue. Walmart Amazon plus others have done studies showing faster load times translates directly into increased revenue in there retail.

<comment><USER25> Yet gmail and maps are slower than warm asphalt.

<comment><USER26> You can't escape Gmail because you'd lose your address, and you can't escape Maps because the alternatives suck.

On the other hand if I don't like Supermarket-X, I can go to Supermarket-Y

<comment><USER3> Or your were lucky enough to start using Gmail with your own domain, when Google Apps was still free for up to 10 users, and can still use it for free.

<comment><USER27> Google Apps with a custom domain was once free for as many email accounts as you were approved for. There are a handful out there with lots more than 10 free accounts. They don't get support, have less space provided, and can't use the outlook connector so it's not an equal comparison. It's nice that google hasn't changed this on their users.

Zoho recently restricted their free custom domain service for email. Not sure who is the best free option out there now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Lot of people here are using DuckDuckGO. I tried that and some others that respect privacy. I like them but there is only one reason why I still use google.

Convenience. I do lots of movie, tv show, sports and Famous People search. Almost always I find what I am looking for directly on the google result page. If I have to open those links, I will have to go through all that js tracking and bloated sites. Google is fast. I keep track of sports scores and schedule through google search. Bing also does all of these.

</comment><comment><USER29> I use DDG now, and have been for about a year.

I still !g a lot, but I'm alright with that. I wish it were a shortcut to add !g to a query.

One of the key things I've realised in the switching is that I actually LIKE a lot of the changes google has made from initial "just show the 10 results" like DDG does today.

I like the news carousel, when I'm searching for a news related article.

I like all the local info on a cafe / store, when I'm searching for it. The google implementation is WAY better than Yelp listings (constantly nagging me to install an app, Yelp seems to satisfy no one, it's a middle man resource no one needs)

But overall I'm happy using DDG for a first crack, knowing my privacy is valued, and moving onto google when I need to.

It feels like I'm supporting a more private future, now, without hindering myself severely in the process. I'm happy with that compromise. Hopefully one day google will not be necessary.

Again, my one wish. Give me the !g tag in one click, one swipe, what ever. Don't make me type it into the query box and search again!

</comment><comment><USER30> Isn't DDG just bing with a different interface? Or do they actually build their own index now or am I just completely confused and totally wrong about my assumptions?

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm glad DDG exists and it's my main search engine. But I'm using g! in about 50% of my queries.

For very technical queries I somehow already know that google gives me better results at the top. DDG results feel more like a dice roll.

Two things I also miss are "site:url" filters (dont know if ddg provides this) and date ranges, for example results within the last 3 years.

Well, maybe it's possible but I have other things to do than to browse around ddg or learn a bunch of bangs. In my opinion this is the main barrier to entry. Provide me all the possibilities on a single screen or behind a menu and don't expect user to dig around the docs. There's a lot of potential which will never be uncovered by alot of users, so they stick to google.

<comment><USER32> > Two things I also miss are "site:url" filters (dont know if ddg provides > this)

How can you miss it when you haven't tried it?

Yes, ddg supports it [0]

It also supports limited date ranges, like last week, last month etc [1]

[0] [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+duckdu...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+duckduckgo&t=ffab&atb=v109-1&ia=web) [1] [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=php+json+site%3Astackoverflow.com&...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=php+json+site%3Astackoverflow.com&atb=v109-1&df=w&ia=web)

<comment><USER31> Well stupid me. Thanks.

site: doesn't work in my browser url bar at the start so I got used to prepend !g... I know, a terrible workaround..

Could not find a way to search within specific years which is very useful for overloaded terms. It says, they are working on it..

<comment><USER33> You can start your searches with a space :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As long as DDG is not traded publicly it will do just fine. Investors would inevitably be screaming for more growth and ultimately force them to comprise their current values.

<comment><USER35> They're still beholden by their VC's, who most likely forced them to purge a lot of their !bangs not too long ago.

<comment><USER36> Why? The !bang is a referral, if you get enough traffic you can charge the site you're sending traffic to

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Bing gives me points I can cash in for Amazon gift cards. I rarely fall back to G, and when I do it seems like the sponsored search results are much more intrusive than even those on Bing. What I'd really like is a meta-search engine incorporating Bing, G, and DDG...but I have never gotten around to doing this myself and don't know of any OSS project that does this. What's most disappointing about Bing is the lack of good search results from Microsoft tech documentation.

</comment><comment><USER38> I really wanted to use DDG but I found for most searches I ended up just using the !g bang anyway, so finally I just took out the middleman.

</comment><comment><USER39> Google doesn't need to be stopped, a lot of innovation is happening there. It just has to be more profitable to care about the users of the services than about the business-clients of Google. If privacy of end users would be a core business instead of selling data there would be no problem. Sadly I don't have any glimpse of an idea how that could be happening. The world is complicated and every little piece that makes interacting with the world more convenient is welcome. Google is convenient, so nobody[1] gives a damn about their data.

I use DDG for 90% of my searches, no complaints from my side.

[1] some do, but since many people Diabetes 2 can't be convinced for a more healthy life style, what do you really expect from others if consequences of habits are not even directly visible...

</comment><comment><USER40> DDG is my default search. It's good for 85% of my searches. Its video and maps search clearly lag behind Google (mostly from a UI standpoint). It needs to find a better balance between shepherding privacy and UX. Most local search is weak, even if I enter in my city/state.

<comment><USER41> Once place they are long ahead on UI is the image search. You can actually "view file" and not "view site" as google had to do after that lawsuit from getty [1]

But having said that, it is very annoying that they put a large nagging notification on the top right of the screen asking to switch to it as it's default.

If I want to do that I will do it myself thank you. I never figured out why webpages do this kind of thing (i.e. pop up a newsletter subscription form blocking the whole article). It just pisses off the users. It's actually the main reason DDG is not my default search engine.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages- after...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after-google- removes-view-image-button-bowing-to-getty/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I use DDG primarily now. I've noticed that I often get better results for my programming queries than from Google and there's always `!g` if I don't find what I'm looking for.

On a side note: anyone else think Apple will eventually buy DDG?

<comment><USER43> Previous "Will Apple buy DDG?" discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18816748)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913336)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've switched to DDG and I've hardly looked back. Google's search has been seriously declined in quality. Most search operators [1] are no longer supported. Even those directly in the "tools" menu don't work.

For example if you search "Nothing Can Stop Google. DuckDuckGo Is Trying Anyways site:medium.com", and set a custom date range to sometime last year. You'll see results which state this blog post was posted in 2018-October-31 for example, or which every date you prefer because I assume they just fuzzily fit the post date -into- that range. You can make google tell you this blog post is 2+ years old.

The Google.com I found useful in the early 00's even had document qualifiers so I could search for strings, but filter to just PDF's, or HTML, or JPG's. Now I have to pay for these features via a Google App-Engine private search instance. It just feels like having somebody spit in your face. When features were free, but they quietly became pay-to-play without zero warning.

[1] [https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search- comprehen...](https://bynd.com/news-ideas/google-advanced-search- comprehensive-list-google-search-operators)

<comment><USER45> Searching by filetype seems to still work fine, e.g.: [https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+filetype:pdf](https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+filetype:pdf)

<comment><USER46> I find it to be an awesome way of finding a document that's actually a few page long list of random document titles, one of which happen to be the one you're searching for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Reminder that DDG actually has an extension (FF & Chrome) and their own Android browser available on Google Play Store and F-Droid!

<comment><USER48> and iOS browser in the App Store

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Given the size and increasingly walled gardens of the web, is it even possible for a new search engine to launch in 2019 and compete with Google? Consider how much time and money Microsoft sunk into Bing. If Microsoft turned off its Bing API, could DDG spin up its own crawlers?

</comment><comment><USER50> It's not just duckduckgo that's privacy focused.

[https://startpage.com](https://startpage.com) is rad [0]. I've moved to using it from duckduckgo and haven't felt I've missed Google, at all. They pay Google to proxy their non-personalized search results, and let you view webpages "anonymously" [1], as well.

