Topic: Remember when you could use google search and find what you were looking for?
Anonymous A started this discussion 2 years ago#115,441
Yeah.
Might as well head straight to wikipedia for factual stuff, straight to reddit if I want the hivemind's opinion, and put a bullet through my brain for anything else, cause that has about as much of a chance of helping as wading through the endless crap google shits out these days.
Anonymous A (OP) double-posted this 2 years ago, 7 minutes later[^][v]#1,274,953
Occasionally, depending on the question, I can also head straight over to stackoverflow if I want to find the exact question I'm looking for. Most often I find that the question's been closed as a duplicate and then linked to another question that is either 10+ years old and not relevant any more, or not actually the question I was asking. Normally it's both.
tteh !MemesToDNA joined in and replied with this 2 years ago, 9 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,187
@1,274,953 (A)
StackOverflow is becoming even more useless now people are using AI. Developers are using ChatGPT and GitHub's CoPilot and not bothering to ask questions on StackOverflow (their CEO acknowledged this recently), which is concerning considering how much of this AI is trained on data from StackOverflow in the first place... It seems all downhill from here.
tteh !MemesToDNA double-posted this 2 years ago, 2 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,188
And yeah I often find myself appending "Reddit" or "site:reddit.com" to my Google searches. Everyone on Quora, which Google seems to push, is massively retarded and I don't want random blogspam either.
I miss when you could Google "that film where they're in a boat and it has the actor from this other film" and it would be the top result.
Anonymous E replied with this 2 years ago, 1 hour later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,198
@previous (tteh !MemesToDNA)
But promisingly, you can now DuckDuckGo it and find a tangentially related rant written by a NeoNazi on the first page of results that has a screencap of the film two thirds down
Anonymous A (OP) double-posted this 2 years ago, 1 minute later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,203
@1,275,198 (E)
Anything I want to find something incredibly obscure, I have better luck with DuckDuckGo than anything else. But if I'm not trying to find something all that obscure, it's basically useless. I don't know how they (Bing) managed to get a search engine to work like that.
tteh !MemesToDNA replied with this 2 years ago, 3 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,204
@1,275,202 (A)
Everyone there is bloody insufferable. And every other post is some "sponsored" bollocks by some pretentious twat or SEO spam or engagement farming. It's like Yahoo Answers meets LinkedIn.
tteh !MemesToDNA double-posted this 2 years ago, 3 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,205
@1,275,203 (A)
I found the results were better before they switched to Bing. I used DDG at the very beginning back when Weinberg would personally reply to emails (and I suggested a few small changes, one of which he did) and it seemed a lot better in that era, but I haven't really used it much for years so maybe it's improved recently.
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 2 years ago, 1 minute later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,206
@1,275,187 (tteh !MemesToDNA)
It'll get better eventually. There's a lot of money waiting for whichever company or group gets some form of reinforcement learning working well with LLMs, so they can finally go beyond just mimicking the average idiot online. I don't think it will happen until the hype (and stock prices) goes down when people realise auto-regression/mimicry training is only going to get us so far.
But for now we get to enjoy the Hollywood sequels phase of AI development, where we get the same thing re-released every year or two because OpenAI/Google/Facebook need not actually invest in serious research when they can just throw more hardware at the same old approaches and get tons of media coverage for it every time.
Anonymous A (OP) double-posted this 2 years ago, 4 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,207
@1,275,205 (tteh !MemesToDNA)
What do you use now?
I never had much success with duckduckgo, but maybe I got in too late.
I tried searx for a while, but the nodes are too unreliable and the search results are not that good.
Now I mostly use startpage (google front end) through tor. I don't like startpage, but it's the most practical thing I can find. Their antibot/spam detection is bullshit though and has way too many false positives. I've never in recent times had success using the "site:asdf.com" pattern on my own connection, through tor, or vpns. Instant temporary block.
tteh !MemesToDNA replied with this 2 years ago, 14 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,210
@previous (A)
Beyond Google, I use Startpage and Qwant. I used Ixquick until the merger with Startpage. I have no idea if Qwant is still using Bing's results or not (it used to) but I find it fairly decent and it doesn't tend to hassle me with captchas etc. when I'm using a VPN.
