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Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

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Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#161

I've also noticed the quality of DuckDuckGo search results has been steadily improving, especially over the past year. I would encourage anyone who tried it and went back to another search engine to consider giving DuckDuckGo another shot--you may be pleasantly surprised!

I just put DDG as my default address bar search, and taught myself a bunch of !bang commands, since for much of the stuff I'm looking for I already know what site I want to end up any way (!w, !wnl, !yt, !gi, !wayback, etc).

In the mean time for general searches, I either use DDG's results or slap on a pre-emptive !g on a hunch, randomly or just-in-case. My idea behind this is that, as DDG's results become better, I'll habitually start using !g less and less.

And indeed, DDG's results have become better, and indeed I have been using the !g command less and less.

Google Search with !g is slowly becoming "just another one among the predefined !bang commands", a command I will append after my searches when I specifically desire to find out what Google has to say about a certain query. Though in comparison I hardly ever use !y and !b (Yahoo and Bing, respectively), mostly because I have no clue in what vague sense those results would be better (with DDG vs Google, I sort of have a feeling when asking for something really mundane and stupid, Google always hits the spot exactly, DDG sometimes misinterprets--though less so lately).

For image searching I really use !yi, !bi and !gi pretty much randomly. They all give quite different results, but as far as I've been able to determine, none of them are of particularly better quality than the others. Yahoo Image Search has a nice integration with Flickr though, so I tend to use it more when my target may be found between high-ish resolution photography.

I already named !wayback, anyone got any other cool !bang commands they use often? For instance, any good documentation searches for JS/DOM/HTML/CSS etc? I tried !mdn but I don't like their search result pages. Same for !python, if I do "!python itertools", I want to be taken straight to the itertools module documentation, not a results page of all python docs that contains the term "itertools".

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#162
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course definitions matter. My point is that your definition is not specific enough to be useful.

Yours is mathematically nonsensical. You either have discrete containers that denote privacy relations between information and parties or you do not have it at all. Privacy does not exist on a gradient on a computer. You can not calculate the percentage of how private something is. If it is marked 'private information' and that information is released to a party not under the user / group / role term that is supposed…

Again, you are revealing your ignorance of mathematics and arguing that you don't like the way a word is used in a context you don't understand.

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#163
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is mathematically nonsensical. You either have discrete containers that denote privacy relations between information and parties or you do not have it at all. Privacy does not exist on a gradient on a computer. You can not calculate the percentage of how private something is. If it is marked 'private information' and that information is released to a party not under the user / group / role term that is supposed…

Again, you are revealing your ignorance of mathematics and arguing that you don't like the way a word is used in a context you don't understand.

[deleted]

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#164
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yours is mathematically nonsensical. You either have discrete containers that denote privacy relations between information and parties or you do not have it at all. Privacy does not exist on a gradient on a computer. You can not calculate the percentage of how private something is. If it is marked 'private information' and that information is released to a party not under the user / group / role term that is supposed…

Again, you are revealing your ignorance of mathematics and arguing that you don't like the way a word is used in a context you don't understand.

Okay, but those ad hominem attacks won't stop some people from training their machines better than implementations of these algorithms can manage the complexities between data kinds and data object noise.

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#165
post #10
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read Gabriel's post, and I pretty much agree (and do) with what he says. Due to these shared believes I've been using DDG quite a bit, I even deleted the Google search app from my phone, and instead been using DDG's iOS app as my default mobile search engine. However, every time I use DDG it hurts a bit. The quality of the results are very far behind from that of Google's. I many times end up doing a Google se…

Specific examples you're willing to share really help us improve. Feel free to send them to us at inbound at duckduckgo.

I'll frequently run the searches from within DDG as !g or !scholar searches (my most frequent variants).

Lack of date-bounded search is a frequent reason to resort to Google. Special collections (Scholar, Books, News) others.

I'm actually relying far more on DDG image search than even a few months ago -- the results are getting good. Also the instant answers, which are getting good.

There have been a few times in recent past where DDG searches have turned up empty (or unsatisfactory results) while Google's nailed it. Actually went hunting for an example and got lost which is why this comment is so late. Couldn't find the example though I'll try to remember to submit it when I do.

Re: Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely

#166
post #45

People are willing to trade personally-identifiable information for a Snickers bar.* Until and unless that changes, privacy doesn't have sufficient value to change the status quo very much. *Really, they'll even trade it for intangible gold. http://candycrushgametactics.com/get-free-gold-bars-in-candy...

I would like to see a experiment where the test subject are informed that the information will be sold afterward. Are people then willing to trade personally-identifiable information for a Snickers bar? Addition parameters that would be interesting: Inform that the information is worth more/less than the Snickers bar, or inform that "the government" will have free access to the information.

> Are people then willing to trade personally-identifiable information for a Snickers bar?

Not as cheap as a Snickers, but I once had a CS professor do a straw poll of the class for this experiment. Back in the day the most evident tracking was through customer loyalty cards at grocery stores. He asked the class: how much money do you save per visit using your loyalty card? $10? And would you instead pay $10 each time to not be tracked?

Perhaps not surprisingly, in 2007 a room full of undergrads would take the discount.

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