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Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

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Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#161

Post by binarysneaker »

drivebycomment wrote: post #4

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

Part of the problem is the way that data is presented. Google indexes HTML, but wouldn't it be better if sites provided a standard interface to their [shareable] data, so that data quality, and searches could get better?

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#162

Post by dopp0 »

Li7h wrote: post #156
tambourine_man wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT-3 and DALL-E scare me. This is too good. I wonder how long it will take before we have a GPT-3 bot commenting here on HN

How do you know there's not one already?

how do you know I'm not one? I'm appaled I'm not getting recognized

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#163

Post by [deleted] »

spullara wrote: post #123
drivebycomment wrote: post #4

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

GPT-3 prompt: I really love the vibe of Koh Lanta in Thailand. It has tourist amenities without really being touristy. I find it charming, slow and cheap. Is there a place in Croatia like it? Completion: There is no exact place in Croatia that has the same vibe as Koh Lanta in Thailand. However, there are places in Croatia that have a similar charm and slower pace. These places include Hvar Island, Korcula Island, an…

[deleted]

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#164

Post by powerhour »

alphabetting wrote: post #153

> Why don’t other search engines compete on search results? It can’t be hard to do better than Google for the long tail. Search is ridiculously hard. Everyone underestimates the forces you are up against with SEO/Spam industry. Microsoft has invested into Bing for 13 years and has no market share and the #1 search term is "google."

It seems like we've all individually been able to find spam, and I'm guessing Google engineers that use Google for searching have the same experience. Is it just a matter of them allowing us to help train their algorithms? I'd be more than willing to report sites if I had the option.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#165

Post by spacemadness »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #53
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, I built sort of exactly this: https://search.marginalia.nu/ What's the elevator pitch? What do you actually do that is special? From the about section: > This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. > The software for this search engine is all custom-…

The point is to surface human websites and discriminate against content mills, click funnels and e-commerce. For one I have a sort of budget for how much javascript I will tolerate. Some is fine, like your standard wordpress config probably will fly, but not much more. I also do a personalized pagerank biased toward the blogosphere. The likelihood your website shows up in the results is directly determined by whether…

I like the idea of a search engine that acts as a sort of filter for known dark patterns along with returning useful results. Limiting on javascript quantity seems like a sledgehammer approach, but I like the spirit of it all the same.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#166

Post by romwell »

drivebycomment wrote: post #4

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

>This is a near impossible query for human beings

As is every query that we need computers for (e.g., a SELECT query that goes over millions of records).

On the other hand, expecting a search engine to find pages which at least mention both Croatia and Koh Lanta is a very, very, very low bar.

And it's going to be better than what Google is giving today.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#167

Post by notahacker »

dakial1 wrote: post #19
drivebycomment wrote: post #4

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

It is not only that. This search specifically is something that it's impossible because if the search worked, those "places out of the beaten path" the author is searching for, would immediately become popular and they wouldn't be true results anymore. They not being "indexed" by Google (or the internet in general) is what makes them the way they are.

It's not difficult to find info on Ko Lanta or Croatian resorts on Google. Its not invisibility that keeps them relatively quiet, it's the sheer amount of competition.

The reason even a fairly advance NLP system is going to struggle to find what the author considers to be the "Ko Lanta of Croatia" is that they can't read the author's mind about qualities associated with Ko Lanta, so they're going to highlight islands, not "small, quiet resort villages with $10-$20 rooms and hammocks" (Not really Croatia's "vibe" though I suspect the OP would probably like most Croatian islands anyway...). The same is going to be true even if you put in strings that return comparisons humans directly make themselves like "Venice of Asia".

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#168

Post by bluGill »

jaimex2 wrote: post #130

Is there a search engine out there that implements the good old page rank algorithm? The patent expired a while ago now.

It wouldn't work if you did. Back in 2000 everyone created their own web site with a list of links to others they found intersting. Now nobody is creating that input and so you don't get and data to rank by.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#169

Post by romwell »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #116
drivebycomment wrote: post #4

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

Yet Google encourages this type of search, where Google operates as some sort of oracle. What seems like an endless army of Google proponents (perhaps they are simply "status quo" proponents) discourage anyone from even attempting to think about how the web could be organised without the need for a Google. In a library, I can do searches restricted to certain subject areas. I might only be searching certain databases…

>I am still not sure this search even makes sense. It seems to rely on an assumption that some traveller will compare Koh Lanta with some location in Croatia

Well exactly. If anyone ever mentioned Koh Lanta in their review of Croatian destinations, we'd hope that that it would be at the top of the results.

Or that there would be no results.

Getting results that don't even mention Croatia is not the intended outcome.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#170

Post by Eratosthenes »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #24

> What I dream of is Google circa 2006. A time where a search engine searched what you asked for. A time before aggressive SEO. A time before social media, when the only people on the internet had a reason to be there. A time before sticky headers and full-screen modal pop-ups asking you to subscribe to a newsletter before reading the article. A time before click-bait and subscription-only websites which tease you wi…

Brilliant! This is fantastic. I'm in love with it already :)
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