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Google Memory Loss

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Re: Google Memory Loss

#541

Post by grkvlt »

rlucas wrote: post #506
Declanomous wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is [one of] the dark side[s] of the "adaptive" or "personalized" Web. The more adaptive and less deterministic, the less collaboratively and reliably useful it is, even if it happens to be better at serving attention-monster momentary gratification of the meme du jour. The reliance on advertising revenue models means that all such Web properties morph into being essentially adversarial attention traps against us…

> pay $50/month in a heartbeat for access to a [...] Google type engine

Never. And definitely not at USD 50 per month. That is a huge amount for this, although I suspect you're a pretty rare customer and/or exaggerating. Broadband or Mobile service, Satellite TV, etc. all have packages that cost about this much. Even a magazine subscription is a fraction of this amount, Netflix is only about 5-10 dollars a month, isn't it? I could see people paying 10% of the Netflix (ad free TV) charge for an ad free search engine maybe so USD 0.50 to 1.00 per month, 1% of your suggestion...

Re: Google Memory Loss

#542

Post by rob-olmos »

advantager wrote: post #34
rob-olmos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found if I put the keyword in double-quotes then it makes the keyword required in the search

Testing your hypothesis: https://imgur.com/a/yvo3y

I think that's a good result, yea? If so, I'm glad it helped! Typically I use the double quotes to search for specific code/error strings and then use non-quoted words in the query to help filter the results to specific context, like the app name or topic. Others suggested the "Verbatim" option.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#543

Post by Izkata »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #389
AndrewOMartin wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this comment is what teaches me I've been expected to do that, I'm going to throw my toys out of the pram. I've specifically googled for instructions on how I might be expected to use the swipe-style keyboards, and turned up nothing.

As far as I know it's in the tutorial they insist you do upon first enabling swiping edit: Don't actually see a tutorial in the app. Maybe I'm confused with another app such as Swype, but the same technique seems to apply to all.

I'm pretty sure Swype did explain it, and I know SwiftKey has this gesture as well (though I don't remember if it was ever explained to the user or just assumed they'd remember it from Swype).

Re: Google Memory Loss

#544

Post by Izkata »

dillweed wrote: post #398
AndrewOMartin wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this comment is what teaches me I've been expected to do that, I'm going to throw my toys out of the pram. I've specifically googled for instructions on how I might be expected to use the swipe-style keyboards, and turned up nothing.

Swipe style keyboard? How does that effect spelling ? So confused - I get how it changes to "predict," anticipate or whatever the AI engineers say but what I don't understand is changing a real word to a non-word. That's not intelligence. That's something else and I don't know what they get from changing word to a misspelled and nonexistent word other than eventually driving the human race insane: I'm going to be a L…

Er, "son" and "soon" are both real dictionary words. Swipe-style keyboards use an internal dictionary to find the most likely match to the swiped pattern, and have methods for adding new words (mine for example automatically adds any tapped-out words after you hit space).

Re: Google Memory Loss

#546

Post by johnsonjo »

josephg wrote: post #413
gonvaled wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't even need foreign languages to run into this problem. English is the only language I speak fluently, but I'm Australian. I'm also a programmer, and I have some american friends. So, depending on context sometimes I spell 'color' (programming or talking to Americans), and sometimes I spell 'colour' (talking to Australian friends and family). Same with behaviour / behavior, favour / favor, etc. The context fo…

When you said this it reminded me that css allows colors to be either ‘gray’ or ‘grey’. Which I’m glad because then I don’t have to fumble until I picked the right one. Though, I’ve learned to type hex colors (especially grey scale colors) intuitively now, so I usually use those a lot more than typed grays now.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#547

Post by tripzilch »

detaro wrote: post #494
tripzilch wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because you're not using DDG's !bang syntax to its full power. I have it as my default address bar search engine so I can redirect straight to Wikipedia (using !w), Discogs or whatever of the 1000s of !bang abbreviations are defined. Just the amount of times where you know the most useful (and probably top) result on Google will be Wikipedia makes DDG worth it. Saves a click. But for me it saves a click very o…

But browsers already have that functionality built in, why go through DDG for that? (well, Chrome and Firefox do, not sure about others)

If others = Opera, then yes, they came up with that first :)

I've been using those kinds of keyword search shortcuts for years before switching to DDG by default.

The realisation was that having 100s (maybe 1000s already) of easily-guessable search shortcuts pre-programmed with DDG's !bang syntax is way more useful than having top configure 10-20 of them by yourself (and forgetting most of them when you reinstall a browser). Definitely worth the extra "!" keystroke and redirect :) [especially given DDG doesn't track you via that redirect].

Re: Google Memory Loss

#548

Post by tripzilch »

mirimir wrote: post #501
tripzilch wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually forgot there's ads in Google's result pages. It's been ages since I've last seen them, uBlock is the first thing extension I install on a fresh Firefox.

Yes, one tends to forget about ads ;)

Ah yes, forgetting... I feel we should maybe commemorate the atrocities of the past in some way... Like a National Remembrance Day for the Fallen Ads, we could have a moment of two minutes of ... loudly over-compressed slick fast talking sales pitches trying to make you feel bad about your life without their product.

Oh, the nostalgia :) Actually thinking about it, I can get nostalgic and enjoy viewing certain ads sometimes, provided that they're over 10 years old. It's that whole icky feeling of being manipulated even while believing you know they do it (except they do it worse) these grabby greasy fingers reaching into my brain. After a about a decade, ads lose that power and they just become quaint. Like the "Jazz Solo Design" from the 90s (image search it and you'll recognize it immediately).

Re: Google Memory Loss

#549

Post by mersault »

akerro wrote: post #507
habosa wrote: post #456

Many people here are pining for the old days of Google search where if you knew the operators and some tricks you could develop very specific queries and get a page that matches exactly. I remember those days too. It did feel like Google search skill was a super power. I also remember my non technical friends and family being pretty much unable to find what they were looking for online. Google did not turn their ramb…

I think you forgot how maintains computers of these non-powered users, it's us. Advanced users. When I decide Bing or DDG is better than Google Search, then Google can kiss my ass goodbye and my 20 computers I maintain occasionally for family and friends.

Why would you take your family to DDG? Not all users need to use the same toolset. If the parent comment is correct, and Google is targeting the "mass market" user, then wouldn't leaving your presumably less-tech friends and family with Google as their default search engine make your life easier? Just because Google is no longer the best fit for you doesn't mean DDG is the best fit for them.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#550

Post by rspeer »

zentiggr wrote: post #431
rspeer wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're imagining that people who make NLP corpora actually vet the text going into them? I dream of a world where people can be convinced to care that much. I'm not even talking about the scenario you suggest of filtering for proper word usage, I'm talking about filtering at all . The corpora used for popular word embeddings are full of weird nonsense text (in the case of word2vec) or autogenerated awfulness like spa…

That is one of the most draining things I've heard recently. Sigh. Are these open projects where someone could in principle improve them?

The best open corpus project I know of is OPUS: http://opus.nlpl.eu/

They say they welcome contributions; I don't know if they just mean new sources of text, or if this includes code for filtering or fixing their existing ones.

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