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How is search so bad? A case study

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Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#311

Post by joshuamorton »

leereeves wrote: post #308
lostcolony wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, whataboutism doesn't actually lend credence. You're free to select the occasional time when a news agency gets it wrong (and apologizes and issues a correction)...but to try and compare it to an intentionally biased organization that always, intentionally gets it wrong (by willfully setting up people, then editing their responses, to paint things in a particular light), and never backs down, never apologiz…

Actually I'm not a fan of PV. Gotcha journalism doesn't appeal to me. But I see that low quality "journalism" every day, so I don't see PV as particularly noteworthy. Certainly not worth altering search results for. And I'd say you are mistaken when you call changing "take that [violence] to the suburbs" into "a call for peace" merely getting it wrong. What CNN did could hardly be anything other than intentional dece…

PV isn't "gotcha journalism". They've repeatedly committed felonies and completely fabricated things (ex. when they tried to trick WaPo into pushing a fake #metoo story about Roy Moore) in attempts to create their content.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#312

Post by leereeves »

joshuamorton wrote: post #311
leereeves wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I'm not a fan of PV. Gotcha journalism doesn't appeal to me. But I see that low quality "journalism" every day, so I don't see PV as particularly noteworthy. Certainly not worth altering search results for. And I'd say you are mistaken when you call changing "take that [violence] to the suburbs" into "a call for peace" merely getting it wrong. What CNN did could hardly be anything other than intentional dece…

PV isn't "gotcha journalism". They've repeatedly committed felonies and completely fabricated things (ex. when they tried to trick WaPo into pushing a fake #metoo story about Roy Moore) in attempts to create their content.

> They've repeatedly committed felonies

That's quite a claim. If that's true, why aren't they in jail?

I'm sure they have many powerful enemies who would love to see them convicted of these multiple felonies.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#313

Post by thrwaway69 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #96
aaron-santos wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merging js deps into one big resource isn't difficult. The number of ads point is interesting though. How would one determine what is an ad and what is an image? I have my ideas, but optimizing on this boundary sounds like it would lead to weird outcomes.

Adblockers have to solve that problem already. And it's actually really easy because "ads" aren't just ads unfortunately, they're also third-party code that's trying to track you as you browse the site. So it's reasonably easy to spot them and filter them out.

Though, advertisers are already using first party redirection. Future of adblockers is bleak.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/780/

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#314

Post by pen2l »

samatman wrote: post #255
viklove wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do your colleagues get to decide what is fact and what is fiction? It's our right, as humans, to be able to make that decision on our own after we encounter information. If Wikipedia gains a reputation for libel, then the onus should be on the public to stop trusting them. Google does not have the moral authority to censor the internet, and it's absolutely wrong for them to attempt this. Information should be fre…

They don't get to decide any such thing, and in fact, can't. Google (fortunately for all of us) doesn't run the Internet. They do run a popular search page, and have to decide what to do with a search like "Is the Earth flat?". Personally, I would prefer they prominently display a "no". Others would disagree, but a search engine is curation by definition, that's what makes it useful.

> Personally, I would prefer they prominently display a "no".

Oh hey! I just tried this, and it does! image: https://i.imgur.com/OqqxSq3.png

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#315

Post by kortex »

avionicsguy wrote: post #102

This should probably be a separate submission but why is search so bad everywhere? - Confluence: Native search is horrible IME - Microsoft Help (Applications): .chm files Need I say more. - Microsoft Task Bar: Native search okay and then horrible beyond a few key words and then ... BING :-( - Microsoft File Search: Even with full disk indexing (I turned it on) it still takes 15-20 minutes to find all jpegs with an SS…

> it still takes 15-20 minutes to find all jpegs with an SSD. What's going on there?

What is going on there? I'm working on a file system indexer in golang and to walk and parse extension to a mimetype runs at several thousand images a second, over NFS. Windows is full of lots of headscratchers "why is this taking so long?"

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#316

Post by dragonwriter »

true_religion wrote: post #305
leereeves wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of that story isn't "two wrongs make a right", but that the left wing still accepts CNN just as the right wing still accepts PV. "Gotchas" and "gaffes" are taken out of context all the time. And when reporters lie to go undercover and obtain a story, they're usually hailed as heroes. These objections are only used to "discredit" opposing viewpoints. People don't object when sources they agree with use the s…

Why the assumption of left or right, when at least in the US most people identify as independents? And to be even more fair, you aren’t talking about “people” here but the OP who can clearly state their own personal preferences, without the need for you to construct a theory of hidden bias.

