For the past year or so, I’ve been using and enjoying the search engine Kagi.
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@jeridansky Thank you.
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@inthehands
Is "duck" a hint?I've used only DDG for about 8 years now.
There's issues, but I don't know of a better alternative right now.
There seems to be a lot of us searching for a better search tool.
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@inthehands @CptSuperlative closing tabs
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@inthehands @glightly@mastodon.social @CptSuperlative one thing I've been thinking about—a tangent to this tangent—is an updated take on the old webrings. For blogs and other websites, using some kind of combination of tags, pingbacks, and algorithms to generate recommendations and related links. One of the things I miss the most about the old timey web is the feeling of "surfing"—not just getting a stream of content from a central feed, but chains of association. I still get it from Wikipedia, and that's it
@alter_kaker @inthehands @glightly@mastodon.social @CptSuperlative Good observation.
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ADDENDUM 1/2: Kagi is apparently now flailing around trying to find a quick and dirty fix for the uproar: “maybe you can disable Brave in your search results or we’ll try to make their services free or something” etc etc.
My deal-killing objection was not actually them using Brave’s services, but rather their •unwillingness to think• about the underlying issues in doing so. I can’t say that this “we’ll let you cover your eyes too” sort of response addresses my concerns at all.
@inthehands it's "i'm sorry you're upset"; they don't even understand why what they did was bad, just that people are mad at them
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Search is a wasteland right now. Alas. And there are no good choices.
But look, if I’m going to •pay• a company money for search, it needs to be a company run by ethically mature people. If and when Kagi is run by such people, maybe I’ll give that paid plan another go. For now, well, maybe these childish people will blunder their way to maturity and maybe they’ll just blunder, but either way, they won’t be doing it on my dime.
/end
@inthehands how about a sidestep? For anything that requires breadth I use DevonAgent. Put enough effort for inclusions and exclusions it can be handy. The only problem is for deep searches (go five layers deep on links) it takes hours
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@unpetitindien @jollyorc @inthehands
I love yacy, and building my own index. -
@ChildlessBambino@mastodon.green @cschack @flowerpot @inthehands
swisscows? Ads.
also, they put this right on their home page:
> "Both pornographic and sexual content are not indexed and not displayed by our search engine."
this sounds actively homophobic
@JamesWidman @ChildlessBambino@mastodon.green @cschack @flowerpot @inthehands
> this sounds actively homophobicI dunno about that, it appears that they actually mean NSFW content. if you search for "pornhub" or some female straight porn actress' names you get no results (with a message saying that the results may contain violence or pornography), but "scruff" and "grindr" display the gay dating apps' websites as the first result.
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@CptSuperlative Back to DuckDuckGo for now, very very very open to suggestions.
@inthehands @CptSuperlative have you tried mojeek?
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@inthehands Firefox has also interesting tab-level sandboxing ("containers") and you can find plugins ("multi-account containers") to help manage and, e.g., use two different MS Teams accounts in two different "containers".
Best part: even the mobile android version of Firefox supports plugins (adblocking, privacy, etc.) unlike Chrome. -
@quantensalat@astrodon.social @inthehands can't have that, I hear its how we create digital god.
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@astrojuanlu@social.juanlu.space @inthehands https://imgflip.com/meme/398221598/Goose-Chase go forth and shitpost
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@dryak @inthehands there's also the temporary containers addon
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Kagi recently started using some services provided by Brave, a company run by immensely objectionable people. Kagi community members rightly raised concerns about this.
I was curious to see Kagi’s response. This is a tricky question that requires a thoughtful, careful response. Their response would be telling: not just about the question of Brave, but about their general ethical outlook.
2/
@inthehands outside of brendan eich, who else is objectionable on their leadership team? i'm seriously asking because i have not been paying attention to brave.
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@blakereid @inthehands Vivaldi is FANTASTIC and pretty committed to privacy.
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@inthehands outside of brendan eich, who else is objectionable on their leadership team? i'm seriously asking because i have not been paying attention to brave.
@ariadne
I’m not up on all the people either; I reached the “I’ve heard enough” point pretty quickly and forgot the details -
@blakereid @inthehands Vivaldi is FANTASTIC and pretty committed to privacy.
@blakereid @inthehands They have made a couple of concessions to Brands(tm) that i don't love (most prominently the recent "direct match" results in the address bar), but a) it's easy to disable that in settings (and in general the browser is just INSANELY configurable via settings), and b) they do have a reasonable user story about why it's a good feature for nontechnical/inexpert users -- realistically, if a nontechnical user types "Samsung" into their address bar, for instance, the Samsung website IS probably the best/safest place to send them.
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@alter_kaker @glightly@mastodon.social @CptSuperlative I’d even be happy with this as a non-API-driven, non-dynamic, manually authored thing that people just toss on the personal blogs they’re now resurrecting.
Web comics folks often still do this. Note for example QC’s “other good comics” links smack dab in the right margin, taking up space on every page: https://www.questionablecontent.net
Good search, for a community-driven collection of links: https://crimethinc.com/search
Double whammy!
Another excellent resource: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/
Much better than Yahoo.
@alter_kaker @glightly@mastodon.social @CptSuperlative
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@inthehands Haven't seen it in replies, so here's a search engine I use: https://ecosia.org
They are based in Germany, use search results from Bing and Google and plant trees for your searches. There are ads, but I found them very unitrusive and you have an option to turn off Google's cookies. The search results are, in my experience, comparable to Google, but with less pushy "ad" results@mciesla @inthehands is there an option to turn off ads in Ecosia aside from an ad blocker?
I'm allergic to ads, and I was looking at Kagi specifically because they offer an ad-free paid product. I'm willing to pay for stuff, just not willing to give my eyes and my data.
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@inthehands Haven't seen it in replies, so here's a search engine I use: https://ecosia.org
They are based in Germany, use search results from Bing and Google and plant trees for your searches. There are ads, but I found them very unitrusive and you have an option to turn off Google's cookies. The search results are, in my experience, comparable to Google, but with less pushy "ad" results@mciesla @inthehands I've posted this so much this week I had to bookmark it lol https://www.eu-startups.com/2021/01/ecosia-and-brave-partner-to-offer-most-private-and-ethical-search-browser-combination/
