Post AiAzrLiHnLHbPhuXSa by Cheeseness@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by Cheeseness@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AiAzAL7a7Vpf7qEa7E by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2024-05-23T07:47:13Z
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Duck Duck Go is down because Bing is down.(Also, you saw the recent AI stuff, right?)Folks, I know… I use Duck Duck Go also but remember they have venture capital. Enjoy it while it lasts (or let’s fund and build alternatives differently that aren’t temporary businesses with profit motives and exits but commons-owned institutions working for the common good).#DuckDuckGo #bing #microsoft #ventureCapital #DDG
(DIR) Post #AiAzI41RZsXIPW2wYC by Fury@mastodon.au
2024-05-23T07:48:31Z
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@aral are there any alternatives atm?
(DIR) Post #AiAzIWNO9sj8LgWrdw by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2024-05-23T07:49:02.437823Z
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@aral A free distributed search engine already exists; YaCyhttps://yacy.net/Too bad it's Java.
(DIR) Post #AiAzNKWZeP8n2T7PKi by Cheeseness@mastodon.social
2024-05-23T07:49:30Z
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@aral Aral, are you familiar with Stract (a search engine that is F/OSS)? It seems neat and has interesting features, but I haven't had time to investigate if it is what it appears to be https://stract.com.about
(DIR) Post #AiAzR3jK29au6trLm4 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2024-05-23T07:49:52Z
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@Fury 🤷♂️
(DIR) Post #AiAzWwtCNdN4dEHtLM by canderson@chaos.social
2024-05-23T07:51:13Z
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@aral Any good and independent alternatives? Maybe Brave Search or Mojeek?
(DIR) Post #AiAzazwkxGMBGwsmEi by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2024-05-23T07:52:03Z
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@Cheeseness The description sounds good. Will give it a shot, thanks :)
(DIR) Post #AiAzhdM9LNsVEivMNU by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2024-05-23T07:52:27Z
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@canderson Brave: fuck no :)
(DIR) Post #AiAzlGkjKEEOI79fQe by altim@mastodon.nl
2024-05-23T07:52:44Z
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@aral 👆 So true. Countries, institutions and citizens need to have access a web that is independent of venture capital or big tech.
(DIR) Post #AiAznyOY2GJIDy4KB6 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2024-05-23T07:52:48Z
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@canderson This sounds interesting: https://mastodon.social/@Cheeseness/112489304604636353
(DIR) Post #AiAzrLiHnLHbPhuXSa by Cheeseness@mastodon.social
2024-05-23T07:54:44Z
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@aral In particular, the "10k short" optic (found in Settings->Manage Optics), which removes the 10,000 most popular sites seems like a cool way of surfacing stuff that wouldn't normally be visible
(DIR) Post #AiAzxfDKClR7dCRLcm by canderson@chaos.social
2024-05-23T07:56:05Z
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@aral Interesting!
(DIR) Post #AiB0445adG8iWAsHBY by forteller@tutoteket.no
2024-05-23T07:52:20Z
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@aral Is that why Qwant is down too?
(DIR) Post #AiB0BPNNszj6Z7hPai by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2024-05-23T07:58:37Z
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@Cheeseness Nice
(DIR) Post #AiB0IdFkgrobdBZdtQ by manu@paquita.masto.host
2024-05-23T07:58:46Z
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@aral I use Qwant. It's still not completely IA free but results are bullshit-free.
(DIR) Post #AiB0UsC6xst5Rghx5s by piyuv@techhub.social
2024-05-23T08:02:09Z
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@aral why not searxng?
(DIR) Post #AiB0oOcAeQh3UuCqhc by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2024-05-23T08:05:13Z
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@algernon @Cheeseness Maybe @nlnetlabs can answer those concerns since they have EU taxpayer money.
(DIR) Post #AiB16NtQ4c0KTHqrtA by aderieg@post.lurk.org
2024-05-23T08:08:49Z
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@aral This is a good discussion of search engines: https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/
(DIR) Post #AiB19RQFPJZ2HpfFnU by urusan@fosstodon.org
2024-05-23T08:09:24Z
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@aral I ask Fedi for suggestions and the fine folks here usually deliver something good.Fedisearch?
(DIR) Post #AiB1TLVD7wktiZTdr6 by siavogel@mastodon.nl
2024-05-23T08:12:10Z
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@aral Ik gebruik Ecosiahttps://www.ecosia.org
(DIR) Post #AiB1WadJKPfJVtoRt2 by nlnetlabs@fosstodon.org
2024-05-23T08:13:29Z
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@aral @algernon @Cheeseness You likely mean NLnet, which uses @NGIZero. We are NLnet Labs, who build #OpenSource software.
(DIR) Post #AiB1qM8sujnMMZ0Sfo by nini@bitbang.social
2024-05-23T08:17:14Z
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@aral While building an alternative non-VC riddled search engine is neat, it still has to be good. Intentions are cute but if it can't find anything then it won't matter how FOSS and/or decentralised it is, searching the internet is not easy. Even web directories are a whole other thing that won't work as well in the internet of 2024 even if it did in the web of 2001.
(DIR) Post #AiB2NYLoXmxtmcsqY4 by kdekooter@mastodon.social
2024-05-23T08:23:13Z
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@aral #enshittification is everwhere
(DIR) Post #AiB38Ermnu6Uxq6FAe by hko@mastodon.social
2024-05-23T08:31:33Z
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@aral oh man. I was wondering what's going on with ddg, today. *sigh*
(DIR) Post #AiB3hT4jy2A1ASxQZs by theDuesentrieb@social.linux.pizza
2024-05-23T08:37:53Z
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@aral ahh, I just wondered. I used Startpage instead, but somehow they only return rubbish for the simplest inputs
(DIR) Post #AiB3ksKIXcygLorKca by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2024-05-23T08:38:31Z
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@aral https://startpage.com is still up I see.
