If you were a fan of #ReplyAll, the podcast, you will probably be a fan of #SearchEngine.
The latest episode (as of today) is a conversation between PJ Vogt and Ezra Klein about using the Internet sanely in the year 2023, and it was fascinating.
It's only a single example, but I find it indicative of the results I get using https://kagi.com as my primary #searchengine.
Out of 4 #search engines (#Kagi, #DuckDuckGo, #Google, and #Bing), only Kagi gave me a result that was a review of someone actually using a microphone with a jogging stroller – and it was the top result. The others are basically just a jumble of unrelated microphone and #joggingstroller reviews.
Oh, and I also tested #Mojeek#search because I find it a very interesting entrant in the #searchengine space. Sadly, the results for this particular query were really, really bad – almost exclusively SEO junk as far as I can tell.
I've been seeing a lot of Python folks talk about https://kagi.com search lately. I currently use Duck Duck Go, and I'm interested in trying Kagi. Are there any others I should look at as well? I don't mind paid if it does a good job, but it would be nice to have something I can get other people to try easily too. #Kagi#DuckDuckGo#SearchEngine
Decided to try @Mojeek as my default #SearchEngine (switching from #DuckDuckGo). I like that they have their own crawler, instead of just using #Microsoft's results. Let's see how this goes...
So, this surveillance capitalism thing is totally out of hand. Today @protonmail had a great explainer (https://mastodon.social/@protonmail/111165171600485248) on the mind bending evil Google is up to with it's new "privacy features". But pretty much every tech company is now in the business of profiling you and monetizing your tidbits.
What can you do? A lot as it turns out, but if you just want ONE EASY THING that you can do today, SWITCH TO FIREFOX (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/) and make DuckDuckGo your default search engine.
"I will sell off 6,000 federal buildings ... so that we can build, build, build, build ... it just warms my heart to think of some beautiful family rolling up in their U-Haul to their wonderful new home at the former headquarters of the CBC."
This may be obvious, but I recently started routinely adding "-youtube" to google searches. This eliminates most pages with links to garbage YouTube-monetized videos that try to attract people looking for basic instructions on how to do simple things. Greatly improves the quality of search results.
I still use keyword filters (eg with #Startpage), always have, but long to be able to have a standard set that always apply and to be able to add domains and keywords to this with a right click on the results.
A article about if Ecosia is really a private search engine.
I did spend a lot a time to analyze and investigate Ecosia, I hope this article helps people to better understand how private is Ecosia really and which are the downsides of it. Is the first article I ever written, so it isn't perfect. I'm open for feedback!
C’est un moteur de recherche qu’on pourrait voir comme premium, on a un abonnement et donc nos recherches ne sont pas dictées pour les annonceurs publicitaires.
Honnêtement je suis en train de tester et pour le moment ça a l’air très prometteur. De très bons résultats et on peut même créer une tierlist des domaines pour gérer leur priorité d’apparition.
Bref, ça pose beaucoup de question sur la légitimité de payer pour chercher sur internet surtout que 5€ par mois, c’est pas donné non plus…
My biggest annoyance with #DuckDuckGo is that it does not use #OpenStreetMap as the default #map provider when searching for place names. Is there a #searchengine that uses #osm by default?
Following up on an earlier discussion today about #Brave browser (and search), I want to lament the loss of the #Gigablast#SearchEngine which was the last I know of which honored giving results which only included words immediately prefixed with '+'. A decade or so ago these kind of result filters were fairly common; then the rare "advanced search" option, now nothing (that I can find).
So I #lament.
And I acknowledge that I may not have looked hard enough in all the right nooks & crannies.
This is a concern because you are promoting StartMail with your post but do not use the service.
There are people that work for both Startpage & StartMail, resources are shared between the two companies since they were founded by the same people, and there are multiple links to #StartMail on the #Startpage website.
How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet - WIRED (www.wired.com)
cross-posted from !google...
Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine (arstechnica.com)
Google accused DOJ of aiming to force people to use “inferior” search products.