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False information on the internet is hiding the truth about onions

339 points by howsilly 10y ago

sgs1370 10y ago
For great onion techniques see "Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook's Manifesto" by Michael Ruhlman. Before this book I didn't know there was a difference between sweating them and caramelizing them.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  if you go down the rabbit hole and follow the links within about his Slate article it takes you to a great recipe for onion soup I have also used, https://www.smith.edu/diningservices/recipes/onion-soup.php https://www.smith.edu/diningservices/recipes/onion-soup.php which covers how to do the onions right.
  - ska 10y ago
    Any version of this that starts off with a food processor is showing you shortcuts, not how to do the onions right. Short version of "right": onions sliced by hand in small wedges with the grain (i.e. lengthwise) - otherwise you cut through too many cell boundaries and let the water out too fast. Then it's a lower heat (no scorching!) for hours, not minutes, stirring every 15 min or so. So it's obvious why people want shortcuts, but all of them give you inferior results.
    - eric_the_read 10y ago
      I suppose you could count using a mandoline as "by hand", but either way, I think it's easier than a knife by far, especially if you're making more than a small amount of soup.
      - ska 10y ago
        A mandoline doesn't help unfortunately. If you want the best result, you have to cut radially along the grain (like orange slices). It's a technique that requires a knife, I'm afraid - though it's certainly harder. It's sort of analogous to the difference between properly mincing garlic and putting it through a press. For some things it won't matter much, for some you prefer a different technique. But they are not interchangeable, they are different things.
    - whyenot 10y ago
      > otherwise you cut through too many cell boundaries and let the water out too fast That really doesn't make any sense. If you slice across the grain, you might slice through more vascular tissue than if you sliced lengthwise, but onions aren't highly vascularized. Furthermore, the cells are linked with plasmodesmata in all directions. No matter how you slice them, water is going to leak out at about the same rate. I would be a little suspicious that slicing with the grain would do anything. It sounds like one of those cooking rules of thumb that don't have any basis in fact. ...on the other hand, maybe Cooks Illustrated or someone else has done a controlled experiment and there really is a difference.
      - ska 10y ago
        As I understand it, it's not the vascularity, but because the cells are anisotropic and arranged a bit radially. Best thing I could find on a short search is serious eats (near the bottom) :http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/11/knife-skills-how-to-slice-and-dice-an-onion.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/11/knife-skills-how-to-slice... I'm pretty sure cooks illustrated has done this experiment, but finding their stuff on line is difficult.
- Ensorceled 10y ago
  A decade ago took a cooking class that an amazing chef offered to a bunch of us regulars. One of the things he showed us was how to properly chop and sweat onions to sweeten them, including how to use smell to tell when they were done. Somebody said "Oh, we're going to caramelize them." and the chef replied, quite matter of factly, "Oh, no, we'll be here all night if we caramelize them." And that's when I learned there was a difference.
  - ska 10y ago
    He was not kidding. Full and careful caramelization for french onion soup, say, takes 3 hours or more (and you have to cut them with the grain or it won't work nearly as well). If you ever wondered why it's really hard to find great french onion soup (assuming you've had it once!) - that's why.
Gravityloss 10y ago
This is about way more than onions. We are always in the danger of decline and regression to the dark ages. The world of rumors, beliefs, marketing and magical thinking is always there, biding its time.
- eriknstr 10y ago
  This is one of my greatest fears.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  As one of my favorite examples of the very phenomenon you fear, just wait for the usual crowd of historical revisionists who will be along shortly to explain that the Dark Ages were really a time of widespread enlightened progress.
- diogenescynic 10y ago
  It seems like Trump is a sign that what you fear is already happening. Look at the media his supporters consume. Listen to AM talk radio if you want to know how much the world is still controlled by "rumors, beliefs, marketing and magical thinking."
woliveirajr 10y ago
And I'd like a step-by-step recipe on how to caramelize onions, which ingredients to use, etc... Like "the final recipe".
- simulate 10y ago
  Scocca provides a good method at the end of the article: Scocca: I throw them in the Crock-Pot overnight. Ryssdal: Oh, that's so smart. Scocca: They become a little juicy, and you might need to dry them out in the pan a bit before you actually use them, but it's a lot faster.
  - tclancy 10y ago
    I did this the first time (based on a post at Metafilter derived from the original article mentioned in this piece - https://www.metafilter.com/115702/Oniongate https://www.metafilter.com/115702/Oniongate) and that was a good approach because it took me out of the process which meant I didn't touch the onions or fiddle with the temperature or anything and 8 hours later I finally got the difference. Now I cook them in a pan while doing something else. Takes an hour or so but it beats running the crockpot all day.
  - HillaryBriss 10y ago
    that's cool. will have to try that some time. it reminds me of the low-labor recipe for making a roux. you can do it in an oven: http://www.saveur.com/article/kitchen/how-to-make-roux-in-an-oven http://www.saveur.com/article/kitchen/how-to-make-roux-in-an...
- epmatsw 10y ago
  The definitive guide imo: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/08/quick-caramelized-onions-recipe.html http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/08/quick-caramelized...
  - xemoka 10y ago
    The baking soda is the key to enhance the maillard reaction and decrease the time it takes to caramelise. It causes the onion to lose a bit of consistency if you use too much (softer), but once you get the right ratio (or if it doesn't matter, for example in a soup, chili or dip) you can speed it up a bit and keep them intact.
aluminussoma 10y ago
I recently created a web page that provides - in my biased opinion - unique, relevant information on a niche topic that I'm interested in. It's been impossible for me to crack the top search results on this topic. Instead, the top 20+ results are all news articles repeating the same thing. I never had reason to complain about Google's algorithm until I became a content creator. Now, I wonder what other great web pages I'm missing out on.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  I'm not sure Google knows a ton about the quality and uniqueness of the actual content, you'll need other sites to start referring to yours.
  - aluminussoma 10y ago
    It's a niche topic, so there aren't any other sites that discuss my topic (except news articles). If there are other sites, I can't find them! :)
  - romaniv 10y ago
    It's a chicken and egg problem. To get a lot of incoming links you need to be popular. To become popular (via search engines, at least) you need a lot of incoming links. This heavily penalizes smaller websites and rewards incumbent players on the web who have dedicated marketing teams that can afford to spend several hours a day on social network promotions and viral campaigns.
- mysterydip 10y ago
  It would be an interesting experiment if there was a search engine that ran on a heuristic of novelty rather than conformity. If you want to search for the history of pineapples, you don't need 100 sites with the same info. The more varied info you get, the broader a picture you can paint. The downside is in the assumption that every difference is correct, but it's as dangerous as the assumption that only what is repeated is correct. Would be an interesting alternative at least.
