The other day I searched for the Tom & Jerry full episodes on the web to no avail (streaming platforms and video platforms like youtube only have rubbish cuts).
Something I'd love to learn to do better is search WBM. I use WBM only a couple of times per month, but when I need it it's the only tool that can do the job and is therefore very valuable. Trouble is, I don't really know how to search it unless I have a record of the exact URL I want, which isn't always possible.
Just as a quick link for others, it's possible to set up a single or monthly donation to the internet archive at this link: https://archive.org/donate/
Internet Archive is generally invaluable for finding older media. I personally use it to find movies from the 40’s and earlier. There’s always a dozen different uploads of the movie regardless of whether it’s still under copyright protection. I guess the rights owners don’t care that much, but it could potentially be ammo to take the whole Archive down.
did I just have a stroke? those two searches are exactly the same. I try to be understanding, but I am constantly tripping over big companies glaring software and/or documentation issues, it gets old.
Has anyone else experienced DuckDuckGo ignoring the exclusion operator? For example, searching `kiwi -fruit`, with no space between the hyphen and second word, used to bring up results that did not include the word "fruit". This no longer seems to be the case.
I feel like Google became absolutely unusable as a search engine. You search for "keyword1 keyword2", and at least half of the results are either "Missing: keyword1" or "Missing: keyword2".
Until a year ago using DuckDuckGo instead of google felt like only an equal or inferior option. But at some recent point I have found that DDG has slightly improved and Google has gotten much, much worse. With DDG and Bing Chat, google's future is looking very Internet Explorer 6.
DDG is following Google's path, with removal of the exclusion operator. Nothing like searching for "foo -quux" and finding "quux" in ALL of my search results, on DDG and Google alike.
They moved over to really dumb word vector stuff, they mention it in the TPUv4 paper and it is pretty surprising but probably monetized better somehow.
Even if you are going to purchase book on a subject, this finds so much stuff that is not in Google because of copyright delisting and is sometimes useful in knowing which books to consider.
Yandex results especially the non English ones can be good if you are willing to use a translator.
If I had my way, I would introduce internet search techniques as a core module in all university programs.
Too often I see in my students work evidence of lazy searching. It is as if they expect Google to be able to read their minds or even foresee their future intentions. Lack of variety of search terms is a key shortcoming. Also, lack of exploration of terms which are tangentially related to their search topic.
An internet search should be playful and exploratory. Above all, it should be understood that the internet is beyond simple linear indexing.
So I actually did have this as a class, or at least part of one.
I think there is / was an official standard or name, I can't remember it though. It never worked with Google really, but it worked on the search engines for our university and other academic sites.
Gwern is the person I'd become if I could properly monetize my ADHD and rabbit hole seeking behavior. I absolutely love his website and everything he publishes, and I am always delighted to look over his new stuff. Wish there are more people like him to read from.
His website is the best designed website I have genuinely ever visited, so fast, easy to navigate and very little blank space which makes it information dense. I also love the inline link opening, I definitely will be implementing that when I make my own website in the future.
Are you perchance able to provide some kind of RSS feed to his website? I'm having a hard time finding his newest stuff. You can subscribe to his newsletters but he stopped doing those two years ago
There is the firehose from his patreon though that might not be exactly what you are looking for. Personally, I just check 'newest' on his frontpage every now and then.
Readit News
The other day I searched for the Tom & Jerry full episodes on the web to no avail (streaming platforms and video platforms like youtube only have rubbish cuts).
The internet archive has every episode starting from the first one in 1940, in an easily accessible player without any ads or recommendations: https://archive.org/details/tom-and-jerry-all-114-episodes
Something I'd love to learn to do better is search WBM. I use WBM only a couple of times per month, but when I need it it's the only tool that can do the job and is therefore very valuable. Trouble is, I don't really know how to search it unless I have a record of the exact URL I want, which isn't always possible.
https://youtube.com/results?search_query=allintitle:Neil+Dia...
now, I get crap like this:
how is that what I searched for? also, what is this:> A search for [site:nytimes.com] will work, but [site:nytimes.com] won't.
https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433
did I just have a stroke? those two searches are exactly the same. I try to be understanding, but I am constantly tripping over big companies glaring software and/or documentation issues, it gets old.
> those two searches are exactly the same
Yes, that appears to be a recently-introduced typo -- the archived version from April does have a space: https://web.archive.org/web/20230412181331/https://support.g...
I submitted a feedback comment, hopefully they'll fix the typo.
(For future reference, here is a snapshot of the current version without a space: https://web.archive.org/web/20230722085337/https://support.g...)
Removed a few weeks ago.
Somebody posted in these pages the github diff showing the removal of the options.
I just had the exact same though while reading the page.
Makes me a firm believer companies should have their documentation on GitHub (or similar) so anyone can make a PR to tidy these things up.
Some libgen clone sites like z-lib have fulltext search on books with support for exact matches: https://zlibrary-asia.se/fulltext/?q=%22frank+sinatra%22&typ...
Even if you are going to purchase book on a subject, this finds so much stuff that is not in Google because of copyright delisting and is sometimes useful in knowing which books to consider.
Yandex results especially the non English ones can be good if you are willing to use a translator.
Too often I see in my students work evidence of lazy searching. It is as if they expect Google to be able to read their minds or even foresee their future intentions. Lack of variety of search terms is a key shortcoming. Also, lack of exploration of terms which are tangentially related to their search topic.
An internet search should be playful and exploratory. Above all, it should be understood that the internet is beyond simple linear indexing.
That's exactly what Google and other interests want --- gullible, uncritical sheeple that can be exploited to extract $$$ and worse.
I think there is / was an official standard or name, I can't remember it though. It never worked with Google really, but it worked on the search engines for our university and other academic sites.
You can use two numbers separated by two dots to represent all numbers in the range.
For example, a search for
gives me results for taki 183.This is useful when you can't remember an exact year or number.
Internet Search Tips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26847596 - April 2021 (77 comments)
Internet Search Tips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18666574 - Dec 2018 (28 comments)
The forced R and L margins suck for people with oldster eyes who have to increase the text size.
Kids these days!
https://www.patreon.com/gwern