Hi -- I'm Head of Product at Cape (previously led product at DuckDuckGo). We are indeed trying to provide an alternative to all the data collection and sharing major carriers do in the US. Happy to answer any questions people have about Cape.

Sorry about that, we had a brief issue with our proxy, it should be working properly now.

DuckDuckGo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315142

LOL, all the people saying the the name is horrible.

I like DDG but still don't like the name. When telling people about it I heard several times that it sounds like a hobby project and not very trustworthy.

I don't think changing the name would make sense for them at this stage but I'd say they are successful despite the name, not because of it.

No joke, I would be more willing to recommend it to others if I could say the name with a straight face.

The name is bad.

Some of the people in that thread are comparing "Just duck it" to "Just google it"

Or even better, how about "Just duck it, mother truckers"

Are they wrong?

Or the design. But who can blame them: https://web.archive.org/web/20080926132853/http://duckduckgo...

The design has improved significantly over the years.

Disclaimer: I work for DDG.

I'd be interested in looking into any examples of searches where the results aren't good enough or where it seems to have gotten worse recently.

As far as I know there haven't been any changes over the past few weeks that would have made things worse.

Here's one I searched for just today: "helium" "futures"

DDG returns 2 results.[1] Google returns 369,000.[2]

Here's another one: "opec" "rebalancing" "peak"

DDG returns 0 results.[3] Google returns 319,000.[4]

There have been many, many others. I can email you them as I run in to them, if you want. Just let me know what email address to use.

Also, just to clarify, I noticed the change maybe 3 or 4 months (not weeks) ago.

[1] - https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?q="helium"%20"futures"&kd=-1

[2] - https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22helium%22%20%...

[3] - https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?q="opec"%20"rebalancing"%20"pea...

[4] - https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22opec%22%20%22...

Just be aware that Google's "hits" number is a wild overestimate. For example, the "helium" "futures" search actually only returns 222 pages (which is obviously still much higher than DDG): https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22helium%22%20%.... Likewise, the "opec" "rebalancing" "peak" returns only 264: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22opec%22%20%22...

I guess the problem only occurs with the lite version? At least for me, removing the /lite/ part in the URL results in far more results.

Thanks, these are helpful. Is it mostly searches with quoted words?

brian@duckduckgo.com

Yeah, I use quotes a lot because otherwise I find the results are pretty poor (ie. they seem to be more likely to miss at least one of the terms I searched for, and if I'm searching for a phrase then an unquoted phrase could have its words scattered all over the place rather than be treated as a phrase).

This was in fact an issue with queries containing quotes on our /lite and /html sites. It should be fixed now. Let me know if you see any other issues.

What happened is we frequently get hit by bots trying to scrape the links from our /lite and /html sites and we have to react by creating rules to try to block them. This particular rule, was over-aggressive. Our ops team is going to discuss internally how to prevent something like this from happening again.

Thanks!

Thank you. I appreciate you responding personally, taking this seriously, and providing a quick fix.

Why does DDG only seem to search videos via Youtube, even with Safe Search set to off?

I live in the UK and with our internet laws here becoming more and more strict over the last few (and coming) years, I wanted an alternative to Google or Bing who both actively cooperate with the governments existing proclivity to censor things like Porn.

Bing's video search for pornography is absolutely fantastic, it's legitimately the one thing I use Bing for.

I guess its a right time to try bing. Will do the next time i have a urge

Thanks for the feedback. We only return videos from YouTube right now, but expanding that is definitely something we'd like to do in the future.

thank you for bangs. changed my entire web browsing experience.

It actually does use WebRTC in Chrome. It falls back to Flash in FF right now.

Why? Firefox has had WebRTC support for a while.

Edit: Ok I see below you want Firefox to give you access to the users microphone without asking permission.

They can both be configured in Settings: https://duckduckgo.com/settings

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

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

We have implemented a bunch of the feedback from the original discussion. Detailed release notes were posted in the forum: https://duck.co/forum/thread/5747/duckduckgo-beta-refinement... https://duck.co/forum/thread/5851/duckduckgo-beta-refinement...

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

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

I can't express how much I like having a dark theme. Thanks so much for making a page I can refer to at night that is both clear and doesn't feel like I turned a lamp on two feet from my face!

Thanks! I'd totally miss the themes functionality if not for your comment. Just switched to Dark to match my desktop theme and it looks perfect. I hope more themes will be added in the future.

You can also fine tune the individual colors on the results page in Settings (https://duckduckgo.com/settings)

Try adding 'news' to the query: https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=amazon+news