sleepychu 10y ago
> Ryssdal: Now, we should say, that in the days, what, week or so since this post was published, Google has in fact changed the search results, right? So, you've changed two things: You've changed the New York Times and you've changed Google. This is still a problem with this specific example today.[0] [0] - http://imgur.com/a/2R5k5 http://imgur.com/a/2R5k5
- kwillets 10y ago
  Welcome to the disinformation superhighway.
- rcar 10y ago
  Interestingly, it gives the wrong times for the "caramelise" spelling, but the correct time for "caramelize."
- lost_name 10y ago
  It seems it's more nuanced. Try the following searches: how long does it take to caramelize onions how long does it take to caramelise onions (note the typo) how long to caramelize an onion (not a typo but still wrong) how long to caramelize onions
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - linuskendall 10y ago
    Replacing the 'z' with 's' is not a typo, though.
    - ConceptJunkie 10y ago
      Several years ago, a coworker pointed out that an article spelled "organization" with an "s" instead of a "z" and wondered why such an obvious mistake would pass an editor. I pointed out that that's just the British spelling. Everyone in my group was amazed that I would know such a thing. It was an eye-opening moment... for me.
scandox 10y ago
> Because bad information that people passionately believe has a way of rising to the top. Great single line summation of the whole problem.
coldcode 10y ago
Onions have layers and so does the truth apparently. Determining actual truth from a lot of vaguely related information is quite difficult. I've always found that there are things you can enter a search string for but you can't describe it sufficiently to find the actual result, just things that appear related somehow.
dkrich 10y ago
The problem, IMO, is introduced when Google tries to provide definitive answers for questions that don't have definitive answers. To be sure, there are lots of questions that have definitive answers that would correctly satisfy 99% of searchers (what is the speed of sound, what is the height of the Empire State Building, etc.). Then there are questions that require explanation and don't have a binary correct/incorrect answer. Even with the question serving as the example for this article: "How long does it take to caramalize onions?" Well sure, the author cited in this article adamantly claims it takes much more than ten minutes. But does it? Maybe there are equally or more qualified people who say that under normal circumstances and a certain heat level it doesn't take more than ten minutes to caramalize an onion. Who is right? I don't think Google can parse the available information to provide a "correct" response, and shouldn't try to. So to me a better solution would be to categorize queries based on whether they can be answered definitively and, if they cannot, don't attempt to.
- alexbock 10y ago
  The speed of sound is probably more in the latter category as it is dependent on altitude and temperature, and even then only after assuming that someone really meant the speed of sound in air. If I search for "speed of sound" Google's info box will give me an answer labeled as "speed of sound at sea level" which should probably instead say "speed of sound in the atmosphere at sea level at 20 degrees celsius". It's an ill-defined question when asked so vaguely, and if you're going to pretend to give a definite answer by making a bunch of assumptions, they should be clearly presented.
  - dkrich 10y ago
    I disagree. While there are some searchers who are curious about the subtleties of the differences between the speed of sound through various mediums and at different altitude levels, most people searching for that basic question are satisfied to know that the speed of sound through air is about 750mph, which is why I said that it would satisfy about 99% of searchers. People who are interested in digging in further can comb through the rest of the results, or further specify that they want to know the speed of sound through water or at 35,000 feet above sea level. Just as some people who search for "What is the height of the Empire State Building?" may want to know what is the height of the highest occupied floor, or just the structure without the mast, most want to know how many feet is the distance from the base to the top? By trying to satisfy every searcher for these types of queries, you will be making searching more cumbersome for the vast majority of people, which is why I think that providing a single, easy to view answer that is likely to satisfy the person who entered the search a calculated risk that's worth taking. It's for the answers that wouldn't satisfy most searchers that I don't think a definitive answer should be provided, as it is likely to be either wrong, or just one of many possible answers that the searcher is looking for. It reminds me of a picture I once saw of MS Word when every single banner is enabled. The menus occupy half the screen. Even though there is some power user somewhere who really needs that menu option, the reality is that virtually nobody else does. So while that user has to go through the pain to figure out how to enable that banner, his pain makes the product easier to use for 99.99999% of users.
peterwwillis 10y ago
Is nobody else disturbed by the fact that nowhere is anyone specifying what kind of onions to use? Vidalia, Texas, Walla Walla? Bermuda? Cévennes??
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  I just assume 'onion' means the bog-standard (and comparatively cheap) brown onion unless a more specific term is used.
  - mod 10y ago
    Interesting, I've never even heard of a brown onion. I thought the cheap standard onions were white, and I always buy yellow. I'm even a gardener! (But I just buy whatever sets they have locally)
    - Freak_NL 10y ago
      Brown onions are also known as yellow onions; depends on your locale. I guess the locale of the recipe's author matters as well (although it usually doesn't matter too much if you use a white or brown onion).
mnx 10y ago
The page seems slow/dead, so here's a mirror: http://archive.is/0Jc7G http://archive.is/0Jc7G
diego_moita 10y ago
So, it isn't very different from the Big Lie idea[0]: if you repeat a lie long enough it becomes truth. It works for humans, it works for algorithms. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
mtgx 10y ago
One could even go as far as saying that "Google is fake news." Now, I wouldn't say that myself, but Google brought this upon themselves. I've criticized them in the past about their "top answer" solution, as well about the AMP-powered carousel with (corporate-owned) "media partners". They're setting up a system where there's a high chance that the top answer is indeed false, but Google acts as if it isn't - and that's the real issue here. Google envisions a future where its AI assistant will soon only give you that "top answer" as the "right answer". I think it's wrong of Google to do that, at least until our AIs become smarter than humans, and can actually discern the truth way better than humans can from "reading" thousands of related articles/papers.
james_niro 10y ago
lol I thought this article is about .onion
nommm-nommm 10y ago
The onions thing really bothers me too. I mean, it takes 45+ minutes to caramelize onions. You can fry them for 10-20 minutes or so and get a pretty tasty result, but they aren't caramelized onions. I have no idea why people say otherwise! I watch a lot of cooking shows and the contestants (supposed to be professional chefs) will have 30 minutes to make a dish and they'll say "I will start out by caramelizing the onions." No you won't! You'd need more than your 30 minute cooking time to caramelize onions! Onions can be caramelized in a slow cooker, as mentioned. They aren't as good as doing it on the stove properly but are good enough for the labor you save. /rant I do proper caramelized onions only about once a year because they are so tedious.
- wangarific 10y ago
