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Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
591–600 of 609 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#592I’m someone that grew up with AltaVista and thus I’m pretty good with my search terms and modifiers. And I often remember specific phrases from the websites I’m looking for. However, Google is more and more optimised for people NOT knowing what they’re looking for and is now even ignoring “quotes” for exact terms unless you switch it to verbatim mode. Which is a shame.
I’m mostly using my personal SearXNG instance and am still finding what I’m looking for.
On systems where I don’t have access to that, I’m currently trying Mojeek and experiment with Marginalia. Both rather traditional search engines.
I’m not a big fan of using LLMs for this. I rather punch in 3-5 keywords instead of explaining to some LLM what I’m looking for.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#593I never use ai for search. It's too unreliable and biased.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#594AFAICT ChatGPT is mostly useless and can't be trusted to answer questions accurately. So no, mostly all search engines. To be honesty I'm surprised anybody uses it for anything other than trivial uses.
Search engines aren't accurate either, they show you 10,000+ pages for your search query. You probably weren't looking for 10,000 answers. The problem is, they can't read your mind. ChatGPT can show you results you want, just like search engines can, you just may have to tweak your query.
The last thing I searched for was about the lady who sunk the New Zealand Naval vessel. It told me she was a captain in the United States Navy. I said that was absolutely not true and it told me of course you are correct, she is from the Australian Navy, and nothing I could say could convince it otherwise.
If it can't manage one small fact on something that was covered quite a bit in the previous month, then it is worse than useless. At the very least it should say I don't know. It reminds me of that one guy we all know that does nothing but make stuff up when talking about stuff outside of their wheel house. Never backs down, never learns anything, and ultimately dumped from the relationship.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#595I use duckduckgo and google for search – sometimes I find the google AI answers helpful (even though sometimes inaccurate still) for more categorical questions that I simply need an anwser or somewhere to start with (i.e. "can you eat charcoal?"), I then go ahead a click some links...
I use ChatGPT for text summation and translation, and midjourney for slide decks and graphic design ideation.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#596For sure. For me, searching is learning. I think, there is not only one exact answer to my question. Also because I am not asking my question absolutely correctly, as such precision would take a lot of time.
So while reading through the list of possible answers I often develop ideas and/or paths that lead to a possible solution. This is good for my fantasy and for future structuring of my search processes or research considerations. I also occasionally have the opportunity to discover information that is important for my other projects e.g. some days ago I searched for a group of software-filters that find borders in groups of pixels where the pixels build more a soft cloud than a separation between rock and water. I found a company - Tempus AI - that developed a successful working medical AI...so I bought this share...
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#597Yes, 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…
Fully agreed. I pay for Kagi monthly now, and it's totally worth it. I really hope they grow and become more well known because they doing what one of the biggest companies in the world is doing, and doing it better, and it seems so few people even know about them.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#598I feel same with you. But sometimes I found that chatgpt is obviously wrong.
So since then I'm trying to be aware of this.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
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Re: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?
#600Search 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…
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