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DuckDuckGo was down

duckduckgo.com

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Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#531

Post by tombert »

freediver wrote: post #465
tombert wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The context of the news was a security researcher conducting an audit of the app. If DDG were, as the GP claimed, performing tracking on behalf of MS then it would be more concerning since there is a difference between performing tracking on behalf of a third-party company and merely excluding them from being blocked via a content blocker that most mobile browsers lack anyway. Sorry, I'm still not entirely sure tha…

> It would be ideal if Kagi had some means of truly decoupling searches from accounts Important to note is that Kagi does not associate searches with an account to begin with, nor there are any incentives for Kagi to do so (search log would be just a giant liability from a standpoint of Kagi's business model, with no benefit). I think what you mean is - are there means to make that provable from a technology standpoi…

> I think what you mean is - are there means to make that provable from a technology standpoint?

Yes that is what I meant. I do genuinely believe you when you say that the searches aren't correlated to the accounts, but the problem is that it's difficult to know for sure if that's actually true; how many cases in tech have we thought something was "private" and it turned out that they were vending our data out to the highest bidder?

As long as Kagi doesn't start serving targeted ads, I am personally willing to trust it (as I have for the last year and a half), though I am super interested in the blind token thing you linked.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#532

Post by dylan604 »

datavirtue wrote: post #479
BobaFloutist wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's how they typically get here, but upon it not working, they were able to unmangle the URL

No need to unwind the pedants.

Nobody was being pedantic. I don't use the web that way. I never type into a search engine the domain of a site I want to go to, so that's just totally odd to me. I'm of an age where we actually know what a domain is, and do not use the web like it is AOL keywords. Especially when >90% of the time, you just tack on a .com to your keywords to find the actual website.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#533

Post by tombert »

pixxel wrote: post #500
tombert wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The privacy vs. anonymous thing is fair, and I have some issues with that, and I wish it were a bit more clear on what exactly that means. Even if Vlad's example of "parents knowing what you're doing but still respecting privacy" thing is true, it's not like I want my parents know I'm looking at porn, even if they don't know what kind of porn I'm looking at. That's something that they should address. I still trust Ka…

> I still trust Kagi more than basically any free service though Please don’t. Just look at the paid services/products around you. Don’t give more PII to a browser vendor than is necessary.

Well I don't use the Kagi Orion browser at all, I use IceCat on all my PC stuff, and Firefox on mobile.

I do generally agree with your broader point, however in 2024 I don't think it's realistic to stop utilizing search engines while not inadvertently giving up PII. I mean, I could, but I do think my life would be considerably worse.

At least with Kagi, they have some means of making money that doesn't involve selling data. It's entirely possible that they betray us and start selling our data anyway, I'm not completely naive, but at least it's not an inevitability like with ostensibly free services.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#534

Post by afavour »

arrowsmith wrote: post #525
red_admiral wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bing but without copilot" alone would be a product worth having. But I think DDG has a few more things on top of that, like the `!bang` stuff and the bit where they don't send tracking data on you to Microsoft.

I really don't understand why any technically literate person would be impressed by the "!bang" stuff on DDG. You know your browser already provides this feature, right? Just configure some custom search keywords in your search settings. What does DDG offer that's better than this?

How do I set that up on iOS Safari?

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#535

Post by opan »

arrowsmith wrote: post #525
red_admiral wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bing but without copilot" alone would be a product worth having. But I think DDG has a few more things on top of that, like the `!bang` stuff and the bit where they don't send tracking data on you to Microsoft.

I really don't understand why any technically literate person would be impressed by the "!bang" stuff on DDG. You know your browser already provides this feature, right? Just configure some custom search keywords in your search settings. What does DDG offer that's better than this?

They already set them up for a ton of sites, though, and often you can guess your way to a bang on the first try. I have only looked at the actual list once or twice. Plus it seems to match the closest one in cases of using one that doesn't exist. I can also go to a machine that isn't my own and take advantage of them there right away. I heavily use the quickmarks in qutebrowser, but also the ddg bangs. I just hit O for open in new tab and can put in a bang right there.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#536

Post by gonational »

kawfey wrote: post #442

I grew up using Google (and ask jeeves and yahoo.) In school, google won. Now, google sucks. It's all ads, AI SEO maxxing, and the work to find useful results has gone up manyfold. I found myself using site:"" to get closer to what I needed. I tried DDG, and it's more or less the same, but it's like the search engine is conspiring against you to more or less find completely useless results. I tried kagi, and i love i…

This has been my exact experience with DDG. I tried Yandex when somebody posted on here that it had old-school style results, and it was true to a certain degree, but I'm not gonna use some Russian search engine. So I just literally stopped searching for things. The Internet mostly died, for me, when searching got bad; now it's just specific forums and websites that I already know about.

In my opinion, this was all done on purpose. They wanted to ruin free and open access to independent, distributed creations, and keep any traffic into a narrow funnel owned mostly by Black Rock, Vanguard Trust, and State Street Capital, with the eventual goal of frustrating people into purchasing licensed access to AI to get curated and censored access to limited information.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#537

Post by SassyBird »

bambax wrote: post #395
notRobot wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting how they insist that they use "so much more" than just Bing for their results, but the moment Bing goes down their search functionality is down entirely, unable to show a single result.

Yeah, exactly. They're mostly a front end for Bing. I know they have their fans, and this remark will probably anger them, but I have never understood the point of DDG.

DDG UI is a lot calmer. Opening Bing feels like entering a Middle-Eastern market.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#538

Post by naasking »

radiorental wrote: post #156
mhuffman wrote: post #141

Can't wait to find out what happened here. This seems to be a massive outage. Interesting how fragile things become when so much technology is concentrated into just a few companies.

Genuine question, are distributed systems naturally more resilient? I can see arguments for both sides. Your point and then the hidden failure modes without central observability and ownership. Nothing exists in isolation.

> Genuine question, are distributed systems naturally more resilient?

Only if they've prioritized the "availability" component from the CAP theorem.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#539

Post by ncruces »

danielcampos93 wrote: post #427
kornhole wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is one of many metasearch sites and not actually a search engine. Other engines include Kagi, Yandex, Brave, Mojeek, Quant, and something called Google.

More countries have nukes than companies have actual indexes

But do more countries actually build them?

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#540

Post by pjc50 »

Springtime wrote: post #154
michael9423 wrote: post #151

So much about DuckDuckGo's claim that Bing is only a part of their search results.

Prior to the Russia-Ukraine situation they actually did offer Yandex results if you set your region to Russia. It was interesting sometimes to see if there were any more useful top results. So at one point the claim was accurate.

Yandex.com itself seems to be still available in the West.
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