> Why the assumption of left or right, when at least in the US most people identify as independents?

Most people don’t identify as independents, and, anyhow, studies of voting behavior show that most independents have a clear party leaning between the two major parties and are just as consistently attached to the party they lean toward as people who identify with the party.

So not only is it the case that most people don't identify as independents, most of those who do aren't distinguishable from self-identified partisans when it comes to voting behavior.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#317

Post by dredmorbius »

creato wrote: post #222
rahulchhabra07 wrote: post #32

I have been thinking about the same problem since a few weeks. The real problem with search engines is the fact that so many websites have hacked SEO that there is no meritocracy left. Results are not sorted based on relevance or quality but by SEO experts' efforts at making the search results favor themselves. I can possibly not find anything deep enough about any topic by searching on Google anymore. It's just surf…

> I can possibly not find anything deep enough about any topic by searching on Google anymore. > It kills my curiosity and intent with fake knowledge and bad experience. I need something better. It's hard for me to take this seriously when wikipedia exists, and almost always ranks very highly in search results for searches for "knowledge topics". Between wikipedia and sources cited on wikipedia, I find the depth of a…

The fact that Wikipedia exists, is frequently (though not always) quite good, has citations and references, and ranks highly or is used directly for "instant answers" ...

... still does nothing to answer the point that Web search itself is unambiguously and consistently poorer now than it was 5-10 years ago.

Yes, I find myself relying far more on specific domain searches, either in the Internet sense, or by searching for books / articles on topics rather than Web pages. Because so much more traditionally-published information is online, this actually means the net of online-based search has improved, but not for the most part because of improved Web-oriented resources (Webpages, discussions, etc.), but because old-school media is now Web-accessible.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#318

Post by dredmorbius »

thrwaway69 wrote: post #313
zozbot234 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblockers have to solve that problem already. And it's actually really easy because "ads" aren't just ads unfortunately, they're also third-party code that's trying to track you as you browse the site. So it's reasonably easy to spot them and filter them out.

Though, advertisers are already using first party redirection. Future of adblockers is bleak. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/780/

Back in the early days of banner ads, a CSS-based approach to blocking was to target images by size. Since advertising revolved around specific standards of advertising "units" (effectively: sizes of images), those could be identified and blocked. That worked well, for a time.

This is ultimately whack-a-mole. For the past decade or so, point-of-origin based blockers have worked effectively, because that's how advertising networks have operated. If the ad targets start getting unified, we may have to switch to other signatures:

- Again, sizes of images or DOM elements.

- Content matching known hash signatures, or constant across multiple requests to a site (other than known branding elements / graphics).

- "Things that behave like ads behave" as defined by AI encoded into ad blockers.

- CSS / page elements. Perhaps applying whitelist rather than blacklist policies.

- User-defined element subtraction.

There's little in the history of online advertising that suggests users will simply give up.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#319

Post by thrwaway69 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #318
thrwaway69 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though, advertisers are already using first party redirection. Future of adblockers is bleak. https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/780/

Back in the early days of banner ads, a CSS-based approach to blocking was to target images by size. Since advertising revolved around specific standards of advertising "units" (effectively: sizes of images), those could be identified and blocked. That worked well, for a time. This is ultimately whack-a-mole. For the past decade or so, point-of-origin based blockers have worked effectively, because that's how adverti…

Some of those techniques will make the whole experience slow compared to the current network request filters and dns blockers.

And that will probably be blocked or severely locked down by your most popular browser, chrome.

I don't need to give advertisers data myself when someone else I know can. I really doubt it is easy to throw off chrome monopoly at this stage. I presume we will see a chilling effect before anything moves like IE.

Re: How is search so bad? A case study

#320

Post by dredmorbius »

reaperducer wrote: post #155
Razengan wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we might need to break this is ... Create a core protocol at the same level as DNS etc., that web servers can use to offer an index of everything they serve/relay. A multitude of user-side apps may then query that protocol, with each app using different algorithms, heuristics and offering different options.

Create a core protocol at the same level as DNS etc., that web servers can use to offer an index of everything they serve/relay Isn't that pretty much a site map? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps

A sitemap simply tells you what pages exist, not what's on those pages.

Systems such as lunr.js are closer in spirit to a site-oriented search index, though that's not how they're presently positioned, but instead offer JS-based, client-implemented site search for otherwise static websites.

https://lunrjs.com

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