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Improving DuckDuckGo

duck.co

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Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#101

Post by masonic »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #81
kraig911 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your position. I'm trying to figure out how to limit my kid from seeing any ads at all. Where can I get more information for this beyond adblock and host file manipulation?

I have Pi-Hole on the network that every device in the house runs through, with extra blocklists and a year or so of manual tweaking, that covers most stuff. I also run ad block plugins just in case, don't allow commercial TV (they only watch Netflix or ABC Kids app), and that pretty much covers everything for our family. It's also just a thing we keep in mind and work around in life. We won't use any service that ha…

  don't allow commercial TV (they only watch Netflix or ABC Kids app
How are Netflix and ABC Kids not "commercial"?

Even PBS is "commercial", given the growing practice of underwriter ads.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#102

Post by biztos »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #46

I love duckduckgo and I feel I can almost replace google completely with it. I only have the following comments on it. 1. They're hosted in the US. I wish the company would pick up and move to a country not within the 14 eyes and out of jurisdiction of the cyber super powers(US, China, and Russia). Maybe panama? At least move it virtually with a warrant canary in place. 2. The search results need better contrasting c…

> a country not within the 14 eyes

I hadn't heard that term; in case anyone else hadn't, this page explains it pretty well:

https://restoreprivacy.com/5-eyes-9-eyes-14-eyes/

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#103

Post by PavlovsCat »

eslaught wrote: post #58
kraig911 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your position. I'm trying to figure out how to limit my kid from seeing any ads at all. Where can I get more information for this beyond adblock and host file manipulation?

I'm not sure this is realistic in our modern society. Online, there is some flexibility: you can pay to remove ads for some things, and use ad-block on the ones that don't provide such an option. But in the offline world, I'm not sure what you're going to do. Physical ads are hard to block, you just have to avoid them when you can. Economically, I'm not sure we're ever going to get away from ads. As I've said before…

> Economically, I'm not sure we're ever going to get away from ads.

Why? Was there no human economic activity before they were ads?

If spaceships appeared in the sky, and shot lasers at all ads, and anyone making new ones, would we find no way to make and sell and buy things regardless? That seems less likely to me than said spaceships.

> I just don't see that happening.

True, and saying "it should be possible" is not the same as knowing how to get from here to there. But I wouldn't say "never ever" in this context.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#104

Post by mantale »

pbreit wrote: post #40
driverdan wrote: post #33

Goal #1 should be high quality search results while respecting privacy. Everything else should be secondary. The biggest thing DDG could do to improve their product is make it quick and easy for users to provide feedback about bad search results. I'd be happy to report searches that Google gives better results for but they don't have a mechanism to do so. For example, search DDG for "odroid". The official domain is h…

Are DDG users comfortable knowing that their search results are always going to be inferior?

They are as good as Google for me, sometime slightly worse, sometime slightly better, and I didn't even change my searching habits when I switched. Also you can turn on or off localized results easily if you need to, which is hard with Google. The only thing I'm really missing is the good completion while typing.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#105

Post by PavlovsCat »

pbreit wrote: post #56
iKenshu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't think that the results on DDG are inferior, but I'm comfortable with the results. If I want something more personalize or near for my location(Venezuela is not available on DDG) I just go to Google directly or with !g

Search is significantly better when it can consider previous search history.

I actually think that breaks it, I like it better when everybody gets the same results for the same queries. People (via algorithms or directly) shaping what others get to see, rather than configuration and user empowerment, is something I reject.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#106

Post by Kiro »

mrweasel wrote: post #97
Kiro wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://duck.co/help/results/sources > We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bing. They do not have their own search index.

Really... You read the last part of that paragraph, but no the first? >In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). Kinda silly to have a crawler that doesn't index anything.

They have an index but just for their Instant Answers (for which they have 400 sources) and not the organic search results. The last paragraph is what's relevant to the actual search index.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#107

Post by Kiro »

walty8 wrote: post #83
Kiro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you saying? That DDG is not getting their search results from Bing and Yandex?

From your source: In fact, DuckDuck Go gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of partners, including Oath (formerly Yahoo) and Bin…

It depends. For me, a search engine is about the organic search results and they get all their organic search results from Bing, Oath and Yandex. The 400 sources they talk about are used for Instant Answers, boxes and stuff like that.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#108

Post by CPLX »

flycaliguy wrote: post #68
kraig911 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your position. I'm trying to figure out how to limit my kid from seeing any ads at all. Where can I get more information for this beyond adblock and host file manipulation?

Just make sure your kids are media savvy. If you train critical thought into them, then ads can be much less harmful. I tend to agree in general but I think the way ads infect non ad content is the danger and you can’t block that. Let’s be honest, the kids of hacker news commenters are probably going to be fine. It’s the way ads influence the unwashed masses that becomes problematic.

Indeed. There’s little precedence for the children of the wealthy and privileged to cause future social problems.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#109

Post by gutnor »

driverdan wrote: post #33

Goal #1 should be high quality search results while respecting privacy. Everything else should be secondary. The biggest thing DDG could do to improve their product is make it quick and easy for users to provide feedback about bad search results. I'd be happy to report searches that Google gives better results for but they don't have a mechanism to do so. For example, search DDG for "odroid". The official domain is h…

Combined with that they could collect locally relevant information too.

Using DDG from the UK is currently a disappointing experience. You have the choice between US centric search result or "UK" filter that is too restrictive: for example "man cat" with the UK filter return mostly non unix stuff (unlike the default version)

!g is great, but when I use DDG on my iPhone, "!" is not an immediately accessible character.

Re: Improving DuckDuckGo

#110

Post by cyphunk »

biztos wrote: post #102
wpdev_63 wrote: post #46

I love duckduckgo and I feel I can almost replace google completely with it. I only have the following comments on it. 1. They're hosted in the US. I wish the company would pick up and move to a country not within the 14 eyes and out of jurisdiction of the cyber super powers(US, China, and Russia). Maybe panama? At least move it virtually with a warrant canary in place. 2. The search results need better contrasting c…

> a country not within the 14 eyes I hadn't heard that term; in case anyone else hadn't, this page explains it pretty well: https://restoreprivacy.com/5-eyes-9-eyes-14-eyes/

Is the OP Swiss and wants it hosted where he/she lives? I'd be fine with that as an alternative to US, but do not understand why that would be better than, say, Sweden
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