I probably was a bit hysterical there, but I think the underlying point that an uneducated populace just can't cope in the modern world centered around information on the internet. I know someone I consider intelligent who started with one Joe Rogan video and a year later was a raving pro-Russia, pro-China, holocaust denying anti-vaxxer. Youtube took him from fun, reasonable guy who you'd love to have at a party to t…
Whatever problem your describing, the answer isn't to control people
Not sure how is this related to the SW development, this is just a general set of Google keywords. I might sound like an old fart, but I feel like it is much more helpful to learn your way around the docs as a developer. I regularly see people googling all kinds of basic language knowledge that can be found in documentation. However, googling might lead to outdated or incorrect information, especially when people jus…
The problem is that each documentation has its own search function, more or less efficient, each with its own quirks. Search engines are much better at finding information and they provide a consistent UI. You can search "php array sort", or "python array sort" and you'll get a link to the relevant page of the documentation. In comparison if I search for "array sort" in the Python doc directly, the first result is ab…
Given what the post is about, I wanted to share what my friend and I are working on. It’s an app called Devbook [0]. Our goal is to build a search engine for developers. Currently, it allows you to search Stack Overflow and certain documentation. It’s fully controllable using just a keyboard and completely free to use. It works in a way that you don’t have to leave your coding editor. [0] https://usedevbook.com
Why is it an app instead of a website? How do you make money? Your privacy policy mentions serving ads but your website doesn't show ads in any of the screenshots.
It's an app because we believe this way we can offer better user experience than a website. Devbook works similarly to Spotlight on macOS. You hit a global shortcut and Devbook appears as an overlay over the currently active application. We couldn't do this with a website.
We don't show any ads or resell any user information. The advertisement in our privacy policy is just a standard language for cookies when you gather basic usage data through analytics tool.
We're funded by Pioneer [0]. Currently Devbook is free. In the future, we will introduce premium plans for teams.
> 1. Use quotes to force an exact-match search Almost never works these days. Google now usually just quantizes your search terms into an ad or ultra popular news article written 3 minutes ago. It also ignores all your operators most of the time. Bonus: If you use something like inurl: You get blocked for a "hacking attempt". Google also has blocked Tor and VPNs since 2006 or so. In fact, they are the one big search…
>Google also has blocked Tor and VPNs since 2006 or so.
I just Googled when was Bush born while on Private Internet Access and the only thing google did differently was giving me results in German.
And no cookies either: I opened a temporary container tab so it shared no cookies with Google.
I'm struck by the profundity of this loss. It's almost as bad as if something like archive.org were to just disappear. SaaS is so ephemeral. One day, you have access to a version of Google that works absurdly well. The next, it's gone forever. I used to use Google so much that it felt like a border collie in those dog competitions. I knew how it behaved, I had a bank of commands/searches that I had half-memorized and…
It's really sad. There used to be a time when I'd try to recall a specific page on the internet and I'd be able to use a zillion search operators to narrow in to the page that I was looking for. Now, that's impossible. I've noticed search for everything kind of sucks now as every platform has tried to become curators.
And there's absolutely no way to talk to the company in question. Both Google and Facebook have become, we will do whatever we want, no you can't talk to a human, no you can't dispute our decisions, no you can't have any control over your life
This is great list, but what is the most important in search is not operators. It is context. Every time I work with students and they are stuck, I ask them to Google the issue. 9 out of 10 they will write something like: how to upload an image? Instead, they should first specify the context. Is it an issue on the front end? Are they looking for the correct input type for file upload? Or is it the php method to recei…
I find the same thing with non-technical people at work. They're highly intelligent, but when faced with a problem they don't know how to solve they are unable to effectively use google. Invariably they can't supply the keywords that will bridge their problem to a solution.
Also, once they search they'll usually click the top link and if it doesn't work they'll just give up (instead of for example quickly opening the top 3 links in new tabs while you're scanning the results). Sometimes the answer might also be the result of 2-3 different pages each supplying a part of the answer to your context.
This is great list, but what is the most important in search is not operators. It is context. Every time I work with students and they are stuck, I ask them to Google the issue. 9 out of 10 they will write something like: how to upload an image? Instead, they should first specify the context. Is it an issue on the front end? Are they looking for the correct input type for file upload? Or is it the php method to recei…
Aren't Gen Z and Boomers searching in a conversational style more and more, due to speech interfaces etc.? Both SEO folks and search engines seem to nowadays optimise for that kind of query. Stack Exchange is also question and answer - so often you can just Google whatever you think a stack exchange user would have asked, in a natural question format. What you suggest is what us old school people do, since that's wha…
If I walked up to a colleague and asked him "how do I upload an image", they would also expect a bit more context.
I probably was a bit hysterical there, but I think the underlying point that an uneducated populace just can't cope in the modern world centered around information on the internet. I know someone I consider intelligent who started with one Joe Rogan video and a year later was a raving pro-Russia, pro-China, holocaust denying anti-vaxxer. Youtube took him from fun, reasonable guy who you'd love to have at a party to t…
Whatever problem your describing, the answer isn't to control people
Putting a lid on propaganda isn't "controlling people". When propaganda is thrown at you from foreign states, those states are the ones attempting to control your population. Fighting that is defending your citizens.
How you fight is tricky and i don't agree that censorship is the right fix in the long run, but i don't think the person you are replying to thinks that either, it's just one easy way to combat some of it.
I've noticed filetype:pdf no longer really works - tons of sites that require you to sign up for an account before seeing the file. Used to be a great method to find pdfs of textbooks / other resources.
These might be shitty websites which employ black hat seo techniques of serving the pdf to google and a paywall to users.