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Google Memory Loss

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Re: Google Memory Loss

#401
post #311

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I’m on an iPhone now but in many ways it’s a step backwards from my old BlackBerry Pearl, let alone the Bold I got next

Call me a crazy person, lately I've been thinking long and hard about going back to the BB (BB Bold 9930) and am willing to make all the sacrifices that come with it for a lot of the frustrations with smartphone OSes listed in this thread. Maybe I'm getting older and my demands on what I expect from a phone are beginning to normalize and simplify: Text, Calls, Email, a browser for sports scores and reading news artic…

Wish I knew what bb 9930 was but I am considering becoming a Luddite

Re: Google Memory Loss

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, Android does that too? This awful, terrible, no good fake "AI" behavior on iOS was one of the many quality issues with modern iOS that was making Android look more attractive. iOS keyboards have been getting worse with every update, probably as more and more engineers feel the need to make a mark, or are required to fix bugs, and they spoil it. The simple and predictable statistical model of the original iOS…

I don't know how easy it is to switch keyboards on iOS, but its a great idea on Android. I use Minuum - looks whacko at first but let's me use way more of the screen when replying and it is really accurate!

Easy bit wonky swift key is probably the best

Re: Google Memory Loss

#403
post #371

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It has not been a guarantee for several years, now. At best it seems to be a slightly firmer suggestion.

Do you have some example searches? I believe you, just never seen it myself. Perhaps I switched some obscure setting on years ago.

[deleted]

Re: Google Memory Loss

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me a crazy person, lately I've been thinking long and hard about going back to the BB (BB Bold 9930) and am willing to make all the sacrifices that come with it for a lot of the frustrations with smartphone OSes listed in this thread. Maybe I'm getting older and my demands on what I expect from a phone are beginning to normalize and simplify: Text, Calls, Email, a browser for sports scores and reading news artic…

Wish I knew what bb 9930 was but I am considering becoming a Luddite

an older Blackberry model: https://www.gsmarena.com/blackberry_bold_touch_9930-3755.php

Re: Google Memory Loss

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This same AI effect can be seen in the Android keyboard, where _properly_ spelled words will be replaced after typing another word or two because it's been determined to be more likely what you want. It's infuriating.

Try switching between languages. I work in English, my wife is Italian, my colleagues are french speaking, I am Spanish and have Catalan friends, and I live in Germany. I gave up on predictive keyboards long ago.

I'm on the same boat, I'm Italian and speak Spanish a lot with friends, English is my daily language. The latest Google keyboard has helped but it's not nearly as good as T9 was.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#406

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> has seemingly degraded into an approximation of a search engine that has knowledge of only very superficial information, will try to rewrite your queries and omit words (including the very word that makes all the difference...) I think the biggest irony is that the web allows for more adoption of long-tail movements than ever before, and Google has gotten significantly worse at turning these up. I assume this has s…

I'm not sure I've got a fully formed concept here, but I'm throwing it out in case someone finds it interesting. Re: long-tail movements and switching contexts between work and home, I wonder if a better example isn't much better user or persona management. Every person is interested in more than just one thing, and can conceivably be looking for the same word in two contexts. Down below, a multi-lingual speaker has…

One of the difficulties I see with this approach is to identify personas.

It would be fine it was work + home persona. I feel though that it woild end up like work local branch + work parent company report + work programming + home family member + home personal hobbies + home grand parent’s health

For context I already have two IDs for work and private stuff, I still hit a lot of barriers on Google search and ended up in ddg, using the location switch when needed.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you're right, they did this a looong time ago... BUT, sometimes Google still insists on showing you results that don't contain the word or phrase that you've explicitly requested must be in the results - utterly infuriating !

You now have to go into Search Settings -> Verbatim. Unfortunately you’d have to do this for each search session as it doesn’t persist.

In Chrome, I've set up Google Verbatim as a search engine and made that the default address bar search. Here is the URL format: {google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:instantFieldTrialGroupParameter}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s&tbs=li:1

Re: Google Memory Loss

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, Android does that too? This awful, terrible, no good fake "AI" behavior on iOS was one of the many quality issues with modern iOS that was making Android look more attractive. iOS keyboards have been getting worse with every update, probably as more and more engineers feel the need to make a mark, or are required to fix bugs, and they spoil it. The simple and predictable statistical model of the original iOS…

4 years ago was a very different time. Software quality in general continues to drop. I’m not sure if that’s due to increasing incompetence in the software engineering workforce (unlikely, but possible), malice (more unlikely), or apathy (most likely). When wages don’t grow over 10 years, what incentive is there to write the best software you can?

> 4 years ago was a very different time. Software quality in general continues to drop. I’m not sure if that’s due to increasing incompetence in the software engineering workforce (unlikely, but possible), malice (more unlikely), or apathy (most likely).

I think another dimension is how deployability has changed.

Before... When you wrote and shipped software, getting your software out was a big problem, a big deal. This also meant that if you shipped a bug, shipping an update would be equally expensive (for you and your customers), and the amount of goodwill you lost would be quite tremendous.

Now everyone has a appstore, always up to date apps, and whatever else is usually "in the cloud" somewhere. The time of people installing applications in a normal desktop-context, with installers and having IT-administrators handle updates once every second year is surely long gone.

With that kind of change, and an increased focus on delivering early, doing proper QA is no longer something which is rewarded in the market.

Who cares if you made a bug-free, awesome service, when you did it 6 months after someone else shipped a similar, but buggy service which everyone is already using? They have established a user-base and as such already has social momentum and lock-in.

What do you have to offer which is not only fantastic enough to make some bother migrating, but also so amazing that these people will also go convert their friends and families? "Less bugs" alone is not going to cut it.

Basically, taking the time to deliver quality software these days is increasingly something you get punished for in the market-place.

The result? We get shit like this and we can only blame ourselves.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#409
post #327

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I just tried a few of my old "dry" queries (as in, things I've always wanted to look for but can't seem to get good results) and didn't notice much difference... Furthermore, after a total of 3 "Next Page"'s, I got IP-banned with a CAPTCHA. I've had similar experiences recently with "site:" and the other colon-operators, so not entirely unexpected, but still immensely infuriating. It's almost like any real attempt to…

I start feeling like the web is being de-optimized for nerds & super-users

Nothing wrong with that. You generally shouldn't optimize applications for power users. Software should be usable.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#410
post #394

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That kind of "name calling" is pretty common in many areas. Watch some debates in British parliament, for example. Do you really think the Chief Financial Officer of one of the biggest companies in the world is unable to handle it? All you will do if you pursue this sterilisation of language is drive away the really intelligent, if idiosyncratic, people and help build an echo chamber.

I sincerely doubt that the Chief Financial Officer of one of the biggest companies in the world has time to read random comments on HN, so whether they 'can handle it' is moot. There is certainly a place for cursing and maybe even name-calling (though I'm surprised you'd bring up the British parliament as an example worthy of imitation) but Hacker News is not it, cf. why I quoted its guidelines. Indeed, sometimes cur…

The only one detracting from anything is you. The rest of us read the comment just fine. I'm american myself and know the "rack" slang but the meaning you suggested didn't occur to me until you pointed it out. I assumed the name had something to do with where this person (I don't know who he's talking about) used to work or some infamous project that went badly or something. Understanding the name didn't seem critical to the comment so I didn't spend time trying to analyze it.
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