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Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

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Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#201

Post by dymk »

alfanick wrote: post #108

I see a lot of good comments here, I got inspired to write this: What if this new Internet instead of using URI based on ownership (domains that belong to someone), would rely on topic? In examples: netv2://speakers/reviews/BW netv2://news/anti-trump netv2://news/pro-trump netv2://computer/engineering/react/i-like-it netv2://computer/engineering/electron/i-dont-like-it A publisher of webpage (same html/http) would pu…

Who maintains, audits, and does validation for content submitted to these global lists of topics?

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#202

Post by inputcoffee »

dbspin wrote: post #183
inputcoffee wrote: post #180

It was thought that one way of finding information is to ask your network (Facebook and Twitter would be examples), and then they would pass on the message and a chain of trusted sources would get the information back to you. I am being purposefully vague because I don't think people know what an effective version of that would look like, but its worth exploring. If you have some data you might ask questions like: 1.…

This seems significantly laborious. Not sure that the utility of this kind of network recommendation scales to incentivise participation beyond a few people. i.e.: We already have user groups on sites like reddit, FB etc, where experts or enthusiasts answer questions when they feel like it. But this is a slow process that relies on a group that contains enough distributed knowledge, but isn't overwhelmed with inquiri…

I don't think it would be questions.

Suppose you like fountain pens, and you recommend certain ones. One of your friend looks for fountain pens that their friends recommend and finds the ones you like.

That is just one example of things that don't require explicit questions.

Another one might be you have searched for books or other things and then they follow the same "path". So long as you have similar interests it might work.

People haven't solved this issue, but there is a lot of research out there on networks of connections potentially replacing certain kinds of search.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#203

Post by pavas »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #182
pavas wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get around the problem of manipulation if your trustworthiness metric for content will be the same for all people, as it is on reddit, hacker news, or Amazon for example. Having moderators just concentrates the issue into a smaller number of people and you haven't solved the central problem--manipulation is profitable. But think of how we solve this problem in our personal interactions with other people, an…

>We have a pretty good idea of which people are trustworthy (or capable, or dependable, or any other characteristic) in our daily lives // We really don't. People get surprised all the time that someone had an affair, or cheated, or ripped someone off, or whatever. "But I trusted you" ... It's actually relatively easy to fool people in to trusting you, as many red team members will probably confirm. Look at someone l…

So how do _you_ make any sort of judgments based off of what people say? What information do you use to judge whether their statements are accurate? Or do you always start with the assumption that everything everyone says is suspect? What sort of information do you use to come to any sort of conclusion, and how do you determine the trustworthiness of that information?

>This is domain authority again - trust some domains manually, let it flow from there. If that domain trusts another domain then they link to it, trust flows to the other domain, and so on. Maintaining such trust for a long time adds to a particular domains trust factor, linking to domains not trusted by others detracts from it.

This can be gamed if you're able to update the trustworthiness of a domain for other people, and that's why a trust metric needs to be mostly personal, and should update dynamically based on your changing trust valuations.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#204

Post by dymk »

ken wrote: post #172
jasode wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, where all the smarts [...] reside on your device, not in the cloud, is the most promising. [...] An on-device search agent could potentially be the best solution [...] Maybe I misunderstand your proposal but to me, this is not technically possible. We can think of a modern search engine as a process that reduces a raw dataset of exabytes [0] into a comprehensible result of ~5000 bytes (i.e. ~5k being the 1st page…

The smarts living on-device is not necessarily the same as the smarts executing on-device. We already have the means to execute arbitrary code (JS) or specific database queries (SQL) on remote hosts. It's not inconceivable, to me, that my device "knowing me" could consist of building up a local database of the types of things that I want to see, and when I ask it to do a new search, it can assemble a small program wh…

I think you're suggesting homomorphic encryption to execute the user's ranking model. Unfortunately, homomorphic encryption is pretty slow, and the types of operations you can do are limited. But it's viable if the data you're operating on is relatively small - e.g. just searching through (encrypted) personal messages or something.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#205

Post by thekyle »

mhandley wrote: post #57

We could always ask a different question: what would it take for everyone to have a copy of the index? Humans can only produce new text-based content at a linear rate. If storage continues to grow at an exponential rate, eventually it becomes relatively cheap to hold a copy of the index. Of course those assumptions may not be valid. Content may grow faster than linear. Content may not all be produced by humans. Stora…

> Humans can only produce new text-based content at a linear rate.