  It's because most people don't take 45+ minutes so they don't know the difference. In 10-20min you just have soft brown onions... but once you truly caramelize, you know it's totally different.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    But hasn't anyone eaten caramelized onions in a restaurant before? Or even seen a picture? I would assume professional chefs (who are the contestants on these cooking shows I watch) would know better. I swear, it feels like an onion conspiracy.
    - uremog 10y ago
      In my experience, even most restaurant don't go real hard into caramelization. It's usually a quarter to half of what they could do, probably still because it takes so long.
      - nommm-nommm 10y ago
        I wouldn't have a problem with restaurants (or anyone) serving sweated onions, as they are actually yummy... Just not selling them as caramelized. Call them what they are... (To be honest, for many applications, I would slightly prefer sweated onions over caramelized onions.... I'd just like to know what I'm getting...) ... Unless there was an onion conspiracy...
myfonj 10y ago
There is well worded keyword dense quotation in the beginning of the article in question [1] that the rest of the article proves wrong, as latter [2] article analyses. But how is poor machine supposed to understand this? Ah, those semantic web utopian visions, with humans producing content gently semantically marked for machines to "see" all those negatively ironic peculiar ambiguities and relations. Now, that problematic "quotation" in [1] is in fact: <div class="text-2 text parbase section"> <p style="margin-left: 40px;">"[…]"</p> </div> i.e. not even marked as quotation (eg `<q cite="[…]">[…]</q>`). Sigh. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/life/scocca/2012/05/how_to_cook_onions_why_recipe_writers_lie_and_lie_about_how_long_they_take_to_caramelize_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/scocca/2012/05/how_to_coo... [2] http://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-onions-and-blam-1793057789 http://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-o...
- logicallee 10y ago
  This is why the semantic web lets you clearly mark up wrong information being cited, which, in the words of the Wikipedia "is primarily used to mark text that is mistaken". https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_strike.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_strike.asp Haha, just kidding. Just reminding you that there's nothing semantic about HTML :) The strikethrough is kind of deprecated, but there's no good semantic replacement, because the semantic web is actually a complete joke. Source on my Wikipedia quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough
  - the8472 10y ago
    <s> and <del> are still in the standard
  - kristianp 10y ago
    Sounds like a good place for a microformat [1] that lets search engines know that they shouldn't take a sentence as true e.g. <div class="actually-wrong">takes 5 minutes</div> [1] http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page
mirimir 10y ago
So am I the only person who thought that this would cover Tor vulnerabilities?
- alexeldeib 10y ago
  Not at all. I must admit I found the actual topic pleasantly humorous after expecting to read about Tor exploits/bugs.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Yes, me too. But seriously, that is a worrisome bug in all single-answer search solutions. Search automation doesn't seem to handle sarcasm and irony very well. Maybe website coding needs an "ignore this block when parsing page meaning" property.
JacobJans 10y ago
The grand irony is that this guy is absolutely wrong about caramelizing onions. It simply does not have to take 45 minutes to caremelize onions. Sure, you can do it in that amount of time, but he's wrong. His "crusade" is based on incorrect information. One of the best tricks I've learned for quickly caramelizing onions is to not use any oil in the pan; the oil is more likely to cause it to burn. No oil; slightly over medium heat; a thick pan; barely any stirring; slices evenly cut; that's all you need.
- Veratyr 10y ago
  > this guy is absolutely wrong > but he's not wrong I think you either contradicted yourself there or it isn't clear from the way you've written it that you're talking about different things.
  - JacobJans 10y ago
    gah, I typed it in a hurry; that "not" was NOT supposed to be there.
- yohoho22 10y ago
  The author is absolutely right. You're browning your onions, not caramelizing them.
eikokuma 10y ago
i'm new here and have no idea how long comments are allowed to be. there's a lot to say, but i'll try to be succinct. (and probably fail.) 1) the quickest way to make bad AI is to train it on bad data. and the internet is the king of bad data. if the New York Times is putting out bad recipes and if other humans are regularly buying into fake news articles, blaming the google algorithm seems like shooting the messenger for echoing the low standards of society. 2) many (though not all) of these questions are injecting presuppositions. when you ask google "how long does it take to caramelize onions," you're implying that such a thing can be quantified. you'll get answers which try to tell you how long it takes because semantically that's what fits. but in reality, a lot of things are done when they look done. or done when they smell done. or done when they're thick enough to form peaks. so i really think this is a human problem. as much as we want to error-proof all our software, in the world of general AI, we will need people to interact responsibly.
- jclos 10y ago
  1) It really depends on your AI and its goal. If the goal of the AI was to summarize human opinions, then the current approach is fine. What isn't working is that it's doing one thing (here is the answer of some people on the internet) and presenting it as something else (here is the answer). Plus, there are ways to put some bounds of confidence on an algorithmic prediction, and I don't see why they are not displayed along with the answer that was generated. 2) It relates to point 1, but the real solution would be that Google admits "I don't know/it depends" when the confidence is under some threshold.
- jclos 10y ago
  1) It really depends on your AI and its goal. If the goal of the AI was to summarize human opinions, then the current approach is fine. What isn't working is that it's doing one thing (here is the answer of some people on the internet) and presenting it as something else (here is the answer). Plus, there are ways to put some bounds of confidence on an algorithmic prediction, and I don't see why they are not displayed along with the answer that was generated. 2) It relates to point 1, but the real solution would be that Google admits "I don't know/it depends" when the confidence is under some threshold.
- 10y ago
sixdimensional 10y ago
DISCLAIMER: I'm an amateur when it comes to the philosophy and science of search engines. I think a core problem is that what we determine to be "fact" [1] changes over time (as it rightly should). As such, no deterministic function can adequately represent fact, without having a bias. Something that is "fact" today can be made invalidated tomorrow through many methods, scientific and otherwise. Of course, that does not change the importance of "fact" over time (i.e. at one time it was "fact" but it may no longer be). I don't know how Google search algorithms inject randomness into search, but I believe that without enough randomness (and subsequent feedback) and testing, any such algorithm would be deficient. It's almost like you have to A/B test the "facts", in a way. And take into account time. And give each and every fact due consideration. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
DubiousPusher 10y ago
My anecdotal experience is that internet recipes are always wrong about cook time. Usually they skew short. I will take this as personal vindication.
- djeikyb 10y ago
  i usually find that internet recipes on aggregators are only good for theme and approach. like, what spices to use for a dish, and whether to braise or saute. the recipe tends to suck in proportion to how specific you read it to be.
sevensor 10y ago
