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Internet search tips

gwern.net

81–86 of 86 posts

Re: Internet search tips

#81
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that, if we (some of us) can figure out when something is SEO spam or rather, generally low quality, an LLM should be able to but faster and more quantitatively why.

And who, pray tell, would have an interest in giving us that? The internet overlords are advertising companies. Would you pay for such an LLM? Those companies have gotten so powerful because everyone wants stuff for “free”.

> Those companies have gotten so powerful because everyone wants stuff for “free”.

On the contrary, my experience of the Internet since pre-web is those companies have gotten so powerful because now everyone 'creating content' wants to get paid.

Put another way, the gwerns of the world may start by posting ad-free content just because they feel like sharing. "Those" companies can't profit from individual pamphleteering.

But usually, as soon as a gwern has a measurable readership, they imagine money, and start supporting the ad industry. Surprisingly quickly, chasing more ad revenue becomes the point of their content instead of just sharing whatever they had to say.

Today, it seems most people start by wanting to get paid, and come up with a type of content to create.

Curiously, and as a result of the type of targeted searching gwern describes here, you'll generally find the best content is that which is still published free (self hosted or as open papers) thanks to motivations of the content's creator.

Re: Internet search tips

#82
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's odd, because that's not how browser zoom works. I checked in both Firefox & Chromium, and if you zoom in, the margins do get smaller & smaller and eventually go away completely when you reach mobile-mode where the text is edge to edge. (Are you sure you didn't do something like enable "Zoom text only" in your browser settings? That it works 'properly' on HN doesn't mean much because HN uses weird table layout…

"Zoom text only" was enabled. I checked a freshly installed Firefox and that is not the default so I am unsure how it was enabled, but it was. Thank you so much for helping me solve this!

Glad to hear that. I was worried that you would say you were using Safari. We keep having problems with Safari doing the wrong thing and we don't have convenient access to Safari instances.

Re: Internet search tips

#83

For complement I would recommend Russian yandex, and vk.com (russian facebook). It is like snapshot of internet from 2018, before everything was hit by massive censorship. It has some very niche communities that are no longer on internet. For example Ancient Egypt history, western net is filled with alien theories, Russians are doing experimental archaeology. Also repair, electronics... Also Telegram is like second i…

The irony of someone recommending Russian platforms to evade "censorship" is astounding.

My thought as well. As a Russian I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole. TG is full of CSAM and others are censored worse than anything in the US.

Re: Internet search tips

#84
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His website is the best designed website I have genuinely ever visited, so fast, easy to navigate and very little blank space which makes it information dense. I also love the inline link opening, I definitely will be implementing that when I make my own website in the future.

>His website is the best designed website The forced R and L margins suck for people with oldster eyes who have to increase the text size. Kids these days!

I have not seen the page on PC, all I can say is that it works very well on mobile.

Re: Internet search tips

#86
post #24
post #15

+1 for his tip of "Search The Internet Archive". The other day I searched for the Tom & Jerry full episodes on the web to no avail (streaming platforms and video platforms like youtube only have rubbish cuts). The internet archive has every episode starting from the first one in 1940, in an easily accessible player without any ads or recommendations: https://archive.org/details/tom-and-jerry-all-114-episodes

Your comment just reminded me of how great the Internet Archive is, so I guess it's time to donate another 100 bucks to IA again.

I give from time to time to Wikipedia, when I get an appeal from Jimmy Wales. Even more important than IA to me, which is saying A LOT.
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