(DIR) Post #AiB4CqbGYMrZ6a8MoC by semele@mastodon.social
2024-05-23T08:43:42Z
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@aral dogpile is down, too.
(DIR) Post #AiB6dsskNQlruSKY6a by thespiralcow@mastodon.social
2024-05-23T09:10:24Z
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@aral Ugh. See, I've been trying to get away from DDG because they, too, have drank the AI kool-aid, but every single alternative is just terrible with results. DDG is the only search engine that seems to give me exactly what I want right up front, with no filler and no trash, regardless of my search. SearXNG, stract, startpage, etc, seems to not care about quality results.
(DIR) Post #AiB7ydaOXfqEVOCqMS by vampirdaddy@chaos.social
2024-05-23T09:25:56Z
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@aral DDG, Ecosia, Startpage etc use Bing as backend - and thus are down, too…
(DIR) Post #AiBAquZVnzdOjPni1g by ShaulaEvans@zirk.us
2024-05-23T09:58:03Z
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@aral Oh, no. I didn't know they had venture capital. This breaks my heart.
(DIR) Post #AiBIwzEEChusXqFl8i by mihira@bantu.social
2024-05-23T09:23:41Z
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@aral I also noticed that. ddg is my main search engine for yearsI didn't know they were depending on Bing.
(DIR) Post #AiBIx10pZUO84s05XE by mihira@bantu.social
2024-05-23T09:25:32Z
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@aral I am using SearXNG and Mojeek @Mojeek in the meantime. But I feel like I need some other options.edit.: Ecosia is also down
(DIR) Post #AiBLJfDGzEeF2LkPDM by igami@social.tchncs.de
2024-05-23T11:55:23Z
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@aral @Qwant https://qwant.org is also down
(DIR) Post #AiBaqmA3fnUpSGUUwi by pascaline@mastodon.nl
2024-05-23T14:49:17Z
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@aral Yeah, my thoughts exactly after they were 'taken over' a few years ago. 'Nothing will change' et cetera.But.Of course it did.Ferengis.I am all for creating a 'community built & maintained search engine'. Would be good.
(DIR) Post #AiBcJ95A99mibcIChs by felwert@fedihum.org
2024-05-23T15:05:36Z
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@aral I really would love @pears to grow into something usable.
(DIR) Post #AiBmDIawrgthuf0kAC by hazlin@shortstacksran.ch
2024-05-23T16:57:16.176038Z
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@Suiseiseki any idea why so many of these tools are written in Java? Is really seems like the worst choice.
(DIR) Post #AiDWCmZ4k6RHcempLU by peacememories@chaos.social
2024-05-23T09:04:01Z
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@Cheeseness @aral they have some nice features and I tried switching to it full-time, but for one the performance and quality of results is not really there right now (forgivable) but they also started incorporating Aishit into their search :/
(DIR) Post #AiDWCncIpacAsxIv0y by Cheeseness@mastodon.social
2024-05-23T10:14:47Z
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@peacememories @aral Do you have a link to where I can read more about Stract's use of AI/ML? It's not something I've been able to find more information on.
(DIR) Post #AiDWCoT7fCrjWm16LQ by peacememories@chaos.social
2024-05-23T11:13:18Z
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@Cheeseness @aral I couldn't find any mention on their website as well, but the summarization feature made me suspicious, so I dove into the code: https://github.com/StractOrg/stract/blob/e74978c5bc1570e10e8f54e2a36a28461f576ead/crates/core/src/summarizer.rsOf course, *providing a summarizer* is way less problematic than what other search providers have been doing. But the obvious inaccuracy of these summaries combined with the questionable ethics of anything ChatGPT are imo not compatible with the mission of an open, accurate, and fair search.
(DIR) Post #AiDWCp5lLXm3Sc5xZY by andersbiork@mastodon.social
2024-05-24T10:46:15Z
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@peacememories @Cheeseness @aral Maybe @mikkeldenker can clarify the use of AI in Stract?
(DIR) Post #AiDWCq1XshzkLp86dc by mikkeldenker@mastodon.social
2024-05-24T12:21:15Z
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@andersbiork @peacememories @Cheeseness @aral Thanks for the tag! The model in production is also Mistral which we host on our own server using vllm. The only reason the code references openai is because everyone seems to have settled on that as the standard api.The summary only shows a couple of lines, so I think it can be seen as an expensive snippet that is only computed on-demand when the user requests it. If one wants more information they need to visit the original site.[continued]
(DIR) Post #AiDWCqtmd3Nd42VQB6 by mikkeldenker@mastodon.social
2024-05-24T12:21:52Z
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@andersbiork @peacememories @Cheeseness @aral With that said, I think this is very fair criticism and we should remove it.Hallucinations is an integrated part of how LLMs work and I haven't seen anyone be able to solve it. At this point, I'm not even sure it can be and I don't think LLMs have any place in search until it's solved.I'll put it on my todo list to remove it right away.
(DIR) Post #AiDjT0jJ8yrLaldooa by morgenkaff@fosstodon.org
2024-05-24T15:35:23Z
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@aral do you know http://metager.org?Dont know much about it, but I'm testing it out after the bing "blackout".It uses more than one backend, are foss, German non profit and you can pay to disable ads.But yeah. I've only just discovered it, so its no endorsement..