It's interesting that PageRank was originally envisioned as a way to rank academic papers. Now it's failing on caramelizing onions, which doesn't seem like a subject anybody profits by spreading misinformation about. What does this say about how we use citation metrics in academia?
anigbrowl 10y ago
Because bad information that people passionately believe has a way of rising to the top. Given that information is a sort of currency (which is exchanged for your attention while an advertisement is displayed in close proximity), perhaps we should have expected that something like Gresham's Law - that 'bad money drives out good' when competing currencies exist - would hold true on the web too. Popularity is only a good proxy for quality when the population is rational. given the abundant evidence of even smart people often suffering from large cognitive biases, weak educational standards, and an economic system where consumption and waste are more profitable to supply than more sustainable solutions, it's not surprising that search quality could decline even as raw performance improves. Google and the existing web will be disrupted by the advent of contextual search, which retrieves the graph of a specific information frame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law
sulam 10y ago
Heh, I just typed "how long does it take to caramelize onions?" into Google and got this answer: about 5 minutes With a link to his article. So, the news that this was fixed is premature. p.s. he is absolutely right that caramelizing onions takes 35-45 minutes, most people have no idea what a caramelized onion really looks like.
more_corn 10y ago
I think the confusion might come in from the fact that many recipes refer to the process of onions starting to brown as "beginning to caramelize" simply meaning that they start to turn brown and sweeten. This does in fact happen in five to ten minutes. "Caramelized Onions" might be an entirely different proper noun than the concept "Onions which have begun to caramelize".
- kem 10y ago
  After thinking about this, I think you're probably right, along with a gradual declining of standards about caramelization. I've made caramelized onions multiple times, watching over them for long periods of time. At some point several years ago I became confused by the issue referred to in the article, and thought that I was mistaken about what caramelizing onions was. I've come to realize that I was not. However, caramelizing onions is a gradual process, and so I could see how what one calls "caramelized onions" could be seen as a matter of degree. With candy making, as a parallel, there are degrees of hardness; with roux there's different degrees of browning, etc. etc. etc. You're probably right, because at some point early on something very very roughly resembling "caramelized onions" is achieved, which is basically the same as "fried onions." People assumed because the onions resembled what they were familiar with in fried onions, they must be the same, even though they're not.
hammock 10y ago
And he ends the article with a falsehood! (Unintentionally I presume) *>I throw them in the Crock-Pot overnight. They become a little juicy...but it's a lot faster Is NOT true. Prep time might be shorter but cooking time 'overnight' is not any faster than 45min on the stove top.
- mattkrause 10y ago
  I think his point is that "drying them out in a pan" before using them is a lot faster than caramelising them from scratch. It's true--it takes maybe 2 minutes to get the crockpot-onions to the same consistency as regular caramelised ones. Also, while the prep is the same, crockpot onions require literally no work during the cooking. On the stovetop, you do have to watch and stir them, which requires a little bit of attention. Since the crockpot version takes so long, the prep is also pretty far away from the rest of the cooking, which makes it "faster" if you have other stuff to do an hour before dinner. Edit: If you haven't tried this, give it a go--it works well and you can put them on everything for a few days! Yum
InclinedPlane 10y ago
If you try to search google for technical information or product information you can often end up with bad answers because it typically prioritizes older, longer lived results. So instead of getting a result that's relevant to the here and now you get one that was true for whatever version of a thing existed 5 or 10 years ago. Even worse, google still hasn't banned pinterest from results.
ClassyJacket 10y ago
Sadly, if you ask how to caramelise onions, Google still says to minutes. Ask it how to caramelize onions, and it'll correctly say 45. I guess those of us outside America will have to figure it out ourselves.
m_stone_code 10y ago
I know this isn't really the point of the story, but if you add a pinch of baking soda to onions you can turn them into something that's pretty similar to caramelised in a few minutes. Add a little sugar to help them along.
ytpete 10y ago
> bad information that people passionately believe has a way of rising to the top That's the money quote for me. Certainly relevant to contemporary politics... but I bet most of us can also think of cases where this happens in the workplace, trendy frameworks, etc.
yazbo_mcclure 10y ago
I was just thinking about Carmlliswd onions made with maple syrup with bacon and some of that special ham that costs $$$$ on some mashed russets with lots of Finnish butter and sel gris
dredmorbius 10y ago
What I've been noting in Web searches (Google and other providers) is that they're becoming less useful. I'm not sure if this is a result of poorer relevance, gaming, my own changing interests, or increased access to more authoritiative sources. I'm suspecting all of the above. As two Stanford University researchers noted in the 1990s, online epistemic services are highly prone to skewing information to favour interests of advertisers and business partners, rather than users. They proposed an approach which would avoid this problem, results suggest they've fallen short. There's a tremendous industry that's emerged to game and skew search engine results. It's proved quite effective in its ends. I've been shifting my explorations from programming and technical subjects to economics, history, and philosophy. Where the former are well-represented online and come from recent sources, the better sources for the latter are often at best nearline, and authoritative sources range from decades to centuries old, occasionally millennia. (Fortunately, the Data Explosion works to advantage, as the search space for older works is far smaller.) I've also been rediscovering libraries and library cataloguing systems, including periodicals and scholarly indices (though far too few of these are available online). Google's Scholar is useful, as is Books, though both remain highly deficient. Samizdat and underground sources such as Sci-Hub, LibGen, and BookZZ provide ready access to material. I can turn up a reference, and in a few minutes, be reading it, from the original, unmediated by others' interpretations or editorialising. That is a refreshing change from online sources which skew to magazine articles, blogs, social media posts, and tweets. Given all this, I'm finding DDG to be a more useful search engine in that from it, using bang syntax, I can hit specific sources (often from much better search dialogs than their own native facilities). From Firefox, bang searches work within the navbar. From Chrome/Android, "Home" => search. This is faster than going to or typing in individual domains. The ability to permanently blacklist domains from search results, shifting more of the search filtering to client side, would be useful.
koolba 10y ago
This article would get even more traffic if it were titled: "7 falsehoods programmers believe about onions"
BrandoElFollito 10y ago
The article and the comments are great, but where is that recipe? (seriously)
grkvlt 10y ago
I searched for "How long does it take to caramelize onions?", and Google returned an infobox with "35 to 40 minutes" highlighted (from this article) along with three other results in the top ten explaining how most articles about caramelising onions are wrong, from 2012 and 2014. So this particular problem seems not to exist? Although, it could have been fixed in the last week, I admit...

