8 ms·

DuckDuckGo Plugin: Hacker News Search

90 points by sherjilozair 14y ago

robotmay 14y ago
Nice implementation. Much more useful than my phonetic plugin (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=phonetic+hacker+news https://duckduckgo.com/?q=phonetic+hacker+news) at least :D
- mapleoin 14y ago
  that's misleading. I was expecting to get hækə(ɹ) n(j)uːz
  - robotmay 14y ago
    True, but it makes ordering takeaway much easier.
scrrr 14y ago
This is useful. I am tired of typing site:news.ycombinator.com into Google.
- Ecio78 14y ago
  Why dont you use http://www.hnsearch.com/ http://www.hnsearch.com/ ?
- ubojan 14y ago
  if you use Chrome, you can add new search engine (right click on address bar -> Edit search engines, scroll down till end) and paste this into URL query field: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+site%3Anews.ycombinator.c..., and give it a short name, for example hn. Now you can search Hacker News by typing: "hn search query" into address bar (without "").
  - patrickk 14y ago
    Great tip thanks! Now if I type the letter "n", chrome picks up "news.ycombinator.com", if I press tab second, it goes to search HN, and pressing return second goes to the sites itself. Lovely time saver.
  - scrrr 14y ago
    Fantastic. Thanks!
bruceboughton 14y ago
In what way are these results different to if there was no HN customisation and a user searched for "hn startup ideas"? I see there is Honduras news in there with the plugin.
antidoh 14y ago
Why is this called a plugin? As far as I can see it's just an additonal search term (hn). http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hn+startup+ideas http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hn+startup+ideas Compare with DDG's existing bang code for HN: !hn + startup + ideas That searches hnsearch.com directly, and gives good results on hnsearch for the search terms. The "plugin" search from the post has an hnsearch box at the top of DDG's results page, but when you follow the hnsearch link, those results are not as good as the !hn search (IMO). The nice thing about the "plugin" search is that there are results from the rest of the web. But that's normal. Am I missing something?
- sparkinson 14y ago
  Bang syntax (like !hn) will take to directly to the sites search. Try for example "!g hacker news". Plugins, or goodies I think ddg calls them keeps you within the site and provides more info in that zero-click box.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    Understood, but I don't see the plug, or the in. They've just added "hn" as another term in the search string. Did I lose or miss something?
    - sparkinson 14y ago
      You're right actually. I think at the moment you can't turn off individual "goodies" either. That would be a good set of options however.
    - epi0Bauqu 14y ago
      The plug part is http://duckduckhack.com/ http://duckduckhack.com/ -- that is, these are open source components that plug into the system via this glue. This one in particular is at https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice/blob/master/lib/DDG/Spice/HackerNews.pm https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice/blob/maste... and https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice/blob/master/share/spice/hacker_news/spice.js https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice/blob/maste... The in part is they get submitted and we try hard to make them all useful and thus "in" DDG by default. However, ultimately you could a) consume them in your own applications (off DDG); and b) choose to turn some off or on more of the time.
bashzor 14y ago
It's better than HNSearch? Why?
moystard 14y ago
DDG gets confused when you use "hn github" and displays Github repositories instead. I think the algorithm should be slightly tweaked so when several keywords are present, the first one has priority over the second one.
- epi0Bauqu 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback -- we're discussing it right now :)
kang 14y ago
How is this better than google? Even if you talk the "hacker way" the 'site:' tag is exact and specific whereas this is not. Upvotes simply show the anti-google (anti established) mindset that hn has.
- sherjilozair 14y ago
  site: only returns with links that are in this subdomain. DDG searches all the links that have been posted in HN. I think this is a big difference.
mikebracco 14y ago
I have DuckDuckGoog as my search engine in Chrome - http://www.duckduckgoog.com http://www.duckduckgoog.com. If you add it as your search engine it routes all queries using DuckDuckGo syntax to DuckDuckGo (like !bangs) and all others through Google. Pretty useful.
pav3l 14y ago
Google is an excellent search engine. If you have privacy concerns, don't store your personal information with Google. It's really that simple. Switching to other search engines because of privacy concerns is just silly in my opinion. I have those concerns as well, but instead of missing out on Google search I choose to not use any of Google's other services (e.g. Gmail, G+, etc.) that would store my personal information (and possibly tie it to my searches). If you want to take advantage of webmaster tools, analystics, etc. just create an account just for that, and don't use it for actual communication.
sherjilozair 14y ago
I didn't mean to incite Google v/s DuckDuckGo war by posting this page. I once had an idea of having a smart Hacker News search. The idea is that the full web might have too much noise. Hacker News serves to be a collection of webpages that are interesting to us, and are intelligent. Moreover, each of them have a rating associated with them, and we don't need back-link analysis to rank them. If I search for startup ideas in Google(full web) or in Hacker News(the interesting subset of the web), I would have a much better result in the latter, that will ensure that only those articles come that have been 'approved' by the HN community, and not noise and fraud that Google might have picked up. Now, current hacker news searches like site:news.ycombinator.com or hnsearch fail to do this. I'm not just interested in things with this domain name, or doing exact string matches. I want to Search, and all the algorithms and techniques that made a proper search engine like magic. What hnsearch is doing is basically grep. This DDG plugin is the closest approximation to my idea, but still not perfect. Hopefully, some day I will find from my busy semester schedule and make something awesome from this idea and show you guys. :)

