4 ms·

If it's searching article content as well as just titles/comments, that's already quite interesting and useful. I've long wanted something like that for my brow

If it's searching article content as well as just titles/comments, that's already quite interesting and useful. I've long wanted something like that for my browser history, like a "help me find this article I know I read sometime last week about X."

metadat 2y ago
Yes, I've only recently rediscovered using the browser history for this exact purpose and it hasn't failed me yet. It would be remarkable and interesting to have a super deep search capability that indexes all first-order links on this site.
- nashashmi 2y ago
  browser history seems to only save the last 3 months of history. It used to be many years of data but that also slowed the browser down.
- yaj54 2y ago
  And you think that hasn't been made yet? :-D Show HN: DeepHN - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26791582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26791582 Of note, I was able to find that item (which I recalled existed but not by what name) with hn.algolia, but I was not able to find it with the OP search engine, or with the DeepHN search itself. So in my book, Algolia is winning. But projects like this are super fun and educational to build so props to OP.
  - metadat 2y ago
    OP said they only indexed the past 6 months.
  - seaal 2y ago
    Perhaps someone will be able to help me find a website I’ve been trying to Google for with no luck: the main focus of the website is a music player with 3D pipes and arrows that the camera would follow along, live rendering the entire scene while music was playing, but it was also a personal blog if you scrolled down. Domain was relatively short and I think it started with K.
- ofermend 2y ago
  Currently it's indexing the content of stories and comments. Are you suggesting also to index the content of the main story link (which is outside HN)?
  - squigz 2y ago
    That is what they're suggesting, yes.
  - cottsak 2y ago
    maybe add metadata to the index, but not the full page content, else you're just gonna build another google
    - metadat 2y ago
      How so? There's no PageRank in sight here, very little spam to worry about or contend with.
- fluential 2y ago
  This already exist: "searching over the titles, text and URLs of sites you've visited before" -- https://www.browserparrot.com/ https://www.browserparrot.com/
  - kid64 2y ago
    Mac-only
yaj54 2y ago
Ditto. I somewhat recently learned that Safari only keeps the history log for one year unless you explicitly set "Remove history items" to "manually." Which I've done so that I at least have a list that I could crawl in the future to build a full text index on.
- squigz 2y ago
  I'm fairly confident every single major browser (and probably most minor) have a history limit of some sort. Sometimes it's age, sometimes it's # of entries.
  - metadat 2y ago
    Usually I'm only looking back the past week or three. Otherwise I snapshot the page to evernote when I think it might be interesting later. Hopefully they don't completely end the free tier.
tjlav5 2y ago
I think Microsoft is working on that right now :p
- rovr138 2y ago
  That’s exactly what it sounded like to me. Of course, local/offline only would be great.
shortrounddev2 2y ago
Lol you're describing Microsoft's recall feature that everyone here is saying is the death of privacy
- kelnos 2y ago
  If Recall was open source and auditable, and didn't send any data at all about usage to the internet, I guess that would be fine. Otherwise, no thanks.

metadat 2y ago

Yes, I've only recently rediscovered using the browser history for this exact purpose and it hasn't failed me yet. It would be remarkable and interesting to have a super deep search capability that indexes all first-order links on this site.

nashashmi 2y ago
browser history seems to only save the last 3 months of history. It used to be many years of data but that also slowed the browser down.
yaj54 2y ago
And you think that hasn't been made yet? :-D Show HN: DeepHN - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26791582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26791582 Of note, I was able to find that item (which I recalled existed but not by what name) with hn.algolia, but I was not able to find it with the OP search engine, or with the DeepHN search itself. So in my book, Algolia is winning. But projects like this are super fun and educational to build so props to OP.
- metadat 2y ago
  OP said they only indexed the past 6 months.
- seaal 2y ago
  Perhaps someone will be able to help me find a website I’ve been trying to Google for with no luck: the main focus of the website is a music player with 3D pipes and arrows that the camera would follow along, live rendering the entire scene while music was playing, but it was also a personal blog if you scrolled down. Domain was relatively short and I think it started with K.
ofermend 2y ago
Currently it's indexing the content of stories and comments. Are you suggesting also to index the content of the main story link (which is outside HN)?
- squigz 2y ago
  That is what they're suggesting, yes.
- cottsak 2y ago
  maybe add metadata to the index, but not the full page content, else you're just gonna build another google
  - metadat 2y ago
    How so? There's no PageRank in sight here, very little spam to worry about or contend with.
fluential 2y ago
This already exist: "searching over the titles, text and URLs of sites you've visited before" -- https://www.browserparrot.com/ https://www.browserparrot.com/
- kid64 2y ago
  Mac-only

yaj54 2y ago

Ditto. I somewhat recently learned that Safari only keeps the history log for one year unless you explicitly set "Remove history items" to "manually." Which I've done so that I at least have a list that I could crawl in the future to build a full text index on.

squigz 2y ago
I'm fairly confident every single major browser (and probably most minor) have a history limit of some sort. Sometimes it's age, sometimes it's # of entries.
- metadat 2y ago
  Usually I'm only looking back the past week or three. Otherwise I snapshot the page to evernote when I think it might be interesting later. Hopefully they don't completely end the free tier.

tjlav5 2y ago

I think Microsoft is working on that right now :p

rovr138 2y ago
That’s exactly what it sounded like to me. Of course, local/offline only would be great.

shortrounddev2 2y ago

Lol you're describing Microsoft's recall feature that everyone here is saying is the death of privacy

kelnos 2y ago
If Recall was open source and auditable, and didn't send any data at all about usage to the internet, I guess that would be fine. Otherwise, no thanks.