## 35 Searching

During the last month, it was one of my main task : Searching... Searching for the future, searching how to deal with pain, searching for informations on old games for vintage computers and consoles. For the future, I know what I want, I have ideas, I it's OK at least for 2027 for the blogs, for my work and family. To deal with pain is quite OK. I just know that I won't be able to do what I did before for a long time. That's life...

But for searching informations on the Internet, it's not like it was before. It's been a lot of years that I don't use Google for that. Or it's an exception. I generaly use DuckDuckGo or Startpage with quite good results. I also know exactly where to find informations for a lot of platforms/consoles/computers because I have bookmarks for that. The Wayback Machine is also very useful and sometimes magazines and other ressources in Archive.org. But recently I saw evolutions in the Search tools. AI is now everywhere as an option. For Google, it's not an option anymore and the results of the "normal" search are awful. Is it to push users in Gemini's hands, their AI? But if you use that AI, it's not better. For so specific subjects as mine, it's a disaster. Gemini (and also ChatGPT clones) are giving halucinations, false informations. If you are able to sort that, it's OK but most people are unable to do that. If you know that those companies are very friendly with Donald Trump, you can really understand the risk
!

But even in the "normal search" result, there are issues. Many results are websites written by AI with not even an human to control that. I have many examples in mind and it's creating a total bullshit. For me, it's just VideoGame history but imagine that for most serious subjects. It's quite easy to detect with a sterotypical writing style, long sentences to say nothing...like in politics. And when I read sometimes a site competing with the one I participate in, I have doubts. Too long, too much described to say nothing and I'm pretty sure they use AI to fill their database. Is it bad ? Not necessarily if it's to copy some informations that are long to write ourselves. For example, I had to create entries for all the Windows Phone games missing...probably more than 1000. I entered 500 for the moment, one by one, with my control to avoid duplicates or mistakes. I could have copied at least one database but I don't want to work like that. But I know that there are more games created each month in the world th
an games created by ourselves in the database. So I'm focus on old games, on terminated and dead platforms.

It's not easier to search informations on that because many people didn't keep copies of the games, of the box, or arcade cabinet. Many creators of the games of the 60-80s are dead now or at least retired. And informations with them, if they are able to remember. Searching models are based on huge databases and some of those dumb companies destroyed sometimes books or other sources after digitalizing them. It's like a crime...But nobody cares, until you are touched by the problem.

2Dɛ
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