[0] [https://www.startpage.com/en/search/download-startpage- plugi...](https://www.startpage.com/en/search/download-startpage-plugin.html)

[1] [https://www.startpage.com/en/search/proxy- help.html](https://www.startpage.com/en/search/proxy-help.html)

<comment><USER51> And more importantly startpage.com is a European service while DDG is an American service. It's extremely important for us in HN community to keep promoting European services regardless of product considerations because anything American is by definition toxic and should not exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I don't think a lot of us here realize DDG is Bing. And also that it's heavy on marketing.

</comment><comment> gator-io For what it's worth, DuckDuckGo has .25% global market share on desktops: [https://netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market- share.aspx](https://netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx)

In the US, it's .66%.

</comment><comment><USER53> Why are people worrying about Bing shutting down? Bing brings in billions, and it's bigger than Twitter. Not to mention that Microsoft needs a search stack for the rest of the company.

</comment><comment><USER54> I stopped using chrome lately, memory usage of firefox is 4x less, sometimes 8x..

I also have ddg as homepage for ages. For most quick queries it's useful. For google worthy queries you have bangs.

</comment><comment><USER55> DDG can win by becoming the king of porn searches. Bing and pornhub are the competition, not Google.

Porn brings massive traffic, then they'll use the site for other things.

<comment><USER56> DDG = Bing anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Quick question, if you Google 'ddg' in incognito mode, do you get any results regarding DuckDuckGo? In the first 10 pages of Google Search I only get two 'relevant' results; one in the bottom of the first page, and a second one of an article mentioning DuckDuckGo in page 8 or something. (Not trying to start a war here, just asking).

<comment><USER58> Android smartphone, Chrome isn't my default browser but I used Chrome (it's set to Google default, mostly for local search & YouTube). "ddg" doesn't return duckduckgo until page 4, but typing "duck" returns duckduckgo as suggested result 4, and searching "duck" returns duckduckgo on the first page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I stopped using Google due to intrusive ads, if you have someone in your family that have a chronic disease and you've ever googled it, get ready to be blasted with ads reminding of that every-time you watch youtube/browse the web. There are just some things I don't want to be reminded of Google !

</comment><comment><USER60> I switch my default search from Google to DDG a few months ago (In the chrome address bar). I like DDG but two things i have noticed

1\. DDG image search is far far inferior to Google's

2\. DDG response time is slower than Google's

Other than that, I love it and all of the little tools they add for developers (color wheel etc)

</comment><comment><USER61> I wish they got domain like ddg.io|ai|... [that appear to be available too]. It would be so much easier to quickly type that in when DDG doesn't happen to be a default search engine somewhere. Instead of typoing it in a hurry to demo it to someone.

<comment> m-ou-se They have duck.com and ddg.gg. Both Firefox and Chromium make <ctrl-enter> wrap the url in 'www.' and '.com', so 'duck<ctrl-enter>' works.

<comment><USER61> Thanks for this! I wasn't aware of either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> If anyone from DDG is reading this please make the site faster from South Africa. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER63> I wonder how feasible it will be for duckduckgo to release a desktop program that will store all our searches and do some machine learning "magic" locally. We would get custom made searches and privacy as well.

</comment><comment><USER64> :s/DuckDuckGo/Bing

<comment><USER65> They do have their own web crawler. I don't have any idea what percentage of their results come from it, but presumably as they grow their own search results will take an ever-increasing slice of the pie.

<comment><USER64> There doesn't seem to be any evidence that it's used for indexing _at all_ ; it seems more like it's just used to scrape additional info from sites that they index via real search engines like Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4851680)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> For anyone interested in useful, tested !bangs, I made a dedicated website of my favorites: [https://duckgobang.com/](https://duckgobang.com/)

</comment><comment><USER67> I have always used DuckDuckGo instead of Google and to be fair, they both perform the same way except DuckDuckGo provides more privacy which is something that is important to people anyways.

</comment><comment><USER68> I use DDG as my main search engine. Though sometimes frustrated with the results that it pulls, then I go to Google. I'm sure DDG can only improve, I will continue to use them.

<comment><USER69> Google's search engine provides good results for precisely the reason DDG will never be able to: They sacrifice privacy to collect data that improves search results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Google seems to have a strong hold on up-to-date news sources. I find myself going to !g when trying to find information on a current event.

</comment><comment><USER71> Nothing can stop DuckDuckGo. At least I hope so, I've been using it regularly for some years now and I love the Google-free experience.

</comment><comment><USER72> stop google? why? i don't even care about google. they are 100% irrelevant to me. i'm sure some of the email i send touches their servers, but i self host all of my services _including search_. i do some of my own indexing, but metasearch works well for me right now.

[https://null.media](https://null.media)

</comment><comment><USER73> It is not even trying, considering how slow DuckDuckGo is to load compared to Google and Bing.

At least it is slow in my country anyway.

</comment><comment><USER74> So if I wanted to slowly start moving away from Google, what would you recommend for an email provider?

</comment><comment><USER75> I've had more success finding TV shows on ddg. Google still a bit better for coding questions

</comment><comment><USER76> (Are there/what are some) objective metrics used to measure search engine quality?

</comment><comment><USER77> For some us, cutting ties with companies that have surveillance capitalism as their business model has already occurred.

Ad supported services are fine, targeted ads that require ever more invasive spying on your users on behalf of your advertising customers are not.

</comment><comment><USER78> It's clickbait hyperbole to say nothing can stop google. Google will fall once something usurps their dominant platform advantage ( chrome/search/android ).

People said the same thing about Microsoft/IE when microsoft leveraged their dominant OS position to take over the browser market. But once google search became just as important or even more important than the Windows itself, they leveraged their search platform to take over the browser market with chrome.

For now, google is cleverly leveraging it's search/android/chrome platforms to block competition and maintain it's dominant position. But eventually, another product/platform will arise that will knock google off its pedestal. Maybe even anti-trust lawsuits will help like it did with ending the Windows-IE monopoly.

<comment><USER79> Please tell me how to use a smartphone without being locked in the Apple platform or Google's. I'm well aware of LineageOS (and other ROM) and of F-Droid (and Yalp and others) but in reality, it's impossible not to supply Google with vast amount of personal data.

So for now, it's true that "nothing can stop google". Unless we change the situation (e.g legal/political actions), this won't change. But of course, if we collectively admit nothing can stop Google _now_ , then we'll do something that makes it possible to stop Google and have some real competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Google is at it's core an ad company, not a search company. So they have backed off crawling the entire internet and only crawl what has a business return for them. Combine that with carefully curating the results they publish, it can barely even be called a search engine at this point. I get more relevant results from DDG at this point.

<comment><USER81> > So they have backed off crawling the entire internet and only crawl what has > a business return for them.

What's the difference between Google's web crawler and DuckDuckGo's web crawler?

> Combine that with carefully curating the results they publish,

Google carefully curates? I thought that Google's search results is based on the users behavior? Are they carefully manipulating everyone's results?

<comment><USER80> > Are they carefully manipulating everyone's results?

100%

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> DuckDuckGo is a heel.

<comment><USER83> I'd just like to encourage people to think a little longer about what you might be saying, before reactively downvoting.

<comment><USER32> It's hardly a common idiom, does he mean ddg is close behind google, does he mean it's run down? Does he mean it's keeping people down?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> No company lives forever.

Google will have its comeuppance one day too. It may not look like that right now, but back in the day Sears, too, had everything, and look at them today.

<comment><USER85> Not a very good comparison I'm afraid, Sears didn't lose to an other company who was offering the same service, they lost to a series of companies that offered the same utility but in a very different way.

DDG is mostly just offering the same service as Google (really, only a fraction of the service because Google is a lot more than Search these days). As such I expect that at this point if a Google-killer appears it's also be a DDG killer as collateral damage.

<comment> em-bee is he making that comparison? i read it as, ddg may not bring down google, but something eventually will, which seems exactly what you are saying too...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> As has been mentioned probably millions of times in the last decade, "to google" is synonymous with, "to search the internet for". As long as this remains true, and google search remains free, their monopoly position _cannot_ be challenged. they have the trademark on the shortest sequence of syllables which means "to search the internet for" which means that in the vast majority of cases, when people describe searching the internet for something, they will do so with the word "google".

<comment><USER87> Isn't "Kodak moment" a counterexample?

<comment><USER86> No, because Kodak is not a free service. Xerox or Kleenex are closer, obviously, but neither of them is free to use, so there's always room to come along with something cheaper, moreover, Xerox and Kleenex at least have unbranded, one word synonyms for the commodity they produce, photocopy and tissue respectively. Google has "search the internet for", which you will never convince the average person to say, so dethroning google in "search" is at least as difficult as getting the word for "to google" changed.

