Technology
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
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Are you using DDG in addition to Kagi because of Kagi's limited number of searches per month, or because DDG does something better?
I'm a bit conflicted about Kagi because $5/month is a plausible price, but the limited number of searches seems like it would add an extra step of, "Do I want to use my limited search resource on this search?" to every search, which is an unwanted extra bit of friction.
I use DDG because I'm still not decided on whether or not Kagi is worth it. If there's no significant difference in the results returned by DDG, why pay for Kagi?
I use DuckDuckGo, but mostly as a "terminal to the internet". In a few keystrokes i've opened a new tab, navigated to the homepage (https://start.duckduckgo.com/), then used a Bang to do a direct search inside the particular site or thing i need. For many things specially tech questions i do fall back to Google though
Duck duck go. Google for maps
They're all garbage. Content farms and SEO nonsense has been flooding search engines with useless garbage for years. Either that or pages that simply copy forum threads over and over and over so you get a whole results page of what appears to be different sites, but are all a copy of the same forum thread from 2007. Or they grab your search string and then you have a page that looks like it's exactly what you need, only to find out it's scammy bullshit. But AI is making that whole problem exponentially worse.
I've tried DDG many many times over the years. Sometimes it's ok. But overall, most of the results i get just aren't relevant, and it seems like over the last year or two DDG's results have gotten way worse. I always end up back on Google. As crappy as Google is, the results still end up being more relevant overall.
I use SearXNG and Ecosia.
Bing and DDG.
Self-hosted SearXNG. Very easy to self-host, and (for the most part) works just fine
The only correct answer here is to use an instance of SearXNG because it's open source, utilizes privacy, and queries every kind of search engine that exists on the internet.
Dunno what it portends, but that link has an update that "SearX instances (not SearXNG) will soon get removed from this list"
A combination of DDG and Google. DDG's results too often look like a list of sponsors so when that happens I fuck right back off to Google.
Get an ad blocker, get Privacy Badger, use a VPN, experience the internet the way it was before corporate shitbags got hold of it. Mostly.
startpage is google with what appears to be less tracking. only issue it that they block tor browser. DDG does not.
Can we stop trying to coin cute terms like "enshittification"? What that term describes is just capitalism working as intended.
There is a term that describes this behavior that we've been using for at least decades (to describe behavior that has happened since the inception of capitalism): rent seeking.
Used to use SearXNG but got increasingly frustrated with it, so I mostly use DDG these days. Although, that being said, most search engines these days are filled with SEO clickbait trash which makes it basically mandatory to do site:reddit.com
Might have to try Kagi some day, despite my reservations about their pricing.
What frustrated you about SearXNG?
Many SearXNG hosts alter your search results without any easy way of opting out. For example, several will change Reddit links to Libreddit or use another frontend for Wikipedia and so on. Doing this, and not giving an accessible option to disable it, is unacceptable in my opinion. A search engine has no business in tampering with someone's results like this. If someone wishes to use Libreddit then that is their choice to do so - not the search provider's.