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You Will Not Understand This

stanleylieber.com

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Re: You Will Not Understand This

#71

Post by vog »

rootlocus wrote: post #67
vog wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Educating" users is not as profitable as serving users. Also, a system that adapts to its users is generally more successful than a system that requires users to adapt to it. Moreover, proper education across the whole population requires, well, a country with proper education across the whole population. So you might have luck in some Scandinavian countries, but not at global scale.

> "Educating" users is not as profitable as serving users. Manipulating "uneducated" users is much more profitable.

This is a true statement, but how is this relevant?

What do localized search results have to do with manipulating uneducated users?

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#72

Post by myfonj »

jdietrich wrote: post #36

>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to differ…

> Of course Google serves different results to different users (…)

And still, you can peek at the "not personalized" and "not local" results with `Tools > Verbatim` (as opposed to default `All results`) option:

https://www.google.com/search?q=takeaway+pizza&source=lnt&tb...

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#73

Post by dahauns »

busterarm wrote: post #4
13of40 wrote: post #2

"Fuck you forever for breaking e-mail for everyone in the world." Did, uh, anyone else understand that bit?

Gmail doesn't play well with plain text emails. Even if you manually select Plain Text to send, it still reflows lines at 78 characters by manually inserting linebreaks and adds its own special characters where it feels like. It also doesn't follow a handful of RFCs specific to email. There is no workaround for the forced hard-wrapping of lines in Plain Text. It will not let you use format=flowed either. Plain Text m…

Heh, yes - they are basically the heir to Outlook, which ironically does play well with plaintext email nowadays...

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#74

Post by hzay »

jdietrich wrote: post #36

>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to differ…

Pretty sure OP gets the idea of personalization. Google's personalization is like piling up chairs in order to reach the moon. It's nowhere near its promise of reading the user's mind and helping him. Instead its present implementation simply stops your world view from expanding in any direction, by serving you the same stuff that you knew over and over again.

This is not personalization. This is a child's imitation of it. An unpersonalized search engine is much better than this thing that simply hides any interesting content from you in favor of showing you something related to your previous search or to whatever nonsense your neighbors look up. Once upon a time, the internet allowed you to escape your geography. No longer.

I'd much rather type "takeaway pizza chicago" than have google mind-read where I want the pizza delivered. Search is not always about looking up something already connected to you. It used to be about unfettered exploration.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#75

Post by aethr »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #52
jdietrich wrote: post #36

>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to differ…

I can't find any sources for why Gmail has supposedly "broken" e-mail for "everyone in the world". Do you know what he's referring to?

If Google's spam filters block an IP or subnet that happens to be where you host your self-hosted mail server, it will be almost impossible for your mail server reputation to ever recover. Your emails to gmail users (a vast percentage of all email users in many places) will never be delivered and maintaining your own mail server will become a nightmare.

Google has very good spam filtering, but their lack of human controls or support make it impossible for the little guy to get resolution in many cases where a spam score may be undeserved.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#76

Post by krick »

jf wrote: post #11

I'm relived that at least some people are leaving social media. "Gamification of personal interaction" certainly degraded my health. Quitting Facebook "cold turkey" is the best decision I've made this year.

I'm constantly amazed by all this "I quit facebook" bragging on HN. I'm avoiding FB as much as I can, but it doesn't feel to me at all like a problem that doesn't affect me if I'm not using it. That's pretty much the point for me. It's harder and harder for me to avoid FB. Local businesses don't bother making their own websites anymore, gym will post updates in some FB group (or whatever it's called), pretty much everyone expects me to be on FB. Fuck, many web-based services will not allow me creating a new account with them, I must use google or fb accounts to log in. Ordinary people I meet everyday don't ask me for a phone number, telegram/whatsapp account (as if it is not evil enough), surely not an email. They ask me how to find me on FB, and find it somewhat creepy that I'm not using it. My friends will text me and send me links to something hosted on FB that I cannot see if not logged in.

And I'm not even some Stallman-grade eremite that declines anything but email. I have a phone, whatsapp, telegram, I'm ready to make a new account on your website. Facebook still affects me, in a harmful way.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#77

Post by abrezas »

jdietrich wrote: post #36

>Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. While I sympathise with the general anti-social-media stance, it's clear from this phrase that OP does not understand the most basic elements of how internet services function at scale. Of course Google serves different results to differ…

> Yes, I am aware that this is likewise no accident.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#78

Post by speedplane »

IanCal wrote: post #34

> Search quality is no longer a core competency of Google, the Internet’s premiere search engine. For example: Two people type the same search string, each receives different results. Yes, I am aware that this is likewise no accident. This is not an example of low search quality and can easily be the opposite. If I search for ruby gems, I probably want code. If someone else does, they may want actual gems. > The qual…

The core issue with Google today is that they've backed away from their mission of "organizing the world's information". They killed Google books, Google scholar is an afterthought, and most results either point to wikipedia or spam. They are definitely falling behind.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#79

Post by meric »

netsharc wrote: post #59
nludd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I search for "takeaway pizza", I'm going to be pretty annoyed if the results are generated using PageRank alone, with no weighting for local relevance. Google "takeaway pizza [place of residence]". >If an American searches for "cricket", they almost certainly mean the cellular provider or the insect rather than the sport Google "cricket provider" or "cricket insect". >if a British person makes the same search, th…

Your queries would work, but Google wants to be like the secretary in the office. If you ask your secretary "I want some pizza", he would not say "Well this pizza place is the most popular in the world, it's located in Rome.", he would tell you options close to your area.

They could have two services - Google Search and Google Secretary.

Re: You Will Not Understand This

#80

Post by skinnyfoetusboy »

jamix wrote: post #70

> Instagram > I paid them for the app. Then they sold the app to Facebook. Now I see targeted ads and promoted posts. Was Instagram really a paid app at some point? Couldn't find any references to this.

The first post from Wired[1] about Instagram refers to it as a free app. I could see OP "misremembering" buying Instagram.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2010/10/instagram-for-iphone-like-a-lo...

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