Furthermore, no one can compete with Google on price, since it's free, and it's very unlikely that anyone will be able to compete on quality, unless they start disallowing adblock somehow.

The best you can hope for as a competitor is to carve out a niche of conscientious objectors, and google doesn't really care about those people either, because they are intrinsically difficult to monetize.

<comment><USER88> > Furthermore, no one can compete with Google on price, since it's free

Google is free because they are deriving revenue from ads. Another service monetizing with ads or by some other method not directly from users could share revenue with users, thus competing favorably on price with Google's free service.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should You Publicly Post Uptime Stats for a SaaS site? - <AUTHOR>

I have gotten burned a lot lately by vendors whose sites go down too much. It's pretty much impossible to tell a priori how good a site's uptime is, and I wish people posted their uptime charts. I thought about instituting a policy of only using vendors that do this, but frankly I can't find any that do.
I run a few SaaS sites, and am wondering if I should eat my own transparency dog food and post our own uptime stats...
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> As a consumer, SaaS sites that post information like this (that I find credible) definitely influence my buying decision (I don't have anything to say to you as a SaaS site owner yet).

Check this site out, it has a lot to say on this subject (and good examples in their 'hall of fame'):

<http://www.transparentuptime.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that's a cool site. I didn't find it in my initial research. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I could be wrong, but I'm inclined to think it's only helpful for SaaS apps serving geeks/hackers.

If you're serving Joe Consumer or a specific industry/niche market, I'm not sure it matters.

I do like it when my service providers have a "system status" page, so maybe that's an option.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it matters whether the customer is a geek; rather it matters only if the service is "mission-critical" for the customer.

For instance, our apps serve niche business customers (photographers, realtors). We get questions about uptime from only about 1-2% of realtors for the website tool app, but probably 10-20% of photographers. This jives with "only matters when it's infrastructure" as mentioned above. We are the deliverable for the photographers...

<comment><USER3> Makes sense. We serve photographers primarily too–and yes, they tend to care about uptime quite a bit.

We don't publish uptime stats, but we do work our butts off to have a good reputation in general. In my experience, photographers rely heavily on the recommendation (good or bad) of other photographers. I'd say don't publish uptime data but give a general outline of your server/data center/reliability/backup procedures and why they're awesome. Treat the customers you have like gold and they'll recommend you in forums, blogs, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Haskell - The Trivial Monad (great intro with exercises) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigfpe.com/2007/04/trivial-monad.html

<comment><USER2> I've been following Dan Piponi for a while now. His stuff is always pretty good and this is no exception.

<comment><USER3> Yes, he has some pretty trippy stuff about quantum mechanics and monads that I saw in a video lecture from icfp (<http://vimeo.com/6590617>).</comment></comment>


Tindallgrams: Crowdsourced effort to preserve NASA spacecraft software memos - <AUTHOR> http://tindallgrams.net <comment><USER2> My family lives across the street to Mrs Tindall, Bills widow. I will share this with her soon!</comment>


Why God Did Not Create the Universe - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575467921609024244.html

<comment><USER2> I fail to see how his reasoning abrogates the notion of God and would appreciate any light anyone cares to shed. Anyone know of any recorded universes sprouting out of nothing? Why do multiple instances of intelligent life and mostly consistent laws of physics mean that there is no Creator? It just doesn't follow for me.

<comment><USER3> If you assert something such as the existence of a demiurge, it's up to you to provide support for the theory. That the idea pre-exists modern science and is thus widely believed by default doesn't strengthen it in the slightest, from a philosophical perspective.

One has to ask why the notion of a creator is necessary to begin with; sure, we're lucky the universe exists as it does but on the other hand if we didn't need to breathe space travel would be a lot cheaper, so our current form is a limitation as much as an adaptation. And if this being does exist, prior to the universe as we know it, then where? In a higher dimension of some sort? In this context, the notion of a creator is a proxy for our lack of knowledge rather than a positive demonstrable.

As for multiple universes, try the number line. Consider how some functions can iterate endlessly upon themselves without falling into an oscillating or steady state. In abstract terms, what you have there is a one-dimensional universe populated by point beings whose only property is that of position, but which can yield exhaustively complex behavior nonetheless. All iterative functions 'exist' simultaneously for all permutations of their starting values whether or not anyone is actually calculating them at any given moment. You can expand this concept to include more than one dimension, or alternative geometries, or indeed any axiomatic formal system, with the one fundamental constraint being that completeness and consistency are mutually exclusive. We could do worse than consider our own existence from a similar perspective.

<comment><USER4> None of this addresses the OP's point. You stated your opinion that deity was formed to fill in the gaps in our knowledge (the popular "God of the Gaps" theory), your opinion that one who professes belief in a deity harbors the burden of proof (assuming that that person is trying to prove something to you...), and your opinion that number lines exist (?).

These are all valid opinions if you want to hold them, but they don't address the OP's point. This article is entitled "Why God Did Not Create the Universe". So, how does the idea that there are reliable laws that govern the operation of our universe show why "God did not create the universe"? What about the idea that an astonishing number of randomly lucky and successful permutations occurred in the correct succession out of an infinite number of wrong potential permutations, how does that demonstrate the article's title?

Evolution is the same way; it's all well and good, but none of it explains _why_ species change, just _how_. Learning how species change is all well and good too, but it is not useful in the debate over the existence of god(s). I wish the creationist v. evolutionist group would just accept that already.

I think it all depends on the perspective you take. A religious person would read this article and spend it marveling at how anyone can believe that God does not exist, even when presented with evidence of all the effort and precision necessary to form a world like ours from an infinite expanse of random blackness, where the potential that things would randomly occur so correctly as to create intelligent humans and a hospitable environment for them is essentially as close to nil as possible.

<comment><USER5> All the article says is this; If I went into a casino picked a number on a roulette wheel and won straight away, you would be amazed. If I then did it a second & third time in succession, you would be incredulous. You might wonder if I was cheating the system or had some strange or divine powers.

However, if you then found out I had been going into a different casino only betting 3 times and walking away every hour of my life you would understand that it was just by chance that you happened to be there on the day that I won three times in a row. There is nothing to explain - no divine powers.

This is what Hawkings is arguing for the multiverse. Because there are many possible universes, the fact that ours has all the right qualities to sustain life is an inevitability. It's inevitable that one would be created and because we exist, we must inhabit one.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that one has to be convinced that multiple universes (which by definition can't be observed) exist. Which means rejecting the idea of one (potentially empirically observable) unknown entity [a creator or "god"] only to replace it with the idea of an infinite number of universes which however can never be observed…

So I think that this has nothing to do with empirical science?

<comment><USER3> My comments above are certainly inductive rather than empirical in nature. I think the potential (or lack of same) for empirical observation is about the same; I can imagine being transported to 'other dimensions' just as I can imagine being with miraculous powers of creation and destruction.

However, I disagree with your implied argument that one is unnecessarily multiplying entities by postulating multiple universes rather than the philosophically more economical single being. When people postulate a God, they usually ascribe infinite power and potential to that being. By contrast, the idea of multiple universes assumes that they are individually finite and have fundamental limitations, which is in line with empirical experience.

<comment><USER6> Likewise we could postulate a more realistic and limited creator-god, one which might even be empirical observable, either directly or indirect. The point being that we can only know which features a deity actually has after one has been observed in action.

Given available evidence at least some postulated deities have become increasingly unlikely, but this is not the case of all. Some might have merit if only they where actual observed from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just having a chuckle over the fact that I posted two stories - this one an excerpt from an important new book by Stephen Hawking on the sound scientific explanation for the making of our world. And the other about someone I know and like getting kicked off a plane. And it's the story about getting kicked off the plane that gets all the upvotes.

[edit post downvote. I found this genuinely surprising. This Hawking piece (the full title was "Stephen Hawking on God, Science and the Origins of the Universe") is a beautifully simple explanation of a profound and complex topic. Based on Einstein's dictum that if you can't explain something simply then you don't really understand it, its simplicity was an achievement.]