True but that assumes a fixed number of humans. In reality, the number of humans is also increasing exponentially.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#206

Post by jasode »

davemp wrote: post #193
jasode wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What would make the approach viable is if there were a nice way to automate and crowd source most/all of the effort. But to me, crowdsourcing is also what Jerry & David did. The users submitted links to Yahoo. AltaVista also had a form for users to submit new links. Also, Wikipedia's list of links are also crowdsourced in the sense that many outside websurfers (not just staff editors) make suggested edits to the wik…

Sometimes it just takes a small changes to make an idea work. Neural networks weren't viable until GPUs/backpropagation. Dismissive comments like this aren't very useful.

>Dismissive comments

I wasn't being dismissive. I was trying to refine your crowdsourcing idea by explicitly surfacing what's been tried in the past.

The thread's op asks: "Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?"

If the current best answer for op is: "I propose crowdsourced curated directories is the alternative to Google/Bing -- but the implementation details is left as an exercise for the reader" ... that's fine that our conversation terminates there and we don't have to go around in circles. The point is I didn't know this thread's discussion ultimately terminates there until I ask more probing questions so people can try to expand on what their alternative proposal actually entails. I also don't know what baseline knowledge the person proposing the idea has. I.e. does person suggesting an idea have knowledge of internet's evolution and has that been taken into account?

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#207

Post by dymk »

kyberias wrote: post #25

If we were to design a brand new DATABASE ENGINE for today's world, can we develop it such a way that: 1. Finding information is trivial 2. You don't need services indexing billions of rows to find any relevant document

Google throws billions of dollars at this problem, nothing about it is "trivial".

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#208

Post by bogomipz »

neoteo wrote: post #43

I think Apple's current approach, where all the smarts (Machine Learning, Differential Privacy, Secure Enclave, etc.) reside on your device, not in the cloud, is the most promising. As imagined in so much sci-fi (eg. the Hosaka in Neuromancer) you build a relationship with your device which gets to know you, your habits and, most importantly in regard to search, what you mean when you search for something and what re…

I remember hearing something about Differential Privacy from a WWDC keynote a few years back however I haven't heard much lately. Can you say how and where Apple is currently using Differential Privacy/

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#209

Post by bogomipz »

decasteve wrote: post #146
alfanick wrote: post #108

I see a lot of good comments here, I got inspired to write this: What if this new Internet instead of using URI based on ownership (domains that belong to someone), would rely on topic? In examples: netv2://speakers/reviews/BW netv2://news/anti-trump netv2://news/pro-trump netv2://computer/engineering/react/i-like-it netv2://computer/engineering/electron/i-dont-like-it A publisher of webpage (same html/http) would pu…

Inventing/extending a new NNTP is nice idea too. The Internet has become synonymous with the web/http protocol. The web alternatives to NNTP won instead of newer versions of Usenet. New versions of IRC, UUCP, S/FTP, SMTP, etc., instead of webifying everything would be nice. But those services are still there and fill an important niche for those not interested in seeing everything eternal septembered.

I believe there is/was an extension to NNTP for full text search or at least a draft proposal no?

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#210

Post by anchpop »

pif wrote: post #199
anchpop wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are placed via an automatic auction upon pageview. GM and Ford both want to show me an ad when I google "what car to buy", and have automatic systems that decide how much they'd be willing to pay to show me that ad based on my likelihood of purchase (income, sex, location, etc). Why not have a system that follows me around and outbids them using funds from my bank account, to show me an ad which is just a transpa…

Are you actually proposing for people to gasp! pay gasp! for content?

Google makes around 30 billion/quarter on ads. Assuming most of that comes from 200 million users (they have more than that but I assume a lot are not worth very much to advertisers), and their ad revenue comes from a 50% cut of the total ad payments, that comes out to around $300/quarter or $75 a month. I'd pay it, but I think most wouldn't.
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