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Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
371–380 of 609 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#372Search is primarily a portal - you know a particular resource exists, you just don't know its exact URL. You hear about this new programming language called "Frob", and you assume it must have a website. So you google "Frob language". You hear that there was a plane crash in DC, and assume (CNN/AP/your_favorite_news_site) has almost certainly written an article about it. You google "DC plane crash." LLMs aren't ever…
IMO an example of a good use case for an LLM, which would be otherwise very hard to search for, is clarifying vague technical concepts. Just yesterday I was trying to remember the name of a vague concept I’d forgotten, with my overall question being: “Is there a technical term in biology for the equilibrium that occurs between plant species producing defensive toxins, and toxin resistance in the insect species that f…
While I do like LLMs for these tasks, unfortunately this one failed you but was a near enough miss that you couldn't see it. What you were really looking for is the Red Queen problem/hypothesis/race, named after a quote from Through the Looking Glass, with the Queen explaining to Alice: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." In particular, the Red Queen term is specifically the equilibrium you inquired about, where relative fitness is unchanging, rather than the more general concept of an evolutionary arms race in which there can be winners and losers. The terms 'evolutionary equilibrium' and 'evolutionary steady state' are also used to capture the idea of the equilibrium, rather than just of competition.
Evolutionary arms race is somewhat tautological; an arms race is the description of the selective pressure applied by other species on evolution of the species in question. (There are other, abiotic sources of selective pressures, e.g. climate change on evolutionary timescales, so while 'evolution' at least carries a broader meaning, 'arms race' adds nothing that wasn't already there.)
That said, using your exact query on deepseek r1 and claude sonnet 3.7 both did include red queen in their answers, along with other related concepts like tit for tat escalation.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#373I've become very very bad at Google searches. Nothing seems accurate anymore, I should say precise, I'm hitting vendor/official/party-line stuff, or wordy blogs that say nothing.
I use ChatGPT at home constantly, for history questions, symptoms of an illness, identification of a plant hiking, remembering a complex term or idea I can't articulate, tips for games, and this list goes on.
At work it's Copilot.
I've come to loathe and mock Google search and I can't be the only one.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#374I still prefer tranditional search engines over LLMs but I admit, its results feels worse than it has traditionally. I don't like LLMs for two reasons: * I can't really get a feel for the veracity of the information without double checking it. A lot of context I get from just reading results from a traditional search engine is lost when I get an answer from a LLM. I find it somewhat uncomfortable to just accept the a…
>A lot of context I get from just reading results from a traditional search engine is lost when I get an answer from a LLM. I find it somewhat uncomfortable to just accept the answer, and if I have to double check it anyways, the LLM's answer is kind of meaningless and I might as well use a traditional search engine.
And this is how LLMs perform when LLM-rot hasn't even become widely pervasive yet. As time goes on and LLMs regurgitate into themselves, they will become even less trustworthy. I really can't trust what an LLM says, especially when it matters, and the more it lies, the more I can't trust them.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#375Search is primarily a portal - you know a particular resource exists, you just don't know its exact URL. You hear about this new programming language called "Frob", and you assume it must have a website. So you google "Frob language". You hear that there was a plane crash in DC, and assume (CNN/AP/your_favorite_news_site) has almost certainly written an article about it. You google "DC plane crash." LLMs aren't ever…
I'd go further, and say I use search when I'm pretty confident I know the right search terms. If I don't, I'll type some wordy long explanation of what I want into an LLM and hope for the best. The reason is pretty simple. If the result you want is in the first few search hits, it's always better. Your query is shorter so there is less typing, the search engine is always faster, the results are far better because you…
It depends. Sometimes webpages are useful, but at the same time navigating the amount of fluff on webpages nowadays takes longer than asking a LLM.
I asked Claude to give me a recipe that uses mushrooms and freezes well and it give me a decent looking soup recipe. It might not be the best soup ever, but it's soup, kinda hard to mess up. The alternative would be to get a recipe from the web with a couple dozen paragraphs about how this is the bestest soup ever and it comes from their grandma and reminds them of summer and whatnot.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#376Search is primarily a portal - you know a particular resource exists, you just don't know its exact URL. You hear about this new programming language called "Frob", and you assume it must have a website. So you google "Frob language". You hear that there was a plane crash in DC, and assume (CNN/AP/your_favorite_news_site) has almost certainly written an article about it. You google "DC plane crash." LLMs aren't ever…
IMO an example of a good use case for an LLM, which would be otherwise very hard to search for, is clarifying vague technical concepts. Just yesterday I was trying to remember the name of a vague concept I’d forgotten, with my overall question being: “Is there a technical term in biology for the equilibrium that occurs between plant species producing defensive toxins, and toxin resistance in the insect species that f…
Agreed. I'm increasingly using ChatGPT to research topics. In that way, I can refine my question, drill down, ask for alternatives, supply my own supplementary information, etc.
I think of AI as an intelligent search engine / assistant and, outside of simple questions with one very specific answer, it just crushes search engines.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#377google and bing are much worse now. I cant find anything. I cant remember the last time a discussion [platform] made it into the results. Kinda comical how even the ads are terrible. I think they discover it is better for me to keep searching rather than buy anything?
Twitter and reddit are garbage.
I sometimes use youtube search then fast forward with the subs on and the sound off.
The internet has ended. It's been a fun ride, thanks everyone.
6510 slaps hn with a large trout
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#378Yes, I use search engine(s) constantly - namely Kagi, which really does feel like Google used to. I tried using LLMs for a recent project of mine when I was trying to figure out if something was possible, and they were actively misleading, every time. My issue for this project was that what I was asking for did end up not being currently possible, but LLMs wouldn't tell me that and would make up incorrect ways to sol…
My experience too. The problem isn't search, it's Google. Kagi really is very useful. I use LLMs for some things but still lots of Kagi search.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#379Using search engines are still _significantly_ faster for me for the vast majority of the queries I want answers for.
The results from LLMs are still too slow, vary too much in quality and still frequently hallucinate.
My typical use-case is that when I'm looking for an answer I make a search query, sometimes a few. Then scan through the list of results and open tabs for the most promising of them - often recognising trusted, or at least familiar, sites. I then scan through those tabs for the best results. It turns out I can scan rapidly - that whole process only takes a few seconds, maybe a minute for the more complex queries.
I've found LLMs are good when you have open-ended questions, when you're not really sure what you're looking for. They can help narrow the search space.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#380Yes, I use Google Search.
But I appreciate and read the Google Gemini AI generated response at the top of the page.
Also, I'm an iPhone user. But I have a Google Pixel phone for deve work.
I find myself now using 'Hey Google' a lot more because of the Gemini responses.
It's particularly fun playing with it with the kids on road trips as we ask it weird questions, and get it to reply in olde english, or speak backwards in French and so on!