339 points by howsilly 10y ago

For great onion techniques see "Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook's Manifesto" by Michael Ruhlman. Before this book I didn't know there was a difference between sweating them and caramelizing them.

Shivetya 10y ago
if you go down the rabbit hole and follow the links within about his Slate article it takes you to a great recipe for onion soup I have also used, https://www.smith.edu/diningservices/recipes/onion-soup.php https://www.smith.edu/diningservices/recipes/onion-soup.php which covers how to do the onions right.
- ska 10y ago
  Any version of this that starts off with a food processor is showing you shortcuts, not how to do the onions right. Short version of "right": onions sliced by hand in small wedges with the grain (i.e. lengthwise) - otherwise you cut through too many cell boundaries and let the water out too fast. Then it's a lower heat (no scorching!) for hours, not minutes, stirring every 15 min or so. So it's obvious why people want shortcuts, but all of them give you inferior results.
  - eric_the_read 10y ago
    I suppose you could count using a mandoline as "by hand", but either way, I think it's easier than a knife by far, especially if you're making more than a small amount of soup.
    - ska 10y ago
      A mandoline doesn't help unfortunately. If you want the best result, you have to cut radially along the grain (like orange slices). It's a technique that requires a knife, I'm afraid - though it's certainly harder. It's sort of analogous to the difference between properly mincing garlic and putting it through a press. For some things it won't matter much, for some you prefer a different technique. But they are not interchangeable, they are different things.
  - whyenot 10y ago
    > otherwise you cut through too many cell boundaries and let the water out too fast That really doesn't make any sense. If you slice across the grain, you might slice through more vascular tissue than if you sliced lengthwise, but onions aren't highly vascularized. Furthermore, the cells are linked with plasmodesmata in all directions. No matter how you slice them, water is going to leak out at about the same rate. I would be a little suspicious that slicing with the grain would do anything. It sounds like one of those cooking rules of thumb that don't have any basis in fact. ...on the other hand, maybe Cooks Illustrated or someone else has done a controlled experiment and there really is a difference.
    - ska 10y ago
      As I understand it, it's not the vascularity, but because the cells are anisotropic and arranged a bit radially. Best thing I could find on a short search is serious eats (near the bottom) :http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/11/knife-skills-how-to-slice-and-dice-an-onion.html http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/11/knife-skills-how-to-slice... I'm pretty sure cooks illustrated has done this experiment, but finding their stuff on line is difficult.
Ensorceled 10y ago
A decade ago took a cooking class that an amazing chef offered to a bunch of us regulars. One of the things he showed us was how to properly chop and sweat onions to sweeten them, including how to use smell to tell when they were done. Somebody said "Oh, we're going to caramelize them." and the chef replied, quite matter of factly, "Oh, no, we'll be here all night if we caramelize them." And that's when I learned there was a difference.
- ska 10y ago
  He was not kidding. Full and careful caramelization for french onion soup, say, takes 3 hours or more (and you have to cut them with the grain or it won't work nearly as well). If you ever wondered why it's really hard to find great french onion soup (assuming you've had it once!) - that's why.

Gravityloss 10y ago

This is about way more than onions. We are always in the danger of decline and regression to the dark ages. The world of rumors, beliefs, marketing and magical thinking is always there, biding its time.

eriknstr 10y ago
This is one of my greatest fears.
CamperBob2 10y ago
As one of my favorite examples of the very phenomenon you fear, just wait for the usual crowd of historical revisionists who will be along shortly to explain that the Dark Ages were really a time of widespread enlightened progress.
diogenescynic 10y ago
It seems like Trump is a sign that what you fear is already happening. Look at the media his supporters consume. Listen to AM talk radio if you want to know how much the world is still controlled by "rumors, beliefs, marketing and magical thinking."

woliveirajr 10y ago

And I'd like a step-by-step recipe on how to caramelize onions, which ingredients to use, etc... Like "the final recipe".

simulate 10y ago
Scocca provides a good method at the end of the article: Scocca: I throw them in the Crock-Pot overnight. Ryssdal: Oh, that's so smart. Scocca: They become a little juicy, and you might need to dry them out in the pan a bit before you actually use them, but it's a lot faster.
- tclancy 10y ago
  I did this the first time (based on a post at Metafilter derived from the original article mentioned in this piece - https://www.metafilter.com/115702/Oniongate https://www.metafilter.com/115702/Oniongate) and that was a good approach because it took me out of the process which meant I didn't touch the onions or fiddle with the temperature or anything and 8 hours later I finally got the difference. Now I cook them in a pan while doing something else. Takes an hour or so but it beats running the crockpot all day.
- HillaryBriss 10y ago
  that's cool. will have to try that some time. it reminds me of the low-labor recipe for making a roux. you can do it in an oven: http://www.saveur.com/article/kitchen/how-to-make-roux-in-an-oven http://www.saveur.com/article/kitchen/how-to-make-roux-in-an...
epmatsw 10y ago
The definitive guide imo: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/08/quick-caramelized-onions-recipe.html http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/08/quick-caramelized...
- xemoka 10y ago
  The baking soda is the key to enhance the maillard reaction and decrease the time it takes to caramelise. It causes the onion to lose a bit of consistency if you use too much (softer), but once you get the right ratio (or if it doesn't matter, for example in a soup, chili or dip) you can speed it up a bit and keep them intact.

aluminussoma 10y ago

I recently created a web page that provides - in my biased opinion - unique, relevant information on a niche topic that I'm interested in. It's been impossible for me to crack the top search results on this topic. Instead, the top 20+ results are all news articles repeating the same thing. I never had reason to complain about Google's algorithm until I became a content creator. Now, I wonder what other great web pages I'm missing out on.

jasonkostempski 10y ago
I'm not sure Google knows a ton about the quality and uniqueness of the actual content, you'll need other sites to start referring to yours.
- aluminussoma 10y ago
  It's a niche topic, so there aren't any other sites that discuss my topic (except news articles). If there are other sites, I can't find them! :)
- romaniv 10y ago
  It's a chicken and egg problem. To get a lot of incoming links you need to be popular. To become popular (via search engines, at least) you need a lot of incoming links. This heavily penalizes smaller websites and rewards incumbent players on the web who have dedicated marketing teams that can afford to spend several hours a day on social network promotions and viral campaigns.
mysterydip 10y ago
It would be an interesting experiment if there was a search engine that ran on a heuristic of novelty rather than conformity. If you want to search for the history of pineapples, you don't need 100 sites with the same info. The more varied info you get, the broader a picture you can paint. The downside is in the assumption that every difference is correct, but it's as dangerous as the assumption that only what is repeated is correct. Would be an interesting alternative at least.

