Has search gotten worse?

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Is the quality of web search results getting worse?

  • Yes

    Votes: 1,238 94.6%

  • No

    Votes: 19 1.5%

  • IDK

    Votes: 52 4.0%
  • Total voters
    1,309
wtf_google.png
So uh, I dunno when THAT got introduced but I just noticed it. 🤔
Yes, I know, I know, why am I looking for writeable media in the age of not using it...
 
So somebody up thread mentioned kagi.com as a new paid-for search engine. I thought I'd give it a try. My early experiments have been pretty positive. For a young search engine, I've not noticed any obvious omissions or weak areas. And it has a LOT of features if you want to get serious about searching. Tonne of !shortcuts as well.

Their basic package is $5 per month. They say they don't log anything and I'm inclined to believe them. You add a session key to the search URL in your browser when you add it and this will normally never change unless you change it.

Their Discord server is incredibly active. They're developing it at a cracking pace. For me one of the main selling points is that it has no ads and other commercial interests. And I believe less prone to social engineering. It also has built in "lenses" which are filters for the type of content. Such as PDF, Academic, Forums. And the community are making their own lenses as well. The forums one is pretty good. If you turn it on (v. easy) then Kiwifarms pops up as the second result for "Chris Chan". Interestingly, if you search "kiwifarms" on Bing you actually get a link to the site and sub-forum links as well but Google wont give you the site no matter what you done, just a tonne of misinformation and articles on how evil Kiwifarms is.

Anyway, going to continue to experiment with Kagi and may post some more meaningful comparisons when I have time to make them.
 
WelperHelper99 said:
Google images is turbo cucked. I have better luck either coming here or trawling 4 chan or wikis if it isn't normie enough.
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I also found Twitter search useful for searching for video clips. Ever since the Youtube purge of videos around 5 years ago, which virtually wiped out the community collation of important quotes or news stories. You can usually get a translated video of a foreign head of government or official within 12 hours. Or in other cases if you are trying to find something in particular, clips of interviews or statements from Presidents and intellectuals going back 70 years.
 
870EVO said:
I also found Twitter search useful for searching for video clips. Ever since the Youtube purge of videos around 5 years ago, which virtually wiped out the community collation of important quotes or news stories. You can usually get a translated video of a foreign head of government or official within 12 hours. Or in other cases if you are trying to find something in particular, clips of interviews or statements from Presidents and intellectuals going back 70 years.
Click to expand...
To be fair I've found a lot of memes and fan art from Twitter that I couldn't anywhere else
 
No stupid questions, yes search's gotten worse.
try searching Nembutal and you get a pussy ass message at the top of google
 
870EVO said:
If you are looking for Black memes on Google, don't use the word Black or any synonym. Google will hard lock you out at like 15 images. I took the word black out of the search query. It then appears.

View attachment 4924478
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Oh my gosh yes. Just trying to find basic memes like the black guy crying gif is hard as shit any more
 
On YT, searching for "heat radiator space" almost always gives results about space heaters of the terrestrial kind.

Even searching for "heat radiator spacecraft" still does the same.

ryuichi said:
try searching Nembutal and you get a pussy ass message at the top of google
Click to expand...
pointless fact: it's on Japanese Google too

ヘルプが利用可能
今すぐ相談する
Click to expand...
help available
Inquire now
Click to expand...
(and the number 0570-064-556 is shown)
 
Last edited:
WelperHelper99 said:
Brother that is pain. Heat radiators on space ships, real or Sci fi, add so much flavor.
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The "Web 1.0" style site "Atomic Rockets" has a whole article on that.

But of course heat radiators are one of the major things conspicuous by their absence in science fiction TV shows and movies. Concept artists don't want their ultra-futuristic spacecraft decked with 17th century billowed sails. They even over-ruled Arthur C. Clarke for cryin' out loud! The only exception that comes to mind is the ISV Venture Star from the movie Avatar.
Click to expand...
(also lots of images there so site may load slowly)
 
ToroidalBoat said:
The "Web 1.0" style site "Atomic Rockets" has a whole article on that.

