Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DuckDuckGo was down

duckduckgo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 571 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#551

Post by erhaetherth »

Zambyte wrote: post #524
8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why y'all going to your fav search engine first to search with another search engine? This is built into chrome and probably Firefox and every other browser

I don't know how the syncing works for that, but all my custom bangs (which for me includes bangs for Kagi lenses / filters and non search engine sites at this point) sync using my Kagi account which is pretty nice. Also I use Firefox Focus on mobile, which doesn't have many settings, and I don't think I've seen that features there.

99% sure Chrome will sync your search settings across devices if you log in. Firefox and Vivaldi also let you log into the browser and sync.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#552

Post by xnx »

notRobot wrote: post #248
npteljes wrote: post #228

I love the acknowledgement that DDG put on their page. We're currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search. Thanks for your patience while we get our ducks in a row. In the meantime, you can use other search engines right here by using "bangs" So fun and straightforward.

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.

I keep meaning to make a Chrome extension called DDGoogle that would reskin Google results in the style of DuckDuckGo. This way people who insist on using DDG wouldn't have to endure Bing-quality results.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#553

Post by reassess_blind »

elicksaur wrote: post #450
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…

>it's like the search engine is conspiring against you to more or less find completely useless results. Has not been my experience at all. Been using ddg as my default for a few years. What kinds of searches do you find frustrating?

[dead]

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#554

Post by starttoaster »

swiftcoder wrote: post #515
tredre3 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things the general HN sentiment genuinely believes is impossible to build unless you have billions of dollars: - Search Engines - Browser Engines I don't quite understand how we got there because neither of those things are impossible. Both are achievable with a small team and a couple years of runway. As proved by Brave and Ladybird.

As I understand it, Brave shipped a white-labelled Chromium, and piggybacked their search results on Bing+Google until they had enough cached results to start using their own index. These are both orders of magnitude easier than building a browser or a search engine from scratch (although they may require similar capital investment)

If you have a web browser that isn’t Firefox, it’s probably Chromium these days. Also irrelevant to the search product.

Regarding the search product, you’re suggesting they used to use Bing/Google but now don’t. … Does that not mean they run their own indexers? So you’re just diminishing their value today based on what they used to do?

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#555

Post by starttoaster »

adamomada wrote: post #447
tredre3 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two things the general HN sentiment genuinely believes is impossible to build unless you have billions of dollars: - Search Engines - Browser Engines I don't quite understand how we got there because neither of those things are impossible. Both are achievable with a small team and a couple years of runway. As proved by Brave and Ladybird.

It’s easy to make a crappy search and crappy browser, I think the sentiment is aimed at producing a useful alternative to google and chrome

In my honest opinion, Brave is a bit better than a crappy browser. They have their little crypto widgets, which you can disable very quickly if you’d like. Which depending on how hot blooded you are on the subject of crypto can be a turn off. But “crappy” seems a bit on the harsh end of the spectrum, no?

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#556

Post by starttoaster »

ErrantX wrote: post #378
berkes wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often the case with US-based companies that have outages during "office hours in Europe". We, europeans see it going down. Communication on why, how and ETAs only appear at the start of the US day.

DDG has a global remote workforce so this wouldn't seem to apply in their case.

My company has a global remote workforce. The only team of which that owns any infrastructure being the team I am on, and all of my peers on that team being based in various parts of the US. So it’s not as simple maybe as you might think.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#557

Post by banish-m4 »

npteljes wrote: post #228

I love the acknowledgement that DDG put on their page. We're currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search. Thanks for your patience while we get our ducks in a row. In the meantime, you can use other search engines right here by using "bangs" So fun and straightforward.

To be fair, DDG uptime seems about 5-6 9's. P0 outages happen but DDG seems to have them maybe once every couple of years or so. That's pretty excellent effort.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#558

Post by banish-m4 »

afavour wrote: post #534
arrowsmith wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Exactly. You can't except by setting DDG as the default search engine. Chrome, Brave, and FF for iOS also don't directly support this sort of feature either.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#559

Post by skjoldr »

quectophoton wrote: post #438
nobody9999 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe Kagi is an option for you? Thanks, but I'd rather have my tonsils extracted through my ears. Unless you're buying. From the FAQ[0]: >Kagi Search requires an account only because it is a paid service which requires an account for the transaction. [0] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#why-does-kagi-search...

They say this: > You can create a Kagi account with any email address including a fake one (we do not care or verify it, it is just an id for logging in) But seeing how they didn't go the Mullvad way, and instead chose to ask for an email during signup and hide this bit of info in a completely separate page, doesn't sit too well with me and comes off as a little bit dishonest (they say they don't need this info but s…

Verbatim from Kagi FAQ:

"Why does Kagi Search require an email address? We require an email address to be able to verify the account really belongs to you in the following cases:

To handle the account recovery (in case you lose your password) In case you contact us via email with an account related questions (in particular requests to delete your account or change your subscription) To occasionally send product updates, which you can disable in your Kagi settings or unsubscribe directly from the email Note that you can use an anonymous email provider such as SimpleLogin with Kagi Search and it is up to you what email address you want to use.

Kagi does not need your personal information and the above requirements are just bare minimums needed in order to be able to operate a subscription product business."

It's similar to services like Bitwarden in that regard.

Mullvad can get away with not doing that because they have a single plan with a low price.

Re: DuckDuckGo was down

#560

Post by npteljes »

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?

>Just configure

I might not be impressed, but as I get older, I skew toward out of the box experience over configuration. I rather learn, and then apply that knowledge everywhere the thing is used, than configure, and lug my configuration around. Therefore, I value an opinionated feature like the bangs in DDG, even though as a professional, I know that there are many alternatives to it. If I know how to do it with DDG, I can use it everywhere I load DDG: my personal computer, my work computer, my phone's browser, my phone's other browser, the browser in the VM, the browser in the VM in the cloud, on the freshly installed computer with its default settings, everywhere.

Post reply on HN