sleepychu 10y ago

> Ryssdal: Now, we should say, that in the days, what, week or so since this post was published, Google has in fact changed the search results, right? So, you've changed two things: You've changed the New York Times and you've changed Google. This is still a problem with this specific example today.[0] [0] - http://imgur.com/a/2R5k5 http://imgur.com/a/2R5k5

kwillets 10y ago
Welcome to the disinformation superhighway.
rcar 10y ago
Interestingly, it gives the wrong times for the "caramelise" spelling, but the correct time for "caramelize."
lost_name 10y ago
It seems it's more nuanced. Try the following searches: how long does it take to caramelize onions how long does it take to caramelise onions (note the typo) how long to caramelize an onion (not a typo but still wrong) how long to caramelize onions
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- linuskendall 10y ago
  Replacing the 'z' with 's' is not a typo, though.
  - ConceptJunkie 10y ago
    Several years ago, a coworker pointed out that an article spelled "organization" with an "s" instead of a "z" and wondered why such an obvious mistake would pass an editor. I pointed out that that's just the British spelling. Everyone in my group was amazed that I would know such a thing. It was an eye-opening moment... for me.

scandox 10y ago

> Because bad information that people passionately believe has a way of rising to the top. Great single line summation of the whole problem.

coldcode 10y ago

Onions have layers and so does the truth apparently. Determining actual truth from a lot of vaguely related information is quite difficult. I've always found that there are things you can enter a search string for but you can't describe it sufficiently to find the actual result, just things that appear related somehow.

dkrich 10y ago

The problem, IMO, is introduced when Google tries to provide definitive answers for questions that don't have definitive answers. To be sure, there are lots of questions that have definitive answers that would correctly satisfy 99% of searchers (what is the speed of sound, what is the height of the Empire State Building, etc.). Then there are questions that require explanation and don't have a binary correct/incorrect answer. Even with the question serving as the example for this article: "How long does it take to caramalize onions?" Well sure, the author cited in this article adamantly claims it takes much more than ten minutes. But does it? Maybe there are equally or more qualified people who say that under normal circumstances and a certain heat level it doesn't take more than ten minutes to caramalize an onion. Who is right? I don't think Google can parse the available information to provide a "correct" response, and shouldn't try to. So to me a better solution would be to categorize queries based on whether they can be answered definitively and, if they cannot, don't attempt to.

alexbock 10y ago
The speed of sound is probably more in the latter category as it is dependent on altitude and temperature, and even then only after assuming that someone really meant the speed of sound in air. If I search for "speed of sound" Google's info box will give me an answer labeled as "speed of sound at sea level" which should probably instead say "speed of sound in the atmosphere at sea level at 20 degrees celsius". It's an ill-defined question when asked so vaguely, and if you're going to pretend to give a definite answer by making a bunch of assumptions, they should be clearly presented.
- dkrich 10y ago
  I disagree. While there are some searchers who are curious about the subtleties of the differences between the speed of sound through various mediums and at different altitude levels, most people searching for that basic question are satisfied to know that the speed of sound through air is about 750mph, which is why I said that it would satisfy about 99% of searchers. People who are interested in digging in further can comb through the rest of the results, or further specify that they want to know the speed of sound through water or at 35,000 feet above sea level. Just as some people who search for "What is the height of the Empire State Building?" may want to know what is the height of the highest occupied floor, or just the structure without the mast, most want to know how many feet is the distance from the base to the top? By trying to satisfy every searcher for these types of queries, you will be making searching more cumbersome for the vast majority of people, which is why I think that providing a single, easy to view answer that is likely to satisfy the person who entered the search a calculated risk that's worth taking. It's for the answers that wouldn't satisfy most searchers that I don't think a definitive answer should be provided, as it is likely to be either wrong, or just one of many possible answers that the searcher is looking for. It reminds me of a picture I once saw of MS Word when every single banner is enabled. The menus occupy half the screen. Even though there is some power user somewhere who really needs that menu option, the reality is that virtually nobody else does. So while that user has to go through the pain to figure out how to enable that banner, his pain makes the product easier to use for 99.99999% of users.

peterwwillis 10y ago

Is nobody else disturbed by the fact that nowhere is anyone specifying what kind of onions to use? Vidalia, Texas, Walla Walla? Bermuda? Cévennes??

Freak_NL 10y ago
I just assume 'onion' means the bog-standard (and comparatively cheap) brown onion unless a more specific term is used.
- mod 10y ago
  Interesting, I've never even heard of a brown onion. I thought the cheap standard onions were white, and I always buy yellow. I'm even a gardener! (But I just buy whatever sets they have locally)
  - Freak_NL 10y ago
    Brown onions are also known as yellow onions; depends on your locale. I guess the locale of the recipe's author matters as well (although it usually doesn't matter too much if you use a white or brown onion).

mnx 10y ago

The page seems slow/dead, so here's a mirror: http://archive.is/0Jc7G http://archive.is/0Jc7G

diego_moita 10y ago

So, it isn't very different from the Big Lie idea[0]: if you repeat a lie long enough it becomes truth. It works for humans, it works for algorithms. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

mtgx 10y ago

One could even go as far as saying that "Google is fake news." Now, I wouldn't say that myself, but Google brought this upon themselves. I've criticized them in the past about their "top answer" solution, as well about the AMP-powered carousel with (corporate-owned) "media partners". They're setting up a system where there's a high chance that the top answer is indeed false, but Google acts as if it isn't - and that's the real issue here. Google envisions a future where its AI assistant will soon only give you that "top answer" as the "right answer". I think it's wrong of Google to do that, at least until our AIs become smarter than humans, and can actually discern the truth way better than humans can from "reading" thousands of related articles/papers.

james_niro 10y ago

lol I thought this article is about .onion

nommm-nommm 10y ago

The onions thing really bothers me too. I mean, it takes 45+ minutes to caramelize onions. You can fry them for 10-20 minutes or so and get a pretty tasty result, but they aren't caramelized onions. I have no idea why people say otherwise! I watch a lot of cooking shows and the contestants (supposed to be professional chefs) will have 30 minutes to make a dish and they'll say "I will start out by caramelizing the onions." No you won't! You'd need more than your 30 minute cooking time to caramelize onions! Onions can be caramelized in a slow cooker, as mentioned. They aren't as good as doing it on the stove properly but are good enough for the labor you save. /rant I do proper caramelized onions only about once a year because they are so tedious.