(lots of images so it may load slowly)
Click to expand...
Thats glorious man. Surprised that you're still able to find such a site. But yeah, heat radiator stuff is absolutely ancient, and non controversial, just look at any nuclear RTG on space probes
Cutdrawing_of_an_GPHS-RTG.png
I don't get why Google can't figure it out.
snov said:
The best thing about Avatar was the Venture Star. Those radiators were so sexy. All the vehicles in it were pretty cool, but the Venture Star and its Valkyrie SSTOs are top notch.
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Avatar, as stupid as it was, had great vehicles. They felt very grounded, like we could build them today.
 
WelperHelper99 said:
Avatar, as stupid as it was, had great vehicles. They felt very grounded, like we could build them today.
Click to expand...
Even the things that don’t make sense, like the tiny rotors for the gunships, are kind of justified in the setting, where Pandora has both a thicker atmosphere and lower mass (and lower gravity) than Earth. Yeah, the gunship would be ridiculously impractical on Earth, because the rotors would need to be much larger, which would make them ungainly, but on that moon it makes enough sense that even someone as picky about realism as me can let it slip.

I did waste three hours watching the sequel (don’t worry, I pirated it), and apart from a glorious scene where the ISVs unleash the Emperor’s wrath on some xenos filth, the vehicles were largely a letdown this time. The new exoskeleton design looked better, but the ekranoplan was ridiculous and the updated gunships looked too much like toys, the old designs were much better. The less said about the stupid crab mech submarines and spider construction drones, the better.
 
Overly Serious said:
So somebody up thread mentioned kagi.com as a new paid-for search engine. I thought I'd give it a try. My early experiments have been pretty positive. For a young search engine, I've not noticed any obvious omissions or weak areas. And it has a LOT of features if you want to get serious about searching. Tonne of !shortcuts as well.

Their basic package is $5 per month. They say they don't log anything and I'm inclined to believe them. You add a session key to the search URL in your browser when you add it and this will normally never change unless you change it.

Their Discord server is incredibly active. They're developing it at a cracking pace. For me one of the main selling points is that it has no ads and other commercial interests. And I believe less prone to social engineering. It also has built in "lenses" which are filters for the type of content. Such as PDF, Academic, Forums. And the community are making their own lenses as well. The forums one is pretty good. If you turn it on (v. easy) then Kiwifarms pops up as the second result for "Chris Chan". Interestingly, if you search "kiwifarms" on Bing you actually get a link to the site and sub-forum links as well but Google wont give you the site no matter what you done, just a tonne of misinformation and articles on how evil Kiwifarms is.

Anyway, going to continue to experiment with Kagi and may post some more meaningful comparisons when I have time to make them.
Click to expand...
Ive been using Neeva at 5.99 a month and I love it. Ad blockers and tracker blockers standard. I like the way they have their bookmark organization set up too. I drive a clunker and often search random car maintenence issues and consitently get beautiful oldschool mechanic forum results where dudes talk about my exact issues including diagrams and workarounds- like having a retired rural farmer dude on tap to ask questions about making shit run again- rather than ads for parts or ads for services. Easy to get 'old internet' type stuff to surface. They released their own AI quick answer generator but I disabled it. You can also customize where results get pulled from very easily- like never ever search amazon.com etc. I might try Kagi soon too. Hadnt heard of it before. Thanks for enlightening me.
 
ToroidalBoat said:
Is it just me or are search engines more aggressively pushing SJW propaganda and burying anti-SJW stuff when it comes to memes?
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You're late if you only just noticed this now but you aren't imagining things. There's been a pretty clear attempt to scrub the internet of older (not even problematic, just older) results so that a basic search will yield the same Gamergate-style cabal of journalist articles who all repeat the same story & share the exact same biases. Google is effectively a brainwashing platform with no actual utility as a search engine anymore. I've directly searched for exact studies by researcher name & journal title without finding the exact result after 20 pages.
 
Ridley said:
There's been a pretty clear attempt to scrub the internet of older (not even problematic, just older) results so that a basic search will yield the same Gamergate-style cabal of journalist articles who all repeat the same story & share the exact same biases.
Click to expand...
Looks like the SJWs really do want to "cancel" the world before Current Year and "gaslight" the "Zoomers" and younger people into thinking it's always been Clown World.
 
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