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a lot of activity on social media about this Stephen Hawking piece though: [http://www.tribevibe.com/track/link/?url=http://online.wsj.c...](http://www.tribevibe.com/track/link/?url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575467921609024244.html)

The book is called The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's rather ridiculous to me how they can shut-down the notion of the "coincidences" that make Earth so extremely unique to support life. The precise placement of the moon, the composition of our core to generate perfect magnetic fields, etc.

 _the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing_

Really? I'm having as hard a time believing in that as many of you might have believing in creation.

 _Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist._

Sounds like God to me.

<comment><USER8> " The precise placement of the moon, the composition of our core to generate perfect magnetic fields, etc."

How precise are you defining these to be? The Moon's distance from earth increases yearly for example. The magnetic field fluctuates over time, possibly causing havoc to migrating animals. This argument seems like a confusion of cause and effect.

My circular bowl was designed perfectly for my circular water to sit within...

<comment><USER4> Well, consider all of the potential places the Moon could have ended up; space is big. And then consider that not only the placement of the moon was necessary, but also the unique physical composition of the Earth and its atmosphere, the Earth's distance from the Sun and other celestial bodies, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc., and all of the potential states that could have been selected but were not hospitable to life, and you will see why some people find it so unlikely that there was no organizing force in the creation of our world.

<comment><USER9> What is it about the placement of the moon that makes earth so extremely unique as to support life. Does it merely deflect asteroids to provide more stability for evolving species? And how intelligent must life be to be considered the "Destined Entity" of the Anthropic Principle? Were dinosaurs not self-aware enough?

The moon's placement is also such that it's the same size as the sun when viewed from the earth, making total solar eclipses more stunning, and intelligent life viewing them may become a more inquisitive species, and maybe more likely to innovate Agriculture, and so sit around in cities considering philosophical questions. But is this the only Destined Entity?

Just as today's humans consider cats and apes to be not self-aware enough to be Destined Entities, maybe some future specimens of humans will consider today's humans in the same way. Or maybe humans today will create some future planet-wide automated intelligence that becomes self-aware, and be the Destined Entity, and the Anthropic Principle will really be the Robotic Principle.

But just as today's humans are the result of thousands of trial-and-error experiments of evolution, an automated intelligence has more likelihood of becoming self-aware if there are many separate instances of it. If it's planet-wide, then different vastly separated planets are needed. So perhaps a moon for the earth increases the ease with which humans can adapt to space colonization, then Mars providing the next challenge, then terraforming Venus, more difficult, until humans blast off into other solar systems, eventually colonizing the galaxy. And one day, one of those planet-wide automated networks on one of the colonized planets will become self-aware enough to be considered the Destined Entity the Universe came into existence for.

Such a self-aware automated intelligence will reminisce with itself that the moon "Luna" of old "Earth" had the correct placement not only to deflect asteroids, but also to display solar eclipses with a spectacular corona, and provide a baby step for space colonization by humans.

<comment><USER10> _The moon's placement is also such that it's the same size as the sun when viewed from the earth, making total solar eclipses more stunning, and intelligent life viewing them may become a more inquisitive species, and maybe more likely to innovate Agriculture, and so sit around in cities considering philosophical questions. But is this the only Destined Entity?_

The moon has not always been at the distance away from earth that it is now. The moon is moving away from earth at about 1.5 inches per year. Thus, one cannot argue about its placement because it has not always been at the distance it is now. What people knew about the moon before the 20th century is merely an artifact of when literate man appeared on earth.

<http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q1282.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm conflicted after reading the comments and the article. On the one hand I hate wasting time dissecting the article but I like the HN discussion and I feel the need to express myself about the article and some of the comments. I admire those willing to pursue big ideas, mysteries, etc but this article...let's just say I'm glad I don't pay for the WSJ.

I read the whole article but I read less than half of the article before checking who wrote it and was surprised. I thought it was written by someone who was not in a 'science' field.

(clipped from article) "Today we use reason, mathematics and experimental test,in other words, modern science." (Whose "we"?)

"Albert Einstein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." He meant that..." (Why are "we" being told what Einstein meant?)

"..latest advances in cosmology explain why.." (I thought science explained how?)

"Many improbable occurrences conspired to create.." (why the choice of such terms?)

"We need liquid water to exist, and if the Earth were too close (to the sun), it would all boil off; if it were too far, it would freeze." (who is his audience?)

"The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned." (more odd terminology..laws form? And luck forms laws? I understand his meaning, but perplexed by the choice of words to convey a non-Creator position)

"..the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing." (so, "laws that allow" existed before "nothing"?)

"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist." (spontaneity occurs when life exists..how can anything spontaneous occur prior to existence? And spontaneous creation is the reason why we exist? Again, what happened to how? Back to the drawing board as far as articulating to John Q Public, no?)

In regards to comments: \+ I like this question: "Why do multiple instances of intelligent life and mostly consistent laws of physics mean that there is no Creator?" \+ "..the notion of a creator is a proxy for our lack of knowledge rather than a positive demonstrable." It's interesting to think about what the notion of a Creator could be from someone who thinks there is no Creator?" A "no-Creator-notion" :) Basing a conversation on that notion limits the conversation...even sucks the life out it.

\+ People saying proof of God tells me that both those who think there is a God and those who do not think there is a God can provide an identity for God and therefore know when particular information becomes proof...this to me seems like pre-knowledge of God claimed by those claiming there is no God (?). Proof..what is it good for? A court of law comes to mind; a dispute; something is at stake in a court dispute and an outcome will occur when "proof" sides with the victor...or does the victor side with proof (?). How do we identify proof? Proof is conjured up to confront someone...a set of criteria is demanded (how limiting or fair is the criteria?).

\+ "small minds talk about people, medium minds events, and great minds ideas" (society needs people dealing with all of these issues...a collective perspective..but yes, if persons are mono-manic about one of those issues, watch out)

Sorry if many of you think I've posted excess.

</comment><comment><USER6> When people use the word "god" it's meaning is often implicitly assumed, rarely identified, almost never defined in a testable way.

How do you recognize a deity? Which observable, ideally measurable, features should one be looking for?

The concept of god used to be simple: _Anything more powerful then me is a god_. A very simple test and the existence of gods is obvious.

Then we started to add more and more and also expect more and more from our gods. Currently we seem to expect them to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omni- whatever… which is really pushing it beyond even internal consistency, let alone observable reality.

I wonder what would (in the 21ste century) be considered evidence of a "god"?

Would we classify an actual existing Zeus as "god" or just as a member of a more powerful intelligent species? Would we apply the term "god" to the god of the Hebrews? Or would we rather consider it to be a very advanced alien?

Imagine this speculative scenario: Next week a very powerful non-human entity will manifest itself on earth. It will claim that it is the representative of the creator of the universe and that has seen how the creator made life on earth.

What could it present as evidence which would convince you that what it was saying is actually true? What evidence would convince you that it's not just a delusional alien with more scientific and technological knowledge and very advanced technology?

</comment><comment><USER12> The article is weak, there is no real reasoning to follow. This is at best a teaser at his book, for a real discussion we'd have to get and read that.

But even beyond that, I heavily disagree with the whole discussion. If I haven't missed some important new advance, the whole parallel universes theory and much of the theories of what happened before or during the beginning of the Universe are not really science. Most of it is based on some speculative interpretation of the mathematical formulas of quantum physics and/or string theory.

But there is no reason those formulas have to be an accurate description of the physical laws in those boundary conditions, where they are known to break hard. So basically they make assertions based on a mathematical theory (which is not bad per se), but those assertions cannot be falsified, as they all operate outside the boundaries of the Universe itself. Non-falsifiable theories are just not science.

The same goes for the strong anthropic principle. This is again making statements that are inherently not testable. That might be philosophical speculation, but it's not hard science.

This is particularly strange as Hawking uses those borderline scientific theories to discount a religious speculation; but both theories are non- falsifiable by definition, so what's the point? I'm not religious, but I don't see the big difference between two non-falsifiable cosmologies there.

</comment><comment><USER13> Valid arguments cannot contain in their conclusions any term (or grammatical mood) that is not present in their premises. In other words: All valid arguments are made up of one or more syllogisms, which, in turn, are made of three parts: the major premise, the minor premise and the conclusion.

.

