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Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

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Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#151

Post by Tepix »

bcrl wrote: post #115
NelsonMinar wrote: post #86

Back in the early 2000s I helped create policy and procedures at Google to stop this kind of thing. Google's early anti-malware policies, extended to ads, and internal procedures to make sure we effectively stopped malware ads. That was a long time ago though and it's sad and frustrating to read it's not working so well now. In particular the article points out several big red flags about how malware scanners are aut…

It's sad that Google finds it more important to take profits from ads linking to malware downloads than to protect users from harms. I guess the only way that's going to happen is if governments step up and make Google liable for harm caused by ads. I've seen it happen myself with my father. He gets served malware and phishing ads at the top of searches on his iPad for completely innocuous searches like "Apple Canada…

Could it be that the device is already infected with malware-injecting things?

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#153

Post by imbnwa »

Phrenzy wrote: post #69
dahdum wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days It feels truly absurd how many queries I need to append "reddit" to get something useful. The web has changed but Google isn't keeping up.

YouTube search is even worse. They could do so much to filter the results. But they don't. They don't even give you a full page of results. The give you half a dozen and go "Meh. Search is hard. Here is some completely unrelated videos you might like."

They have the abitity to create transcripts of everything on there, across languages, with the capability to apply good-enough translations to other languages, its insane

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#154

Post by whoisthisguy »

GavinAnderegg wrote: post #2

Google's search product has become a shadow of its former self. Every year it seems harder to find what I'm looking for. The top half of the first search result page is now (potentially malicious) ads, and what follows is likely SEO spam. I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days so I'm not served nearly useless results. It's a sad decline from 10+ years ago when I'd type a half-formed…

Kagi is the way to go. Search results are more useful, and I'm rarely faced with spam sites.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#155

Post by Jach »

jrockway wrote: post #118
dahdum wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days It feels truly absurd how many queries I need to append "reddit" to get something useful. The web has changed but Google isn't keeping up.

I keep hearing about adding reddit to one's search queries, but what sort of things are y'all searching for where reddit's opinion is relevant? Reddit is kind of like that effect that people say about popular journalism; for the things that you're an expert on, they always get it wrong, but for things you know nothing about, they have a way of sounding right. Reddit is very much like that for me; if I know nothing ab…

I agree in the broad that much (most) of reddit is awful, wrong, and not worth viewing. (I wonder how you feel about HN over the years. To me HN got as bad as parts of reddit were at some point, however reddit has gotten worse too so there's still a quality gap.) Still, it can be occasionally useful to filter it as a site for queries, like with HN. (It's fun to see if a company I've thought about working for has been talked about on HN at all.) Recently I found some useful travel posts on reddit, like how to best get to a destination with some tradeoffs highlighted for time sensitivity and helpful links for everything, and as an augment of location reviews, some offering quite a bit more context than the one or two paragraphs I usually see on google maps. Though to be fair, a sample of short reviews is usually good enough. Another use of reddit remains finding other people who want to talk about relatively niche things, but these days it's more common that it's just one way that leads you to a discord server whose contents are sadly invisible to search engines.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#156

Post by mgdlbp »

Alupis wrote: post #89
dahdum wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days It feels truly absurd how many queries I need to append "reddit" to get something useful. The web has changed but Google isn't keeping up.

This makes me laugh - I've found myself appending "reddit" to my search queries more and more frequently when looking for product or service reviews. The regular google results are filled with affiliate-link-driven ads disguised as product reviews. If you want to really know what people think about products, you have to go digging these days.

and site:news.ycombinator.com

surprisingly few topics haven't been discussed here. Often there's interesting technically-minded thinking, and for most (most!) topics it's less likely than a dedicated forum for any interested parties to be present. The latter really applies to any generalist forum or off-topic section of a forum where a sincere community has gathered. Until the dead-internet is achieved, at least.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#157

Post by Smilliam »

grishka wrote: post #39
GavinAnderegg wrote: post #2

Google's search product has become a shadow of its former self. Every year it seems harder to find what I'm looking for. The top half of the first search result page is now (potentially malicious) ads, and what follows is likely SEO spam. I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days so I'm not served nearly useless results. It's a sad decline from 10+ years ago when I'd type a half-formed…

It's gotten so bad that there's now an ad blocker filter list that removes the StackOverflow clones from search results.

I'm not OP, but for those of you who saw this comment and were hoping for a link, the one that I use is https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#158

Post by OmarAssadi »

Akronymus wrote: post #140
voytec wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example: music videos may require "-reaction -reacting". But it's the same or worse with DuckDuckGo.

For music, also adding -extended feels necessary. Along with -60fps for anything anime related.

Oh my GOD. The 60 FPS 4K memescaling shouldn't drive me as insane as it does, but jesus christ, the amount of times I have wanted to show someone some opening, gone on YouTube, and literally everything is some tweened upscale.

I usually give up and end up having to go and StackOverflow the ffmpeg filters I'll never remember for burning in subs just to clip it myself -- `ffmpeg -i episode.mkv -vf "subtitles='episode.mkv':si=0" -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 18 -c:a aac_at -b:a 320k -ss start_duration -t opening_duration output.mp4` [1].

I think it bothers me even more given anime is rarely even natively fully 1080P 29.97/30 FPS, let alone 4K 60.

I try my best to live and let live, but it's my biggest pet peeve. It drives me nuts that basically all TV manufacturers do this too now by default -- everything I've purchased over the past ~10-12 years or so comes preset with """"smooth""" motion and a billion other video "correction" modes enabled, despite it just artifacting or making everything look straight up worse [2].

I'm genuinely really curious, does anyone here on HN use and enjoy those modes? Maybe there is something I'm missing.

Or maybe I'm just hyper-sensitive to that kind of thing. It made me laugh when I moved back to the US after school in Russia; family had gotten a new TV and within like seconds of being home and trying to watch a movie together, I'm immediately sitting there fiddling with the sittings, meanwhile no one else apparently even noticed the frame interpolation was on in the first place.

Anyway, sorry for the rant ;-)

‎

[1]: OK, this time it was from memory, so it might not quite be right. But maybe I've finally memorized the correct incantation?

[2]: good video on the topic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1nUCyC8hGA>

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#159

Post by malfist »

ilostmyshoes wrote: post #92
Alupis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me laugh - I've found myself appending "reddit" to my search queries more and more frequently when looking for product or service reviews. The regular google results are filled with affiliate-link-driven ads disguised as product reviews. If you want to really know what people think about products, you have to go digging these days.

I do the same and even then you need to be careful about the astroturfing on reddit corporatism is everywhere and infecting the web to enrich a few at the expense of everyone else

Yeah, this suggestion still works okay. It used to work better, but now the advertisers have caught on. I give it another year or two before corporations have astroturffed the hell out of site:reddit.com searches and made them useless

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#160

Post by mrguyorama »

Alupis wrote: post #125
jrockway wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing about adding reddit to one's search queries, but what sort of things are y'all searching for where reddit's opinion is relevant? Reddit is kind of like that effect that people say about popular journalism; for the things that you're an expert on, they always get it wrong, but for things you know nothing about, they have a way of sounding right. Reddit is very much like that for me; if I know nothing ab…

> but what sort of things are y'all searching for where reddit's opinion is relevant If you want real, unvarnished reviews and opinions of products, you need to get it from real people that have owned the product for more than 1 day before leaving the review. I recently needed to purchase a new winter coat. Surfing many reddit threads across a dozen or so subs actually convinced me to not purchase the coat I had in m…

Why do you assume the posts on reddit are at all organic? Big brands 100% astroturf on reddit.
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