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every time someone mentions Kafka here i get reminded of his works and every time the comment is about Apache Kafka :)

by kmlx 3y ago

weinzierl 3y ago
In the 90s I had heard about this software you needed to publish web pages called 'Apache' so I googled it on Altavista expecting it to be hard to find amongst all the content about the Native American tribes. To my big surprise it was the web server that was at the very top of the search results. Today I searched[1] for 'Kafka' on Google before I made the comment above and I got 'Apache Kafka' first and I'm still surprised. I never learn;-) [1] I was tempted to write 'altavistad', but it's such a clunky word, no wonder Altavista lost.
- bombcar 3y ago
  > googled it on Altavista I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe I can bing it in Hotbot.
  - ivanmontillam 3y ago
    I sometimes find myself saying "maybe do the math in Google's Excel"
- miki123211 3y ago
  The fact that it's at the top now is not surprising, Google probably knows you're a programmer and is likely to show you programming-related results. Even if you turn off all tracking and use a private window, there are ways. In my case, the combination of a Polish IP address, Safari on Mac OS and English as the browser language is enough to profile me as "tech-savvy, probably interested in science and edutainment, not in funny cute cat videos, Polish politics and sports." The Youtube home feed is a testament to this. If I change my location to the UK (with a VPN), that feed suddenly becomes a lot more generic.
  - klibertp 3y ago
    No. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kafka https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kafka also mentions Apache Kafka before Franz's wiki page. DDG's very existence hinges on NOT profiling you, in any way.
    - codetrotter 3y ago
      For me DDG shows a fact card at the top about Franz Kafka, linking to the Wikipedia page about him. After that comes the search results, of which the first one is about Apache Kafka.
    - weinzierl 3y ago
      I see the same on DDG, but Bing has Franz first for me.
    - miki123211 3y ago
      DDG's userbase is also pretty particular, though. Your average DDG user is somewhat privacy conscious, so they probably know much more about tech tan your average Google user, and are a lot more likely to be a programmer than anybody studying literature. If you base your algorithm purely on what results get clicks (but not on who clicks them), you essentially target your average user.
      - klibertp 3y ago
        I think it's just the combination of a direct match in a subdomain name, the popular and widely linked to domain name, and lack of any other context in query. I don't remember whether DDG does anything to the scores it gets from Bing. They might, but then - taking into account how particular its users are... - the poor Franz K. would be on the third page, far behind even a Kafka library for Franz Lisp. (No, that's not a thing. A shame, I know.)
  - weinzierl 3y ago
    "Google probably knows you're a programmer" I do everything in my power that it doesn't, but your point still stands. My somewhat creepy story about this is that at some point I got lots of COPD related search results and ads and I didn't even know what this is at the time. After a few weeks my neighbors wife died from it. I can only assume that my neighbors and other people in the house searched for it a lot in these weeks and Google thought I must be interested in this topic too.

every time someone mentions Kafka here i get reminded of his works and every time the comment is about Apache Kafka :)

by kmlx 3y ago

every time someone mentions Kafka here i get reminded of his works and every time the comment is about Apache Kafka :)

In the 90s I had heard about this software you needed to publish web pages called 'Apache' so I googled it on Altavista expecting it to be hard to find amongst all the content about the Native American tribes. To my big surprise it was the web server that was at the very top of the search results. Today I searched[1] for 'Kafka' on Google before I made the comment above and I got 'Apache Kafka' first and I'm still surprised. I never learn;-) [1] I was tempted to write 'altavistad', but it's such a clunky word, no wonder Altavista lost.

bombcar 3y ago
> googled it on Altavista I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe I can bing it in Hotbot.
- ivanmontillam 3y ago
  I sometimes find myself saying "maybe do the math in Google's Excel"
miki123211 3y ago
The fact that it's at the top now is not surprising, Google probably knows you're a programmer and is likely to show you programming-related results. Even if you turn off all tracking and use a private window, there are ways. In my case, the combination of a Polish IP address, Safari on Mac OS and English as the browser language is enough to profile me as "tech-savvy, probably interested in science and edutainment, not in funny cute cat videos, Polish politics and sports." The Youtube home feed is a testament to this. If I change my location to the UK (with a VPN), that feed suddenly becomes a lot more generic.
- klibertp 3y ago
  No. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kafka https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kafka also mentions Apache Kafka before Franz's wiki page. DDG's very existence hinges on NOT profiling you, in any way.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    For me DDG shows a fact card at the top about Franz Kafka, linking to the Wikipedia page about him. After that comes the search results, of which the first one is about Apache Kafka.
  - weinzierl 3y ago
    I see the same on DDG, but Bing has Franz first for me.
  - miki123211 3y ago
    DDG's userbase is also pretty particular, though. Your average DDG user is somewhat privacy conscious, so they probably know much more about tech tan your average Google user, and are a lot more likely to be a programmer than anybody studying literature. If you base your algorithm purely on what results get clicks (but not on who clicks them), you essentially target your average user.
    - klibertp 3y ago
      I think it's just the combination of a direct match in a subdomain name, the popular and widely linked to domain name, and lack of any other context in query. I don't remember whether DDG does anything to the scores it gets from Bing. They might, but then - taking into account how particular its users are... - the poor Franz K. would be on the third page, far behind even a Kafka library for Franz Lisp. (No, that's not a thing. A shame, I know.)
- weinzierl 3y ago
  "Google probably knows you're a programmer" I do everything in my power that it doesn't, but your point still stands. My somewhat creepy story about this is that at some point I got lots of COPD related search results and ads and I didn't even know what this is at the time. After a few weeks my neighbors wife died from it. I can only assume that my neighbors and other people in the house searched for it a lot in these weeks and Google thought I must be interested in this topic too.