Example:

      o  Major premise: All men are mortal.

      o  Minor premise: Socrates is a man.

      o  Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

Each of the three distinct parts contain terms, "men", "mortal", and "Socrates". "Mortal" is the major term and "Socrates" is the minor term. The premises also must have one term in common with each other, which is known as the middle term; in this example, "man". If a term is found in the conclusion that is not present in either premises than the argument is invalid.

.

Example:

      o  Major premise: All men are mortal.

      o  Minor premise: Socrates is a man.

      o  Conclusion: Socrates is a Conservative.

.

Furthermore, any argument that excludes 'god' in its premises cannot validly contain 'god' in its conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER14> I love Hawking, but I have to play apologist here (and I am not a religious person)

I've spent many, many hours on this God thing, and at the end of the day you can't prove nor disprove there is a God. Sure, you can assume all sorts of attributes about a God that don't make sense or are silly -- big old guy with beard in the sky. But the idea that there is some greater intelligence out there with some sort of interest in mankind? It's just impossible to know, one way or another.

Now some will tell you that because it is impossible to know, there must be a god. I.e, that we can put whatever thing we like under the category "god" -- one story is as good as another. Actually, this "creative story-telling for stuff we don't know" is a critical part of being a human, even being a scientist. As long as the stories don't contradict observable reality. So that's okay, up to a point.

Some will tell you that because we don't know, there must _not_ be a God. If you can't prove it, it doesn't exist. Or put better: why add terms to an equation where no extra terms are needed? You see this in Hawking's essay -- once we figured out the theory, didn't need a God anymore.

The problem here is that this smacks of the caveman, when told about airplanes, said that the other person was either a fantastical liar or crazy. In his mind he is being uber-rational. From our point of view he's being childish and silly. Certainly things exist that we have not experienced. We do not know everything, and many things we think we know we are mistaken about. This is the way it has always been. It is part of being our species at this point in time.

So we're left not-knowing. And that bugs folks. I had a good friend that was an atheist tell me last week that sure, he didn't know, _but he felt like he had to take sides_. He felt like certain Christians he knew were somehow harming rationality, and it was up to him to sort of balance the scales. Many other people are profoundly disturbed by not-knowing and go the other way.

As for me? I've decided that while I cannot accept your story about an angry guy in the sky, the idea of not-knowing -- and the greater idea of our relationship to not-knowing, our relationship to the unknown, is a critical part of being alive. I choose to call that Great Unknown God, simply because, well, that's the traditional name for powers that are outside of our scope of knowledge. This allows me to enjoy both the work of the scientist and the priest.

<comment><USER15> What Hawking said is not that god does not exist, but that god is not required for the universe to exist. Subtle but important.

<comment><USER16> _Evolution is not required for Homo sapiens to exist._

The above statement does not in any way infer that evolution did not result in humans. Subtle but important.

<comment><USER17> _Evolution is not required for Homo sapiens to exist._

How do you know? If you were framing your statement scientifically it would be "Evolution _may not be_ required for Homo sapiens to exist", which, of course, scientists already understand. Theories are subject to change, and even be discarded altogether in light of better information, unlike faith which cannot change.

<comment><USER16> Your definition of faith is very narrow.

What certain institutions define as faith may not have changed in thousands of years.

Peoples personal beliefs and understanding of the spiritual change over time. I know mine have.

<comment><USER17> Faith that a Creator exists without verifiable proof is inherently unchangeable -- that's why it's called faith. How one chooses to arrive at, or express that faith certainly may be subject to change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Robert Sawyer wrote a great book on this subject, Calculating God. He has a way of writing about science and philosophy that's incredibly engaging and accessible because it's in the form of fiction. It's one of the few scifi books I can recommend to people who normally don't like scifi (Ender's Game is another).

I don't want to give any spoilers but it takes up the various issues raised by the Hawking article and in this discussion.

</comment><comment><USER19> When we draw a circle it has no beginning and no end, but there is most certainly a creator of it.</comment>


Learning GNU Emacs while reading a manual - <AUTHOR> http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/

<comment><USER2> The GNU manuals are extremely comprehensive... far too comprehensive to read as an introductory text. The Emacs manual's table of contents alone is over 6000 words[1].

I recommend my own guide <http://david.rothlis.net/emacs/howtolearn.html> which teaches you how to use the Emacs built-in help, the elisp source code, and the built-in access to these very manuals.

[1] lynx --dump [http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/ind...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/index.html) | sed '/^References/,$ d' | wc -w</comment>


Show HN: I analyzed 50TB of Reddit comments to get top recommended fitness links - <AUTHOR> http://awesomefitnesslinks.com/ <comment><USER2> I was expecting to find a write-up of the data analysis :(</comment>


If it weren't for those meddling cryptographers - <AUTHOR> https://www.attejuvonen.fi/meddling-cryptographers/ <comment> java-man Nothing will change until he election commission officials are held criminally liable for this.

In any country.</comment>


Coursera course on game development using Python (first homework due tomorrow) - <AUTHOR> https://www.coursera.org/course/interactivepython

<comment><USER2> I think Coursera needs to do a course on game engine architecture with real- world examples (idtech, ogre).

<comment><USER3> The problem that I see with that is, these engines are difficult to do in one class. Generally, learning that is a full two-year program involving programming, logic, math, 3D design, etc. Using 3D engines gets difficult to teach in a 7 week course unless the student already knows quite a bit.

<comment><USER4> Should be enough time to understand and implement a basic raycasting engine ala Wolf3D/Doom though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> well, just signed up.

My first programming experiences were actually small games for the TI-83, a humble dream soccer and a bowling game.

PC's were very expensive around '95, a fact which also lead me to take computer science for having access to them at school and obviously, gaming :-) Warcraft, Dune 2, Lost Vikings and the sorts.

After my first job and subsequently, that fascination on developing games faded away under other things like e-commerce, corporate applications and messing with Linux also sinked a large deal of my spare time etc but haven't yet lost hope of finding a way into it.

</comment><comment><USER4> First homework due tomorrow!

That brings back some unpleasant memories. When I was a CS undergrad something the professors would enjoy doing was assigning problem sets on the very first lecture of a module that were deliverable by the next lecture (often the next day). I assume it was a mechanism for figuring out people's learning rates.

Of course it was great fun beginning a new term and having 2 or 3 such classes on the first day.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you really want to learn game development on the web, you should check out <http://codehs.com>

You learn how to make games that run in HTML5 Canvas using JavaScript, and there are custom libraries that make graphics and user interaction much easier to deal with.

Also, you can take the class at your own pace, so no need to worry about artificial deadlines.

<comment><USER7> It looks like Udacity is doing a similar course in the new year: <http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs255/CourseRev/1>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, it seems that they're generating js + canvas games straight from Python (the tool used in the course is <http://www.codeskulptor.org/> ). Never heard of it before

<comment> stargazer-3 They seem to have built it by themselves this summer.

<comment><USER8> Okay, I had a look and it and its clearly for educational purposes only. Indeed this course is more a "fun" introduction to programming ("what's a function" ... ) than a real course on building games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the recent news about the course, a headline reads: "Make a student tutorial video, Win an iPad" ([https://class.coursera.org/interactivepython-2012-001/class/...](https://class.coursera.org/interactivepython-2012-001/class/index)) - Sounds wierd to give a non-programmable device to someone who is following a course on interactive programming. Someone did not get the point.

<comment><USER2> In what universe is iPad non-programmable?

<comment><USER9> Try to write a python script and run it natively on the iPad, and we'll talk again if we live in the same universe.

<comment><USER2> I don't follow. Is Python the only programming language available? Is programmability determined by a device's ability to run python scripts natively?

<comment><USER9> That's an example. On any open device you can program in any language. There are no restrictions. The iPad is a walled garden and there are clear limits to what you can envision doing, embedded in the way it is designed and locked down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great. Just signed up. Anyone knows of a similar courses/tutorials for C++ Game dev?

<comment><USER11> I am also very interested, but could not find this kind of course

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Almost missed that, thx.</comment>


Airbnb (YC S09) mobilizes to help stranded travelers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.airbnb.com/need-a-place-in-nyc

<comment><USER2> I really hope the big media outlets pick this up and broad-cast across Europe. Of all the nuisance on CNN's "Social News" this bit of usefulness could be a welcome change.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I just put it on facebook. I wonder how else they've announced it (besides the blog). Airbnb's been rather good about getting press, and this could be really helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem is that most people who are stuck may not have internet access to take advantage of Airbnb. I'm typing this on internet access that cost me 9 Euros in a hotel that I first had to pay 70 Euro to get into

<comment><USER5> Obviously advice on the Internet about finding free WiFi is not terribly useful... but...

