That's probably what Disqus would have said too if you asked them when they were in your phase. Privacy concerns aren't solved by promises, it's solved by infrastructural and technical decisions that make tracking impossible or/and simply not profitable.
…and if I was looking for a hosted solution I'd probably go for https://www.discourse.org/ as it's open source and possible to self host if I'd like to migrate to that some day.
I'm sure DDG works great if you're an American. As someone who has tried a region specific version of DDG though, I can say the results are downright terrible.
Some say the DDG bangs are a solution. What do I win by doing that? It only made me resort to !g all the time, because the results were so bad.
Now I use https://www.startpage.com/ with region set to Swedish. It's practically a proxy for Google search, so it gives me the right results but sans the filter bubble experience (yes, I want the regional bubble). If you're a non US user, I can recommend it.
I must say I'm having the reverse experience. I very seldom use its Danish regional setting, but even for Danish searches DDG is fine. It's only 4-5 times a month I need the !g bang. But knowing about Startpage, I now use the !sp bang instead of !g.
Indeed, due to the bangs, I know use DDG as my proxy to a lot of other search engines, like Wikipedia (!w/!wda/!w..) and Wiktionary (!wikt), and even obscure ones like Memory Alpha (!memoryalpha). Very handy indeed.
Note you can access startpage results from DDG with the "!s" bang.
I rarely use region specific DDG, but when I do, I find it ok. With DDG I can manually enable/disable and switch the region, while Google guesses based on my IP - very annoying, given that I frequently use VPNs. (Of course, if you're logged in to Google, you can specify region/language/etc., but if you don't want to be tracked and delete their cookies or use the browser in private/porn/incognito mode, then it'll just assume that you are looking for Dutch things in the Netherlands, because that's where the VPN exit is...)
As Finn I rarely search for Finnish specific stuff. Sometimes I check prices or if something ships here or not, but that is exceedingly rare and for that DDG works fine.
As for bangs, I love skipping clicks. Most of the time I know what I want and can use bangs accordingly. I'm guessing my most common tags are !a, !yt, !gh, !wiki, !wolf and then some game(s) specific bangs.
I do agree with that. As I am from India I find myself hitting g! or actually opening google.co.in more often than I should but I am still trying DDG and will give it few weeks more.
StartPage doesn't seem to be helpful at all. It doesn't let me select language and region separately. I need to select English UK and then it sets my region as UK. Also, it's very slow (at least for me)
I never touch the DDG settings, but I often search in about a dozen different languages, and I get great results. The rare times I try to find something in another search engine, including Google, I get worse (or not better at best) results there, even for quite obscure topics, so I guess everything is user-specific.
Decentralized social networks is often an alternative to profit driven social networks.
The social giants today optimize their offerings so that we spend as much time as possible using them[1] to maximize profits. That doesn't necessarily make us happier. Wouldn't a a social that frees time and doesn't create addiction and depression be something to strive for?
I think we should stop counting success in time spent and numbers of users.
1. I have been looking for the icons on this site for 3 minutes and I can't find them. I suppose they should be visible in the examples[1], but they are not. Not in Firefox, not in Chromium.
2. Custom HTML elements. I see that even Firefox 58 wont support for them[2]. Isn't this a premature choice? Is there a fallback?
I was however able to view a couple of fonts via the header on the site. Looks beautiful.
I alternate between standing and sitting. It seems only natural to me that the body needs variation. Stand, sit and (if possible) take a brief walk. Also, there's only one way to stand (correct me if I'm wrong), but there's a whole bunch of ways to sit. http://www.anvention.com/images/zazen_postures.jpg
You can still stand with bad posture which doesn't do your lower back any good. [0] Some people call it sway back, others call it Anterior Pelvic Tilt (APT).
Can't edit, but I now see what you meant for sitting in different positions. Still, people should be standing and thinking about how they stand in order to get better posture and not have back problems in the future.
Oh my god! What a coincidence this is. Yesterday at around 3am I woke up in the middle if the night and I had the worst pain in my lower back.
I have never had any problems with my back in my entire life so this came as a shocker. My job is as a web developer so I spend 90% of my time awake seated and working.
Here's what happened:
Once I woke up, I tried standing up and I could barely walk because of the pain. Talk about being god damn mortified. I immediately called my girlfriend to let her know she should probably check on me in the morning.
In a state of panic, I also called a doctor friend of mine at around 4:30am. I explained my situation to him and he told me to conduct a simple test and answer some questions so he could assess what it could be: he asked me to put my chin on my chest which I could and that was good. He also asked whether there was numbness or tingliness which I didn't have so he was more at ease. However, because he couldn't explain what it was he suggested I should go to the hospital. It wasn't safe to get out at that time so I decided to take some ibuprofen which luckily I had, and wait it out till the sun was up. I managed to get some sleep by 5:50am and by the time I woke up at 9am. The pain had somehow reduced and I could walk again.
My friend later on prescribed some myospaz and suggested it might have been a muscular issue. I'm feeling much better now. I still can't bend or lift heavy things but I can at least I can do some basic stuff like go to the bathroom without feeling excruciating pain when I change body posture e.g. moving from standing to sitting position and vice-versa.
I'm working from home now. Seated on my couch in the living room because, you know, code must be shipped and I absolutely love what I do. My back is rested on the couch so I'm pretty comfortable and the pain has been gradually decreasing.
LESSONS LEARNED
1. What didn't help:
Reading about back pains on the internet. If you want to absolutely heighten your anxiety when panicking about your health, read about it on the internet. I had begun to imagine the worst.
2. My girlfriend has been so great helping me out with cooking and cleaning since I've been pretty much useless at any laborious tasks. I should probably marry her NOW. She's been amazing.
3. Ergonomics
I've been trying to figure out what I might have done to trigger this and the only thing that comes to mind is that lately I had been changing my posture to a more upright position i.e. straight back instead of leaning back on the chair and letting my back ease up by resting it on the back of the chair. I'm insatiably trying to learn all I can about this topic. (any resources are welcome)