wangarific 10y ago
It's because most people don't take 45+ minutes so they don't know the difference. In 10-20min you just have soft brown onions... but once you truly caramelize, you know it's totally different.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  But hasn't anyone eaten caramelized onions in a restaurant before? Or even seen a picture? I would assume professional chefs (who are the contestants on these cooking shows I watch) would know better. I swear, it feels like an onion conspiracy.
  - uremog 10y ago
    In my experience, even most restaurant don't go real hard into caramelization. It's usually a quarter to half of what they could do, probably still because it takes so long.
    - nommm-nommm 10y ago
      I wouldn't have a problem with restaurants (or anyone) serving sweated onions, as they are actually yummy... Just not selling them as caramelized. Call them what they are... (To be honest, for many applications, I would slightly prefer sweated onions over caramelized onions.... I'd just like to know what I'm getting...) ... Unless there was an onion conspiracy...

myfonj 10y ago

There is well worded keyword dense quotation in the beginning of the article in question [1] that the rest of the article proves wrong, as latter [2] article analyses. But how is poor machine supposed to understand this? Ah, those semantic web utopian visions, with humans producing content gently semantically marked for machines to "see" all those negatively ironic peculiar ambiguities and relations. Now, that problematic "quotation" in [1] is in fact: <div class="text-2 text parbase section"> <p style="margin-left: 40px;">"[…]"</p> </div> i.e. not even marked as quotation (eg `<q cite="[…]">[…]</q>`). Sigh. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/life/scocca/2012/05/how_to_cook_onions_why_recipe_writers_lie_and_lie_about_how_long_they_take_to_caramelize_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/scocca/2012/05/how_to_coo... [2] http://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-onions-and-blam-1793057789 http://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-about-o...

logicallee 10y ago
This is why the semantic web lets you clearly mark up wrong information being cited, which, in the words of the Wikipedia "is primarily used to mark text that is mistaken". https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_strike.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_strike.asp Haha, just kidding. Just reminding you that there's nothing semantic about HTML :) The strikethrough is kind of deprecated, but there's no good semantic replacement, because the semantic web is actually a complete joke. Source on my Wikipedia quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough
- the8472 10y ago
  <s> and <del> are still in the standard
- kristianp 10y ago
  Sounds like a good place for a microformat [1] that lets search engines know that they shouldn't take a sentence as true e.g. <div class="actually-wrong">takes 5 minutes</div> [1] http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page

mirimir 10y ago

So am I the only person who thought that this would cover Tor vulnerabilities?

alexeldeib 10y ago
Not at all. I must admit I found the actual topic pleasantly humorous after expecting to read about Tor exploits/bugs.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Yes, me too. But seriously, that is a worrisome bug in all single-answer search solutions. Search automation doesn't seem to handle sarcasm and irony very well. Maybe website coding needs an "ignore this block when parsing page meaning" property.

JacobJans 10y ago

The grand irony is that this guy is absolutely wrong about caramelizing onions. It simply does not have to take 45 minutes to caremelize onions. Sure, you can do it in that amount of time, but he's wrong. His "crusade" is based on incorrect information. One of the best tricks I've learned for quickly caramelizing onions is to not use any oil in the pan; the oil is more likely to cause it to burn. No oil; slightly over medium heat; a thick pan; barely any stirring; slices evenly cut; that's all you need.

Veratyr 10y ago
> this guy is absolutely wrong > but he's not wrong I think you either contradicted yourself there or it isn't clear from the way you've written it that you're talking about different things.
- JacobJans 10y ago
  gah, I typed it in a hurry; that "not" was NOT supposed to be there.
yohoho22 10y ago
The author is absolutely right. You're browning your onions, not caramelizing them.

eikokuma 10y ago

i'm new here and have no idea how long comments are allowed to be. there's a lot to say, but i'll try to be succinct. (and probably fail.) 1) the quickest way to make bad AI is to train it on bad data. and the internet is the king of bad data. if the New York Times is putting out bad recipes and if other humans are regularly buying into fake news articles, blaming the google algorithm seems like shooting the messenger for echoing the low standards of society. 2) many (though not all) of these questions are injecting presuppositions. when you ask google "how long does it take to caramelize onions," you're implying that such a thing can be quantified. you'll get answers which try to tell you how long it takes because semantically that's what fits. but in reality, a lot of things are done when they look done. or done when they smell done. or done when they're thick enough to form peaks. so i really think this is a human problem. as much as we want to error-proof all our software, in the world of general AI, we will need people to interact responsibly.

jclos 10y ago
1) It really depends on your AI and its goal. If the goal of the AI was to summarize human opinions, then the current approach is fine. What isn't working is that it's doing one thing (here is the answer of some people on the internet) and presenting it as something else (here is the answer). Plus, there are ways to put some bounds of confidence on an algorithmic prediction, and I don't see why they are not displayed along with the answer that was generated. 2) It relates to point 1, but the real solution would be that Google admits "I don't know/it depends" when the confidence is under some threshold.
jclos 10y ago
1) It really depends on your AI and its goal. If the goal of the AI was to summarize human opinions, then the current approach is fine. What isn't working is that it's doing one thing (here is the answer of some people on the internet) and presenting it as something else (here is the answer). Plus, there are ways to put some bounds of confidence on an algorithmic prediction, and I don't see why they are not displayed along with the answer that was generated. 2) It relates to point 1, but the real solution would be that Google admits "I don't know/it depends" when the confidence is under some threshold.
10y ago

sixdimensional 10y ago

DISCLAIMER: I'm an amateur when it comes to the philosophy and science of search engines. I think a core problem is that what we determine to be "fact" [1] changes over time (as it rightly should). As such, no deterministic function can adequately represent fact, without having a bias. Something that is "fact" today can be made invalidated tomorrow through many methods, scientific and otherwise. Of course, that does not change the importance of "fact" over time (i.e. at one time it was "fact" but it may no longer be). I don't know how Google search algorithms inject randomness into search, but I believe that without enough randomness (and subsequent feedback) and testing, any such algorithm would be deficient. It's almost like you have to A/B test the "facts", in a way. And take into account time. And give each and every fact due consideration. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

DubiousPusher 10y ago

My anecdotal experience is that internet recipes are always wrong about cook time. Usually they skew short. I will take this as personal vindication.

djeikyb 10y ago
i usually find that internet recipes on aggregators are only good for theme and approach. like, what spices to use for a dish, and whether to braise or saute. the recipe tends to suck in proportion to how specific you read it to be.