For London free WiFi can be found at:

\- Starbucks (when you buy a £5 Starbucks card, but you get the £5 back as caffeine - and unlike the US there is no daily limit, just a 2hr session limit).

\- Refurbished (green) McDonalds.

\- Coffee Republics.

\- Wetherspoons (if you feel like e-mailing while drunk).

\- Some small coffee shops, although not very many.

\- St Pancras station.

<comment><USER6> \- Pret A Manger</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker News Clone Using CQRS, Eventsourcing, React, Redux and GraphQL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/reimagined/hacker-news-resolve <comment><USER2> Nice, I always wondered how CQRS/ES would mix with GraphQL.

GraphQL seemed to me like REST in good, but I had the impression that CQRS/ES was better suited for RPC like APIs, because they could capture the Events/Actions more naturally than the limited amount of Verbs in REST or Query/Mutation in GraphQL.

<comment><AUTHOR> In reSolve framework Commands (Write side) are sent with RPC API (Command as input and result is ok or error). Queries (read side) are served via GraphQL, because it fits well with React/Redux. resolve-redux package makes it even easier - it would generate action creators for commands and handle read model querying.

<comment><USER2> Yes, makes sense to split it up :)</comment></comment></comment>


GitHub.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/michael/github

<comment><AUTHOR> Prose, the app this was built for is also quite cool: <http://prose.io/>

Very easy way to edit your Markdown documents on GitHub, regardless of whether it is just the project README, or full gh-pages.

There was quite a lot of discussion about it here back when it launched: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157321>

<comment><USER2> Wow. What a great looking editor. I'd been using Cloud9, but had issues. Wanted to build something like a wordpress-admin for gh-pages ever since v3 of the api came out.

But Prose looks like it'll do the trick nicely. Thanks for that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "stable since it is used in production" - if only thats always the case!

<comment><USER4> yeah i was wondering about that too...

"Github.js is automatically™ tested by the users of Prose. Because of that, we decided to save some time by not maintaining a test suite."

I know that Prose isn't a for-profit, business-centric app, but how does this work exactly? Is there some system built in to notify developers when an error happens, like with Airbrake? If so, THAT sounds like an awesome tool for businesses!

<comment><USER5> Haha, no. ;) We started with a test suite, but once Prose launched we had a lot of users reading and writing files to GitHub using GitHub.js (almost 5000 GitHub users have logged in at least once). So it was implicitly tested by the crowd. If something goes wrong, we know it pretty soon. Running automated tests against the GitHub API is kinda tough, and I haven't had the resources to maintain a test suite. Well, it all makes good progress, and gets more and more reliable.

Feedback welcome though, on both the API and the implementation. -- Michael</comment></comment></comment>


Stallman Number - <AUTHOR> http://newdev.ariel-networks.com/rmsnr/ <comment><USER2> Oh, I thought this was going to be like the Winer number:

[http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/04/21/whats_your_winer...](http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/04/21/whats_your_winer_number)</comment>


A Scrapbook on the Web Catches Fire - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/technology/personaltech/reviewing-pinterest-the-newest-social-media-site.html?_r=1&src=dayp <comment><USER2> How is this start up going to pay the bills?</comment>


Tensions with the West are putting the future of China's Skynet at stake - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2165372/how-tensions-west-are-putting-future-chinas-skynet-mass <comment><USER2> > _There are other components, such as graphic processing chips used in the > security cameras, that are not yet banned for sale to China, but soon may > be. Most of the chips are imported from the US, which still allows them to > be exported to China._

And here I thought all these components were manufactured and assembled entirely in China already. What's stopping a Chinese company from developing a better chip than Ryzen or Tegra? Not enough R&D funding?

<comment><USER3> Developing chips is a marathon. AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and company are decades ahead of everyone else due to the fact that they buy what they want and have been building them for decades.

Nothing is stopping a Chinese company from making their own GPU/CPUs (which they are)- it will just take years, if not decades, to reach feature parity. That's not even considering how much work China needs to do to be able to tap out chips at 32, 14, and 12nm

<comment><USER4> This claim seems a little dubious to me.

China seems pretty good at 'obtaining' the info they need to give them a head start, plus they're a manufacturing powerhouse with a ruthless determination to 'get stuff done'.

They also don't face commercial pressure to release stuff slowly. Sure it'll take them _some_ time, but 'decades' seems to me to underestimate their capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Skynet, as China's national security network is known, had 170 million > cameras last year and Beijing plans to have another 400 million units > installed across the country by 2020.

Oh wow, what an unfortunate name. Did the government choose that name oblivious to its use in movies, or is this just a nickname ascribed to the system?

<comment><USER6> This (天网, or "sky net") most likely comes from proverb "天网恢恢疏而不漏" (tian wang hui hui shu er bu lou), meaning "Justice has long arms."

This saying was from Lao Zi, going back thousands of years.

<comment><USER7> It might be both. Like here where .gov nerdy projects will be some long name starting with "Operational" that'll make the pointy hair bosses happy, but when you look at the title and subtitle it spells out Optimus Prime. I can imagine similar games being played in Mandarin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article gives the impression that sanctions were put in place in response to humanitarian concerns.</comment>


Why Your Technical Blogs Belong on Dev.to - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/ryanfarney3/why-your-technical-blogs-belong-on-devto-1hlf <comment><USER2> The serif font is a turn-off.</comment>


Linux kernel coding style - <AUTHOR> https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/process/coding-style.html <comment><USER2> This coding style works, sure. But so does the NT kernel style, which is the opposite of Linux kernel style in many ways. For example, in NT, all structs and pointers are typedefs. So what? There's a certain elegance to type names being one token long.

People bikeshed source code formatting. They make arguments about developer portability and visual minutiae, usually without any sort of evidence, when in reality the higher-level organization of the code matters a lot more. Optimizing code for readability quickly runs into diminishing returns and begins hurting a lot more than it helps.

In general, I'm strongly against rules and ceremony and centralization when it comes to coding. Ostensibly, it's all about hygiene and best practices and whatever, but in practice this kind of discipline amounts to "I like it this way and you're going to like it too". It's far more important to let developers make decentralized, rapid decisions about the best approach for a particular task than to enforce some kind of useless Procrustean uniformity on everyone.

<comment><USER3> The two styles work because they are not being mixed with their opposite. A cached shed optimization is what makes working with others bearable.

<comment><USER4> That's sort of what the parent is saying: "the only code formatting rule that matters is consistency, everything else is bollocks". But people want to think there's some kind of higher justification for their preferred style, so they come with these just-so stories that don't have any real evidence behind them.

<comment><USER5> The word consistent is an issue in and of itself. You probably mean you think it's best when a style is applied consistently. But probably don't care that the style itself values consistency. The style linked above is not remotely consistent. Braces in different columns. Braces styles for functions different from non functions. if statement can have or into have braces. All extremely inconsistent

<comment><USER2> ITYM "regular", not "consistent".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think these guidelines are something every C programmer should atleast have read and reflected about.

I've been coding according to these guidelines for quite a while with some minor modifications:

Always use curly braces (especially when you're not alone coding in the codebase as it allows for easy modification without code ending up out of the intented scope).

80 char width; well I don't follow this one as I really do prefer long lines over broken lines for readability.

Other than that I think these guidelines are great and offer consistency and easy to read code, in my opinion.

<comment><USER7> 80 char width helps encourage you to "do less stuff in each line", rather than "break lines at 80 chars".

But I agree, after a few levels of indentation (which is sometimes unavoidable) you end up struggling.

<comment><USER8> Also, when a function takes five arguments, and each_argument_looks_like_this, it's easy to hit 80 chars!

<comment><USER9> Maybe pass them in a struct?

<comment><USER10> The linux kernel USB API has a few functions that take a bunch of arguments. For example:

int usb_control_msg(struct usb_device __* dev, unsigned int pipe, __u8 request, __u8 requesttype, __u16 value, __u16 index, void __* data, __u16 size, int timeout);

So it is kind of hard to avoid going over the limit.

