Search Engines
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Shippou-Sensei
4:1:2.5
Please define what you find rubbish about the search engines to help us recommend alternatives.
Not accurate enough?
Too generic a response?
Too technical a response?
Trying too hard to appease your biases?
Slow?
Not accurate enough?
Too generic a response?
Too technical a response?
Trying too hard to appease your biases?
Slow?
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
I kick it old skool with Ask Jeeves.
1 and 2. Safari or Google when you search something it just comes up with a list of obvious answers . You can very rarely find anything helpful .
I will give you a very specific example. A few years ago I was reading about a very important incident in Afghanistan. Whatever keywords I put in I couldn’t find out about it.
That was one example. Google was at one time extremely good at finding out that sort of thing. Not just political I’d forget a name of a band . I could always find it . Now it’s just shit loads of generic advertisements.
Even worse now if I’m looking for a news item or even a historical question I’m led to sites that have paywalls
Shippou-Sensei
4:1:2.5
Actually nowadays AI can be quite helpful with this.
I use chat.openai.com a fair bit nowadays
You do need to do some fact checking with what it presents but it can often suftvthe chaff from the grain
Sadly the signal to noise ratio of the Internet is all over the place
Wolfram alpha can also be good
Wolfram|Alpha: Making the world’s knowledge computable
Wolfram|Alpha brings expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels.
Thanks I will have a look at them . Another example popped up this morning. Dan Poulter the Tory MP who has defected to Labour. Now a few people have accused him of being on the board of a “ dodgy “ Israeli Medical company. Interesting but I was going to fact check it nothing at all.
Might suggest no truth but I was just fronted with endless generic media articles.
Might suggest no truth but I was just fronted with endless generic media articles.
ouirdeaux
Caring, Understanding, Non-judgemental Type
You can't expect a search engine to replace common sense.
I have no knowledge of what companies Poulter might be on the board of, if any. However, if he is said to be on the board of company X, this can presumably be checked, and either confirmed or denied. If he is said to be on the board of 'a dodgy Israeli company' that nobody can name, it sounds like bullshit.
I have no knowledge of what companies Poulter might be on the board of, if any. However, if he is said to be on the board of company X, this can presumably be checked, and either confirmed or denied. If he is said to be on the board of 'a dodgy Israeli company' that nobody can name, it sounds like bullshit.
Shippou-Sensei
4:1:2.5
Yeah search engines are broad and generic.
Proper investigation is still needed to identify stuff.
Proper investigation is still needed to identify stuff.
Dystopiary
putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon
SEOs have ruined things. 
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
There have been quite a few articles on techie blogs recently about how bad Google has become - allegedly due to the ad dept getting the upper hand in internal arguments a few years ago. It's much harder to find specific info than it used to be - for an awful lot of things I search Reddit now as you're more likely to find useful info written by an actual person.
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