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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
colak wrote #309097:
…If you are looking for more involved content, there are currently no alternatives to the scholar and books subdomains of google.
I’ve heard this argument before, and I’m not saying there’s not an indexing difference between Gaggle and DDG — which, let’s admit, is the result of shoving Gaggle Search down our throats for years thus gaining the monopolistic advantage, like Macrohard did with IE, Word, etc, until the world is stupidly addicted to the lock-in — but I have a hard time buying it.
I’ve been using DDG for about 2 years now, solely, laptop and phone, and I do a lot of research of various kind (mostly historical these days; no, not Wikipedia, but the stuff Wikipedia relies on) and I’ve never had problems finding stuff. It might be taking me a little longer to get there, I don’t know, but I’m getting there.
Maybe it’s a personal method/behavior thing… I don’t just tap keywords every single time I look for something. Yes, periodically you have to start digging from the search box, but when I find a good source that is itself a legacy jump-off point — university databases, city archives, underground government caverns, etc — I bookmark those search UIs and go straight to them after that. Once you have the legacy links to springboard from, there’s no need for pecking into a Gaggle box like a zombie bird. (Reminds me of people, like in my own family, addicted to GPS who will use it to drive across town. We’re letting our brains go to shit; being lead around by an electronic leash. But I digress.) And if you refine your search digging queries, or mix them up a bit — a laborious extra minute or two, but hey, it’s research, right? — you can still find things from DDG.
Just saying.
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
colak wrote #309088:
What about the .org and .com domains?
Well, the .com and .io sites I mean (the sites I manage). The .org site I have never touched the codebase on and am never likely to. I’ll eventually close that site down anyway, when we have a replacement.
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
colak wrote #309097:
If you are looking for more involved content, there are currently no alternatives to the scholar and books subdomains of google.
How about startpage? I use that. The results are “powered by Google” but it doesn’t track anything you search for. The results do differ, but I’ve had no issue finding stuff. Not into scholarly works though, so maybe such markets are left out in the cold.
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
Destry wrote #309099:
We’re letting our brains go to shit; being lead around by an electronic leash.
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
Destry wrote #309099:
I’ve heard this argument before, and I’m not saying there’s not an indexing difference between Gaggle and DDG — which, let’s admit, is the result of shoving Gaggle Search down our throats for years thus gaining the monopolistic advantage, like Macrohard did with IE, Word, etc, until the world is stupidly addicted to the lock-in — but I have a hard time buying it.
Agreed. DDG works well (well enough?) for me. It might be down to personal methodology, the used / preferred keywords… One issue I have though is that DDG is a wee bit stubborn and emphasizes English results too much, even if my queries are in French / Spanish / Japanese.
We’re letting our brains go to shit; being lead around by an electronic leash.
Oh yes, it is becoming disastrous.
Where is that emoji for a solar powered submarine when you need it ?
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
Bloke wrote #309109:
How about startpage? I use that. The results are “powered by Google” but it doesn’t track anything you search for. The results do differ, but I’ve had no issue finding stuff. Not into scholarly works though, so maybe such markets are left out in the cold.
I have startpage as my default search engine but scholar.google.com and books.google.com can not be searched in any other way that I could find. I understand Destry’s rave above but I still believe that the methodology limits the wealth of results we can find in the more specific g search engines. Using them for me, is not a matter of convenience, it is a matter of volume as I discover though them, scholarly texts and books on the subjects I am researching, that it would probably take me days to find in bookmarked academic sites most of which do not even offer pdf content search.
Yiannis
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
phiw13 wrote #309113:
One issue I have though is that DDG is a wee bit stubborn and emphasizes English results too much, even if my queries are in French / Spanish / Japanese.
You could try https://www.qwant.co
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
Yes, I’ve been using Qwant a bit the last few months too., especiaaly for French searches. Not totally used to the display of results yet, but I like it.
Worth mentioning about DDG…
!bangcodes
E.g. start a ddg search with something like !a (Amazon) or !w (Wikipedia) it searches that site directly after being anonymized through ddg’s server. Can even do !g for an anonymous untracked google search. Etc.
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
Qwant has it also :) (!bangcode)
Nice replacement for GG map: !osm your address
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
planeth wrote #309164:
You could try https://www.qwant.co
Hmm, I’ve heard about that one before. But when I access that URL, I get this:
Where is that emoji for a solar powered submarine when you need it ?
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
You are missing the M
qwant.com
…. texted postive
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Re: "Keep your blogs light"
bici wrote #309172:
You are missing the M
qwant.com
Oh, indeed… adding that letter brings me to something more interesting… TY :-).
Where is that emoji for a solar powered submarine when you need it ?
Sand space – admin theme for Textpattern
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