What we end up doing is break each argument into one line, like this (I hope the formatting comes out all right):

int res = usb_control_msg(

        dev,

        usb_sndctrlpipe(dev, 0),

        0x41,

        ...

);

It's not so much of an eye-sore.

<comment><USER9> Ahhhh I see. Nortel had that coding guideline actually. Just in their case, the first argument followed the parenthesis. The second argument (and the rest) followed the first argument column.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I always "preach" the value is in uniformity ! Weather you camelCase or kebab- style or using my-super-foo-style as long as everyone on the team uses the SAME style. Thats a WIN ! THATS where the value is !! Not in the RIGHT style but in the SAME style.

<comment><USER12> Amen to that! I have my preferences on where I place my curly braces, and I have strong opinions on camelCasing versus using_underscores. But for a given code base, consistency outweighs any advantages any given coding style might have.

Also, emacs has glasses-mode, so when I have to work on a code base that uses camel case, at least I don't have to squint really hard. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Inconsistently using braces for function declarations.

> Not using braces for conditions followed by single line statements.

> Using abbreviations.

This is enough for me to say fuck this guide.

</comment><comment><USER14> I tend to follow these guidelines with the following exceptions:

1\. always use curly braces

2\. 4 spaces instead of a tab character

<comment><USER15> I violate #1 in only one case, the entire statement has to be one line:

        if (var1 != var2) return false;

But having it on two lines and tabbed out without braces seems extremely ugly and dangerous to me.

<comment><USER16> 100% agree with both points. Though I'm the crazy guy who does

        #define unless (x) if (!(x))

so I can do

        unless (f = popen("ps -axf")) die("popen of ps -axf");

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Encoding the type of a function into the name (so-called Hungarian notation) > is brain damaged - the compiler knows the types anyway and can check those, > and it only confuses the programmer. No wonder MicroSoft makes buggy > programs.

This refers to systems hungarian, the brain-dead twin of apps hungarian. The latter can be useful in C.

<comment><USER2> "Apps Hungarian" is what happens naturally when defining meaningful variable names. You don't need to systematize it.

<comment><USER5> There are advantsges to systematizing it.

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong- code-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong-code-look- wrong/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The biggest take-away from this, in my opinion, is that it's better to just type `struct foobar` instead of typedefing `foobar_t`. Structs should be treated differently than scalars, and therefore you should write them differently. The #1 principle of any coding style should be to optimize for readability and clarity over writability and convenience.

Also, please limit your lines to 80 characters. [https://sr.ht/toyc.jpg](https://sr.ht/toyc.jpg)

<comment><USER19> > 80 characters

Assuming indentation is counted against those 80, why not use a bigger monitor?

<comment><USER18> Did you see my link?

More practically, a lot of people (myself including) will split their monitor vertically to consider lots of code at once, and talk about code in emails via patches on mailing lists and such where 80 columns is the norm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "It's a mistake to use typedef for structures and pointers."

C programmers tend to forget this wise recommendation.

<comment><USER21> I have always though it was good practise (because it reduces the verbosity) ; Could you please prove me wrong? :-)

<comment><USER22> It varies a bit by context; Linus's call is likely the right one in the context of the kernel, though to be sure it's not so big a deal that other approaches can't be made to work fine.

You call out one upside - decreased verbosity. The accompanying downside is usually - as in this case, for both structs and pointers - that potentially relevant information is made less visible. Whether it's a good idea depends on how likely that information is to be _actually_ relevant, weighed against the upsides.

Where performance is relevant, you want to be aware of where you're potentially passing large structs around. Putting this info in the type name instead is an option (eg _s), and can reduce verbosity a bit. I don't know of any good reasons to call out structs that are sized like primitives.

The case against hiding pointers is much stronger. Level of indirection can be relevant to performance, and is _often_ relevant to correctness, particularly where mutation is involved. You can put it in the type name, but it's not going to be any less verbose - a star is already one character. I allow a possible exception here for where an opaque type is allocated by a library and passed around as a handle and the client really doesn't need to ever know whether it's a pointer or an int index or what.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In case anyone is wondering if there's some kind of linter for these rules, you can use checkpath.pl [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/scripts/checkp...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/scripts/checkpatch.pl)

</comment><comment><USER8> The article has sentences like:

> First off, I'd suggest printing out a copy of the GNU coding standards...

Which suggests this was written from the point of view of a specific person. In which case, it should attribute the author somewhere. I couldn't find a byline anywhere. Also, no date.

<comment><USER24> It was originally written by Linus and is quite old (the line about burning the GNU coding standards was there in the first Git import [1], but IIRC it's way older).

[1] [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blame/master/Documentation...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blame/master/Documentation/process/coding- style.rst)

<comment><USER24> Looks like it was introduced in Linux 1.3.53, which is from Jan 1996. [http://lxr.linux.no/#linux- old+v1.3.53/Documentation/CodingS...](http://lxr.linux.no/#linux- old+v1.3.53/Documentation/CodingStyle)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are there any languages where code-style is required to be a certain way? or it won't compile. I mean full authoritarian about everything, not just based around white-space like python.

<comment><USER26> Yes, old fixed-format languages like FORTRAN and RPG (the older versions). Everything had to be written in specific columns, due to their punched card heritage.

<comment><USER27> Fixed-format FORTRAN isn't actually that rigid. The first six columns have special semantics, but apart from that, the compiler is not going to enforce a certain style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > A C programmer would call that variable tmp, which is much easier to write, > and not the least more difficult to understand.

Yuck. Abbreviations are usually bad. For one thing, people tend to pick different ways to abbreviate things so an hour later when you're trying to grep for where the variable was used you have to try to remember whether the variable was written tmp, temp, or temporary.

In this example, "temporary" is probably the least useful thing to know about the variable, since most variables are temporary. How about "counter"?

<comment><USER2> Short idioms are essential for concision in specific domains though.

My favorite example: I was writing some graphics code recently, and some reviewer said: "I don't understand this uv abbreviation that appears all over the code. Please expand it."

headdesk.gif

(For those who aren't familiar: u and v are conventional names of texture coordinates, like x, y, and z are conventional names of spatial coordinates. There's no abbreviation to expand.)

<comment><USER29> I am sure you are right, but I can't figure out what "xy" would mean in a program, either. Perhaps all the points on a plane normal to z?

<comment><USER12> I used to use x and y as my generic loop iteration variables until I worked on code that involved two-dimensional coordinates, and suddenly x and y had very specific meaning.

I skipped to i and j, but I am certain there are mathematicians out there who find that confusing, too.

I guess, it's about context, too, at least a little.

<comment><USER30> > I skipped to i and j, but I am certain there are mathematicians out there > who find that confusing, too.

IME it's pretty standard in most of mathematics to use "i" and "j" as index variables when e.g. doing sums and products over indices/sets. (Though I suppose you could be talking about the use of i, j, k as axes?)

<comment><USER12> I think in Quaternions, i, j, and k are the non-real components.

<comment><USER30> Good point, I'd missed that one! :)

What does one for index variables in that notation? Or is the main point of q notation that you don't need index variables? ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It would be nice to have this integrated into clang-format.

<comment><USER32> It doesn't have to be integrated. It shouldn't be hard to produce a .clang- format configuration file for this coding style.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > if you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and > should fix your program.

I hope some JS programmers read this

<comment><USER7> Why are anonymous functions so popular in JS? Why not just name the callback?

<comment><USER2> Because Java is a kingdom of nouns, and for the most part (method handles, which are just fancy reflection objects, aside), you can't name a function without creating a closure.

Anonymous callback:

      Foo.foo(() -> bar());

Named callback:

      private final class MyFooDelegate implements FooDelegate {
        @Override
        public void doFoo() {
          bar();
        }
      }

      ...