Also, Yandex's search is surprisingly not too terrible and its image search is nowhere near as filtered as Google or Bing nowadays. It will absolutely captcha you every 10 or so searches if you're using a VPN though.
Yandex's email service is also grate for throwaway email addresses (obviously there are more privacy-oriented providers; works well in a pinch though).
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 2 years ago, 12 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,217
@1,275,210 (tteh !MemesToDNA)
Can you get yandex emails over tor?
I use protonmail, but they require phone numbers and crap like that if you go through tor. Not so normally though.
There was another one, tutonia (?) I forgot the name. It's from Germany, I think. That's similar to protonmail, but similar BS when trying to register through tor.
Luckily I rarely have a need for completely anonymous email, but if there's a way for me to do it without tons of trouble, why not?
tteh !MemesToDNA replied with this 2 years ago, 8 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,221
@previous (A)
Last I used Yandex Mail through Tor was ~5 years back — I don't recall any issues. Not sure about nowadays.
RuggedInbox used to be great for mail over Tor before it died, probably due to the sheer amount of abuse. Tor Mail was okay although it suffered from emails being blocked or going missing, then died when Freedom Hosting was taken down and never returned (maybe the Freedom Hosting nonce was even the one running it, idk).
Have you looked into Mail2Tor? Never used it, but it seemed popular enough when I last looked into this.
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 2 years ago, 4 hours later, 1 day after the original post[^][v]#1,275,273
@1,275,221 (tteh !MemesToDNA)
Thanks. I've made a note and will look into them if/when (probably "when", not if...) I find a use for a completely anonymous email account again. I mean, I guess with all things, there's always a way to do stuff like that if you're willing to put in the time and think things through carefully. But rarely, and increasingly so, do I come across situations where I'm motivated enough to. But if I can just hop on tor and signup, that's a game changer and like I said, why not?
> Also I didn't even know ProtonMail allowed Tor. I thought it blocked all Tor users. Maybe I'm thinking of another provider.
They do. They even have a .onion site. But again, kind of pointless if you can't easily sign up over tor without bs like giving a phone number. Sure, one could possibly find a way to temporarily buy a number with crypto or something, but that's so much work. None of my use cases are serious enough for me to put in that much effort.
Anonymous A (OP) double-posted this 2 years ago, 5 minutes later, 2 days after the original post[^][v]#1,275,300
> What, do you believe, is the question of the century?
> Generating answers for you…
> That’s a great question! There are many questions that could be considered the question of the century, depending on one’s perspective. One of the most pressing questions of our time is whether technology can solve the climate crisis or make it worse 1. Another question that has been debated for decades is whether we have a right to a livable climate. The 10 biggest questions of the past 100 years, according to NBC’s “Today” show, include what makes a courtroom proceeding the “trial of the century,” who was the biggest villain of the century, and what was the biggest medical breakthrough of the century. Finally, the Millennium Prize Problems, which are seven complex mathematical problems, have been called the most important open problems in mathematics.
> What do you think is the question of the century?
Q1. Solve it.
Q2. No.
Q3. no1cares
Q4. no1cares
Q5. "What do you think is the question of the century?" is it asking me or is this part of the answer lol?
Anonymous A (OP) replied with this 2 years ago, 19 minutes later, 2 days after the original post[^][v]#1,275,408
@previous (I)
Wow, yahoo answers. That's a throwback. I remember it being kinda dumb, but the people answering questions generally weren't exclusively know-it-all boomers, so I never found it annoying like I find quora.
Apparently it closed down in 2021. I would've guessed it closed down 10 years prior. Wikipedia is claiming that the Japanese version is still online for some reason.