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Comment by neffy | Hacker News Reader

No, actually, I as an adult human being, am quite capable of using search, to find what I want.

Now, I agree, search is also governed by algorithms - but I'm also quite capable of sitting there for a few minutes, paging through until I get past them to find what I want. I do not want anything controlling my filters, except me. Edge cases can be dealt with. Latex lovers need to learn that it's a text editor first.

As for Amazon, I have never found their recommendations helpful, or bought anything via them. If Amazon wants to help me, it really needs to clean its house on fake recommendations, and bogus products.

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A simple google search for, say, "string" confirms to me that what you say is not true. I program, so it shows me ... well not clothing. Things I would not want to sort through.

So you should realize that even something as simple as search cannot work well without "using my information". And I very much want it to do that.

If that were true, people would not be able to find anything useful on DuckDuckGo.com and similar sites. Tracking is definitely not a prerequisite for quality search.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=string&t=h_&ia=web

https://www.google.com/search?q=string

Judge for yourself whether context matters. I suppose the results will differ from person to person, but I feel comfortable saying that while Duckduckgo isn't a lost cause, it contains a lot of bullshit to filter through. Example:

> STRING: functional protein association networks > STRING is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure: it is one of > ELIXIR's Core Data Resources. Learn more > ...

I mean ... really ? I suppose it must be a string, but, and maybe this is just me, I'm not looking for genetic manipulation tips or databases when I search for "string".

What I find funny, is that you think some crappy algorithm, can beat the real neural network, your mind ;)

You convert a fixed problem ('locate search terms that have a high correlation to what I am searching for') to a fuzzy problem of "how can I guess what this person is searching for, based on a sequence of search terms, where I manipulate the results, thereby gauranteeing that the search sequence is poisoned by what I presume they are searching for').

Oddly enough, the latter, is how you get high dwell on a search engine (COUGH COUGH).

as soon as I started using duckduckgo - bang, back to 1 minute searches as I just altered my search terms and actually got back, what I wanted.

Is it called "dwell"? Because it's a useful word for an incredibly annoying trend that Google were doing the last few months I used it: whenever I searched for a word I'd used in a previous search they would try really hard to get me the same results as before, including ignoring quoted words and minus-prefixed strings. At that point I just really wanted Google to forget my previous searches, but of course that's impossible. Since I'm interested in more than one thing, using a different search engine is just better.

On a related note, Google seems to be doing something similar with startpage.com searches, I guess because mostly geeks use it. Or else they are somehow getting enough data through startpage.com to identify me.

dwell is a technical term from production lines ;) it means you adjust the speed at which your conveyer runs, to offer more time under a particular process (implemented along the line). typically heating.

Google, like Amazon, and Apple, have jumped the shark.

Facebook, is the shark. ;)

Actually, when you link up 2 neural networks, or even a neural network and, say, a search algorithm, the neural network rapidly learns to use the external algorithm to do what it was planning to do anyway.

So there is no "beating" a neural network. The reward for having such a search algorithm is simply the ability to put thoughts into your mind. Your mind may still reject them, and if you don't feed it enough relevant data, it will rapidly abandon you.

presuming you don't just abandon the search is irrelevant. :)

which is why I don't stress that "agree to disagree over similar premises". can be both a hindrance, and a benefit.

string c++

The human mind is far greater than the sum of the algorithms - when we allow it to be.

I do remember that from the 90s. There were whole books with google search tips. The extra syntax that you needed to know.

The meaning of quoting search terms (all 3 different ones). The + and - things: +term -term. The special syntaxes "site:", the use of asterisks within quoted search terms, "define:", "link:", "related:", "...", "nearby", "filetype:", ...

And then the many "soft" tips, like leaving out unimportant words and so on.

I mean it was ... euhm ... well I remember it was all kinda cool (and it still works !), but ... today it is better.

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