      Foo.foo(new MyFooDelegate())

<comment><USER34> You forgotten about method handles.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CMU professor with terminal cancer shares  about Dreams - <AUTHOR> http://www.sonnyradio.com/lastlecture.html Apologies if this has already been widely noted, originally he gave this talk at CMU in September. <comment><USER2> The hour long lecture at CMU is available at: [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=362421849901825950&#...</a></comment>


Ask HN: Most efficient practice schedule for learning? - <AUTHOR>

I surprisingly couldn't find much information about this online. Say you're trying to learn a new skill, whether it's guitar, a new language, coding, or even a sport like golf. Are there general guidelines to follow for the most efficient practice schedule? Is it "x" hours a day of deliberate practice? Is it daily with breaks every few days, or basically just get as much practice in as possible?  How do you best optimize your practice to improvement ratio? <comment><USER2> From my collections:

Review of Mnemosyne vs. Anki vs. SuperMemo <http://nihongoperapera.com/mnemosyne-anki-review.html>

Open Source Anki: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki>

Open Source Mnemosyne: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemosyne_(software)>

Some science: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition>

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

And my favorites for language learning: <http://www.smart.fm/>

</comment><comment><USER3> This should get you started, the primary research source for many of the current ideas on deliberate practice:

[http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Thanks tokenadult, great article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my experience, LONG practice sessions are much more effective than short ones. E.g., I've found I get far more out of one 8 hour practice session than four 2 hour sessions.

I'd also say you need to do it intensely - you've got to be into and "feeling" what you're doing. If you're just sitting there waiting for your 3 hours of "practice time" to elapse so you can go chill you may as well just not do it.

<comment><USER6> The value of very long practice sessions probably depends at lot on the skill you're trying to acquire. If it's a mechanical/physical skill, then the muscle groups involved would be a big limiting factor, especially for novices. Playing guitar would be challenging for a novice to practice for more than half an hour while people of average physical ability could practice a golf swing for an hour or more on day one.

The problem with favoring long sessions is that you can fall into the trap of only doing long sessions because of the perceived efficiency. Which means you'll need to 'make time' for it. Which means you'll put it off. The result is that most of the gains you make will be lost by the next time you find time for another extended session.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, good point, my advice is not particularly general. I guess I should also add, I've found most things not particularly enjoyable until I get a minimum level of skill. So if your a complete beginner jumping in for 10 hrs at a time might be a little much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You could try SuperMemo:

<http://www.supermemo.com/>

I found out about it from this article, which was posted on HN a while back:

[http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak)

<comment><USER8> I bought the Palm version of Supermemo a while back; nice program, but I found the process of creating new cards and onto the device too painful to make much use of.

(I would be surprised if this problem wasn't solved in the up-to-date, PC versions.)

I still like the idea, though; I've been using Mnemosyne (<http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/>) recently to practice my Spanish vocabulary to good effect.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Should a business method patent stop my startup? - <AUTHOR>

It made me sick to read a "business method" patent spelling out a service I am considering developing. I know similar services exist, although not in the exact formulation as the patent and what I might create.  Are these patents meaningful? <comment><USER2> Business methods were held as unpatentable subject matter until a Supreme Court ruling in 1998 ("State Street Bank"). Almost overnight, a flood of business method patent applications hit the PTO, but the examiners had no prior art to cite against the applications.

As a result, many absurdly broad business method patents were issued between 1998 and 2001, when the PTO started to tighten up on the issuances for business methods. For example, see U.S. Patent No. 5,715,314 ("Network sales system"), which probably covers every online shopping cart you've ever used...

I find it interesting that the timing of the decision coincided perfectly with beginning of the internet tech boom, so the overwhelming majority of business method patents are related to internet businesses, for better or worse.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can think of other services that violate this patent and still exist. On the other hand, I can't really do too much if I get sued... The current patent system is such an anti-competitive blight. Ugh.

<comment><USER3> I was in a similar situation to you a little over a year ago, although from the sound of it our situation was a bit more dire:

I learned that there were a number of patents (12+) that covered nearly every variation of our business method EXACTLY, and all were held by just two large companies. They were also the only two companies I could find that were using these business methods, and I couldn't find any pre-existing art. I was ready to slit my wrists. [One of the two companies has an IP division that will license the patents for royalties, but the other company wouldn't even talk to us except to threaten us.]

I spent a few weeks reading the competitive patents, and then found a 'loophole' than not only enabled us to compete with them, but that allowed us to generate several new revenue streams and to strengthen the strategic position of another one of our portfolio companies. The companies with the competitive patents had also been successful enough (Billion$) that they essentially proved our business model, so signing up partners is becoming easier for us. The fact that our competitors had great patents actually ended up helping us in the end.

In our case, the initial breakthrough for finding the 'loophole' was realizing that by focusing on an alternate "concrete and tangible result" to the competitive patents, we gained an entirely new perspective. Say, for example, that the competitive patent's "tangible result" was financial savings for retail investors. Our "tangible result" might then become generating new business for a brokerage firm, not saving money for the retail investors. That little change in perspective might suggest a different business method, perhaps even one that is better. I'd give our specific example, which would be much more clear...but that would be giving away the store a bit. We're still in the process of patenting OUR new business methods, so that we can cause some other startup intense psychological pain ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No, don't sweat it. You can't do a web application of any kind without violating any number of patents.

</comment><comment><USER5> No.</comment>


The Heisenberg Guide to Sales  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getbase.com/the-heisenberg-guide-to-sales

<comment><USER2> She forgot #6.

\---

6\. He died alone, now hated by virtually everyone he ever loved.

Getting caught up the "empire building" business caused Walt to lose sight of what was really important in life, resulting in a situation in which he was directly responsible for dozens of deaths including that of his own brother- in-law and the complete abandonment of him by his family, not to mention an untold amount of collateral life destruction via the supply of his product.

\---

Yeah, I get it, "Breaking Bad" is a hot topic right now. Great show! But is this really the show and character you want to base your sales force on? Jeez.

Also, FWIW, Walt was never a sociopath as the article says. Todd probably was, but Walt certainly wasn't.

<comment><USER3> You don't think Walt had a history of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights of others? I certainly do. And you're right - the post is meant to be a bit cheeky. I wouldn't really hire Walter White for my sales team, but I do think we can learn some things from him :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are many real world applications. He had the highest quality product and that meant nothing without key distribution. How you distribute your product (with an amazing UI for example) can have a huge effect.

<comment><USER3> Excellent addition, Doug. Thanks for chiming in - distribution was key.</comment></comment>


RealNetworks financially ruins Dutch web developer for linking to freeware - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwebwereld.nl%2Fnieuws%2F107687%2Fhyperlink-ru--neert-websitebouwer.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Short summary, because the Google translation sucks:

His house was raided by the authorities and his computer equipment was seized because he linked to a piece of software called RealAlternative which seems to be some sort of reverse engineered codec for RealVideo. By now his legal bills have reached the massive amount of 75000 euros.

The shocking thing - apart from the fact that RealNetworks still exists this day and age - is that they never sent some sort of takedown request. The raid on his house by police is apparently the first thing he heard of any problem.

edit: According to another article, RealNetworks are claiming hundreds of thousands of euros in damages from him.</comment>


Will your startup live up to its potential? [Eric Ries, BofS 2011] - <AUTHOR> http://blip.tv/business-of-software/eric-ries-the-science-of-lean-startups-5450527 <comment><USER2> This is one of my favorite talks but...

It was at Business of Software 2010, not 2011.

You can get a transcript of the talk if you don't have time to watch the full hour here: [http://thebln.com/2011/09/eric-ries-the-lean-startup-the- mos...](http://thebln.com/2011/09/eric-ries-the-lean-startup-the-most- innovative-book-launch-ever-video-transcript-of-erics-talk-the-science-of- lean-startups-at-business-of-software-2010/)

This year's event takes place in Boston 24-26th October. (I run it) <http://businessofsoftware.org/></comment>


DropZap 3 rejected from app store. Please help. - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/gepyr/dropzap_3_rejected_from_app_store_please_help/

<comment><USER2> I think the advice you're getting from Reddit is pretty sound.

" _Why do you have so many different side-by-side versions? Why aren't you making it a single app? This makes no sense. If you want these as separate apps, then it would make sense to give them very different names, not the same name with a number after it (which implies a new version)._ "

[http://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/gepyr/dropzap_3_reje...](http://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/gepyr/dropzap_3_rejected_from_app_store_please_help/c1n14sy)

<comment><AUTHOR> The situation is complicated by what has already been done with DropZap and DropZap 2.

It's not clear what I should do.

<comment><USER3> No, its quite the opposite. It _is_ clear what you should do - harvest all the attention you can get from this, but most certainly just combine them, or rename them as per Angry Birds/Rio/Seasons etc.

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Renaming won't help. There's a policy against similar apps in the app store.

As for the complications, see what I wrote on reddit.</comment></comment></comment></comment>