someone should invent a search engine where if you put in two keywords it finds pages that have both the keywords

[lilfluff@mastodon.art]

@xssfox even more irked that when they got rid of the vt100 terminals it took nearly twenty years before the card catalog software had better than simple word search. It had fancy GUI instead of green text on black. But that green text on black electronic catalog had power. When you found an entry there was even a, "look at neighboring cards" command.

[qim@mas.to]

@xssfox what about a result which has a synonym of *one* of the words, but the synonym is for a different meaning than you need?

the other term is ignored, of course

[pq1r@tech.lgbt]

@xssfox I can still remember the times when search engines returned results with all the keywords, spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.

[heavyimage@mastodon.social]

@xssfox for the last time @xssfox the singularity is many years away.

[djgummikuh@mastodon.social]

@xssfox maybe raise a couple of bilions in VC for that?

[svelmoe@hachyderm.io]

@xssfox That almost sounds heretical.

[mandelhorn@mastodon.social]

@xssfox Did you mean...
- pages that match either one of the keywords?
- pages that match any combination of horrible misspellings of the keyboards?
- sponsored pages, with or without matches, lighters, flint, fire solutions cheap in 'Keywords' now?
- Certainly..! A keyword is a word that is used to produce both public and private keys like "private", "/etc/shadow", or 4. [1] Reddit user saquittarius1 recommends...

[dodo_sipping@cupoftea.social]

@xssfox you mean sth like that? https://hachyderm.io/@eliasulrich/117234902637900790

[david@setouchi.social]

@xssfox Wow... You're asking something a bit insane... You should have more realistic expectations, in my opinion...

[xssfox@cloudisland.nz]

@messieass used to? Something so sophisticated could not have existed in the past

[miiko@social.darxxide.eu]

@xssfox That would be unheard of.

[lyokanthrope@app.wafrn.net]

@xssfox@cloudisland.nz

I'd be happy with a search engine that actually gives me results for the keyword I'm searching instead of things tangentially related to it. I'm fine if there's no results for it but please don't give me random bullshit or try to thesaurize my search…

[coreysnipes@hachyderm.io]

@xssfox why is this so accurate

[funkula@goblin.camp]

@xssfox what if there are extremely popular results similar to one of the words? Obviously you should be shown only those, in case you messed up and meant to type the incredibly easy to find thing. Those might even be something for sale and you'd hate to miss an opportunity to buy something!

Obviously we can safely ignore the second word that would have narrowed down the search results greatly, because it doesn't result in *any* products for you to buy.

[ralf@mountains.social]

@xssfox Why not ask for world peace while you're at it?

[jay0@alico.nexus]

@Dodo_sipping@cupoftea.social @xssfox@cloudisland.nz marginalia is useful every now and then, but indexes too few sites ​​

[shadowlab@furry.engineer]

@xssfox

"You were searching for red. Did you actually mean green? I'll show you the results for green."

[jmcrookston@mastodon.social]

@xssfox Best I can do is a large language model that will hallucinate pages with the two keywords.

[stuartyeates@cloudisland.nz]

@shadowlab @xssfox

"You were searching for red. My advertisers want to show you ads for green. I'll show you the results for green."

[nuintari@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@xssfox I miss the days when you could search for "pyro necro homo nymphomaniacs" on Lycos, and get 65,000 results.

We used to hold competitions. How fucked up a term you could invent, and still get a shitload of results.

Modern search is indeed terrible, the golden age of search is long over.

But holy shit, it used to be sooooo much worse.