3 ms·

I think there's still a lot to be done in search engines when contextual and personalized results are concerned. I want my search engine to search not just the

I think there's still a lot to be done in search engines when contextual and personalized results are concerned. I want my search engine to search not just the public internet, but also the niche stuff only I have access to. If I type "pizza", I want local pizzerias. If I type a name of a friend, I want to see their Facebook profile, as well as our conversations on Messenger, Slack and WhatsApp web. If I type "xxx crashing with code 608", where xxx is an internal service of some organization I work for, I want to see past Github issues, Slack conversations, Sentry reports and Jira tickets. The fact my search engine can't search my emails, conversations and private resources makes it much, much less useful than it could have been. I genuinely don't understand why people dislike it so much when software processes information about them, for their own benefit. I use Google, Facebook etc. a lot, and I've never witnessed any bad consequences of being tracked. If not for that strange aversion, technology could be so, so much better.

mwcampbell 6y ago
> I genuinely don't understand why people dislike it so much when software processes information about them, for their own benefit. I use Google, Facebook etc. a lot, and I've never witnessed any bad consequences of being tracked. If not for that strange aversion, technology could be so, so much better. I think it's partly because we in the western world have a lot of exposure to hypothetical dystopias in our entertainment and rhetoric. And that's probably based in part on the paranoia that we had during the Cold War. I wonder if it's different in Eastern Europe, where you are IIRC. On a related topic, how would you feel about websites being able to know that you're running a screen reader? In the American blind community, many have expressed concerns about possible discrimination against blind people. I would be in favor, but then I'm partially sighted (low vision).
- miki123211 6y ago
  Definitely in favor, as long as I can disable that, i.e. in incognito mode. There are some things that could work so, so much better, especially with some modern frameworks (think Flutter) that don't render to DOM unless absolutely necessary. There would be no accessibility mode buttons, everything would, you know, just work.
  - mwcampbell 6y ago
    Yeah, and companies that do A/B testing of their UIs could get valuable data, like knowing that we're actually out there trying to use their new, probably less accessible UI.

mwcampbell 6y ago

> I genuinely don't understand why people dislike it so much when software processes information about them, for their own benefit. I use Google, Facebook etc. a lot, and I've never witnessed any bad consequences of being tracked. If not for that strange aversion, technology could be so, so much better. I think it's partly because we in the western world have a lot of exposure to hypothetical dystopias in our entertainment and rhetoric. And that's probably based in part on the paranoia that we had during the Cold War. I wonder if it's different in Eastern Europe, where you are IIRC. On a related topic, how would you feel about websites being able to know that you're running a screen reader? In the American blind community, many have expressed concerns about possible discrimination against blind people. I would be in favor, but then I'm partially sighted (low vision).

miki123211 6y ago
Definitely in favor, as long as I can disable that, i.e. in incognito mode. There are some things that could work so, so much better, especially with some modern frameworks (think Flutter) that don't render to DOM unless absolutely necessary. There would be no accessibility mode buttons, everything would, you know, just work.
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  Yeah, and companies that do A/B testing of their UIs could get valuable data, like knowing that we're actually out there trying to use their new, probably less accessible UI.