sevensor 10y ago

It's interesting that PageRank was originally envisioned as a way to rank academic papers. Now it's failing on caramelizing onions, which doesn't seem like a subject anybody profits by spreading misinformation about. What does this say about how we use citation metrics in academia?

anigbrowl 10y ago

Because bad information that people passionately believe has a way of rising to the top. Given that information is a sort of currency (which is exchanged for your attention while an advertisement is displayed in close proximity), perhaps we should have expected that something like Gresham's Law - that 'bad money drives out good' when competing currencies exist - would hold true on the web too. Popularity is only a good proxy for quality when the population is rational. given the abundant evidence of even smart people often suffering from large cognitive biases, weak educational standards, and an economic system where consumption and waste are more profitable to supply than more sustainable solutions, it's not surprising that search quality could decline even as raw performance improves. Google and the existing web will be disrupted by the advent of contextual search, which retrieves the graph of a specific information frame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law

sulam 10y ago

Heh, I just typed "how long does it take to caramelize onions?" into Google and got this answer: about 5 minutes With a link to his article. So, the news that this was fixed is premature. p.s. he is absolutely right that caramelizing onions takes 35-45 minutes, most people have no idea what a caramelized onion really looks like.

more_corn 10y ago

I think the confusion might come in from the fact that many recipes refer to the process of onions starting to brown as "beginning to caramelize" simply meaning that they start to turn brown and sweeten. This does in fact happen in five to ten minutes. "Caramelized Onions" might be an entirely different proper noun than the concept "Onions which have begun to caramelize".

kem 10y ago
After thinking about this, I think you're probably right, along with a gradual declining of standards about caramelization. I've made caramelized onions multiple times, watching over them for long periods of time. At some point several years ago I became confused by the issue referred to in the article, and thought that I was mistaken about what caramelizing onions was. I've come to realize that I was not. However, caramelizing onions is a gradual process, and so I could see how what one calls "caramelized onions" could be seen as a matter of degree. With candy making, as a parallel, there are degrees of hardness; with roux there's different degrees of browning, etc. etc. etc. You're probably right, because at some point early on something very very roughly resembling "caramelized onions" is achieved, which is basically the same as "fried onions." People assumed because the onions resembled what they were familiar with in fried onions, they must be the same, even though they're not.

hammock 10y ago

And he ends the article with a falsehood! (Unintentionally I presume) *>I throw them in the Crock-Pot overnight. They become a little juicy...but it's a lot faster Is NOT true. Prep time might be shorter but cooking time 'overnight' is not any faster than 45min on the stove top.

mattkrause 10y ago
I think his point is that "drying them out in a pan" before using them is a lot faster than caramelising them from scratch. It's true--it takes maybe 2 minutes to get the crockpot-onions to the same consistency as regular caramelised ones. Also, while the prep is the same, crockpot onions require literally no work during the cooking. On the stovetop, you do have to watch and stir them, which requires a little bit of attention. Since the crockpot version takes so long, the prep is also pretty far away from the rest of the cooking, which makes it "faster" if you have other stuff to do an hour before dinner. Edit: If you haven't tried this, give it a go--it works well and you can put them on everything for a few days! Yum

InclinedPlane 10y ago

If you try to search google for technical information or product information you can often end up with bad answers because it typically prioritizes older, longer lived results. So instead of getting a result that's relevant to the here and now you get one that was true for whatever version of a thing existed 5 or 10 years ago. Even worse, google still hasn't banned pinterest from results.

ClassyJacket 10y ago

Sadly, if you ask how to caramelise onions, Google still says to minutes. Ask it how to caramelize onions, and it'll correctly say 45. I guess those of us outside America will have to figure it out ourselves.

m_stone_code 10y ago

I know this isn't really the point of the story, but if you add a pinch of baking soda to onions you can turn them into something that's pretty similar to caramelised in a few minutes. Add a little sugar to help them along.

ytpete 10y ago

> bad information that people passionately believe has a way of rising to the top That's the money quote for me. Certainly relevant to contemporary politics... but I bet most of us can also think of cases where this happens in the workplace, trendy frameworks, etc.

yazbo_mcclure 10y ago

I was just thinking about Carmlliswd onions made with maple syrup with bacon and some of that special ham that costs $$$$ on some mashed russets with lots of Finnish butter and sel gris

dredmorbius 10y ago

What I've been noting in Web searches (Google and other providers) is that they're becoming less useful. I'm not sure if this is a result of poorer relevance, gaming, my own changing interests, or increased access to more authoritiative sources. I'm suspecting all of the above. As two Stanford University researchers noted in the 1990s, online epistemic services are highly prone to skewing information to favour interests of advertisers and business partners, rather than users. They proposed an approach which would avoid this problem, results suggest they've fallen short. There's a tremendous industry that's emerged to game and skew search engine results. It's proved quite effective in its ends. I've been shifting my explorations from programming and technical subjects to economics, history, and philosophy. Where the former are well-represented online and come from recent sources, the better sources for the latter are often at best nearline, and authoritative sources range from decades to centuries old, occasionally millennia. (Fortunately, the Data Explosion works to advantage, as the search space for older works is far smaller.) I've also been rediscovering libraries and library cataloguing systems, including periodicals and scholarly indices (though far too few of these are available online). Google's Scholar is useful, as is Books, though both remain highly deficient. Samizdat and underground sources such as Sci-Hub, LibGen, and BookZZ provide ready access to material. I can turn up a reference, and in a few minutes, be reading it, from the original, unmediated by others' interpretations or editorialising. That is a refreshing change from online sources which skew to magazine articles, blogs, social media posts, and tweets. Given all this, I'm finding DDG to be a more useful search engine in that from it, using bang syntax, I can hit specific sources (often from much better search dialogs than their own native facilities). From Firefox, bang searches work within the navbar. From Chrome/Android, "Home" => search. This is faster than going to or typing in individual domains. The ability to permanently blacklist domains from search results, shifting more of the search filtering to client side, would be useful.

koolba 10y ago

This article would get even more traffic if it were titled: "7 falsehoods programmers believe about onions"

BrandoElFollito 10y ago

The article and the comments are great, but where is that recipe? (seriously)

grkvlt 10y ago

I searched for "How long does it take to caramelize onions?", and Google returned an infobox with "35 to 40 minutes" highlighted (from this article) along with three other results in the top ten explaining how most articles about caramelising onions are wrong, from 2012 and 2014. So this particular problem seems not to exist? Although, it could have been fixed in the last week, I admit...