90 points by sherjilozair 14y ago

Nice implementation. Much more useful than my phonetic plugin (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=phonetic+hacker+news https://duckduckgo.com/?q=phonetic+hacker+news) at least :D

mapleoin 14y ago
that's misleading. I was expecting to get hækə(ɹ) n(j)uːz
- robotmay 14y ago
  True, but it makes ordering takeaway much easier.

scrrr 14y ago

This is useful. I am tired of typing site:news.ycombinator.com into Google.

Ecio78 14y ago
Why dont you use http://www.hnsearch.com/ http://www.hnsearch.com/ ?
ubojan 14y ago
if you use Chrome, you can add new search engine (right click on address bar -> Edit search engines, scroll down till end) and paste this into URL query field: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+site%3Anews.ycombinator.c..., and give it a short name, for example hn. Now you can search Hacker News by typing: "hn search query" into address bar (without "").
- patrickk 14y ago
  Great tip thanks! Now if I type the letter "n", chrome picks up "news.ycombinator.com", if I press tab second, it goes to search HN, and pressing return second goes to the sites itself. Lovely time saver.
- scrrr 14y ago
  Fantastic. Thanks!

bruceboughton 14y ago

In what way are these results different to if there was no HN customisation and a user searched for "hn startup ideas"? I see there is Honduras news in there with the plugin.

antidoh 14y ago

Why is this called a plugin? As far as I can see it's just an additonal search term (hn). http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hn+startup+ideas http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hn+startup+ideas Compare with DDG's existing bang code for HN: !hn + startup + ideas That searches hnsearch.com directly, and gives good results on hnsearch for the search terms. The "plugin" search from the post has an hnsearch box at the top of DDG's results page, but when you follow the hnsearch link, those results are not as good as the !hn search (IMO). The nice thing about the "plugin" search is that there are results from the rest of the web. But that's normal. Am I missing something?

sparkinson 14y ago
Bang syntax (like !hn) will take to directly to the sites search. Try for example "!g hacker news". Plugins, or goodies I think ddg calls them keeps you within the site and provides more info in that zero-click box.
- antidoh 14y ago
  Understood, but I don't see the plug, or the in. They've just added "hn" as another term in the search string. Did I lose or miss something?
  - sparkinson 14y ago
    You're right actually. I think at the moment you can't turn off individual "goodies" either. That would be a good set of options however.
  - epi0Bauqu 14y ago
    The plug part is http://duckduckhack.com/ http://duckduckhack.com/ -- that is, these are open source components that plug into the system via this glue. This one in particular is at https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice/blob/master/lib/DDG/Spice/HackerNews.pm https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice/blob/maste... and https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice/blob/master/share/spice/hacker_news/spice.js https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice/blob/maste... The in part is they get submitted and we try hard to make them all useful and thus "in" DDG by default. However, ultimately you could a) consume them in your own applications (off DDG); and b) choose to turn some off or on more of the time.

bashzor 14y ago

It's better than HNSearch? Why?

moystard 14y ago

DDG gets confused when you use "hn github" and displays Github repositories instead. I think the algorithm should be slightly tweaked so when several keywords are present, the first one has priority over the second one.

epi0Bauqu 14y ago
Thanks for the feedback -- we're discussing it right now :)

kang 14y ago

How is this better than google? Even if you talk the "hacker way" the 'site:' tag is exact and specific whereas this is not. Upvotes simply show the anti-google (anti established) mindset that hn has.

sherjilozair 14y ago
site: only returns with links that are in this subdomain. DDG searches all the links that have been posted in HN. I think this is a big difference.

mikebracco 14y ago

I have DuckDuckGoog as my search engine in Chrome - http://www.duckduckgoog.com http://www.duckduckgoog.com. If you add it as your search engine it routes all queries using DuckDuckGo syntax to DuckDuckGo (like !bangs) and all others through Google. Pretty useful.

pav3l 14y ago

Google is an excellent search engine. If you have privacy concerns, don't store your personal information with Google. It's really that simple. Switching to other search engines because of privacy concerns is just silly in my opinion. I have those concerns as well, but instead of missing out on Google search I choose to not use any of Google's other services (e.g. Gmail, G+, etc.) that would store my personal information (and possibly tie it to my searches). If you want to take advantage of webmaster tools, analystics, etc. just create an account just for that, and don't use it for actual communication.

sherjilozair 14y ago

I didn't mean to incite Google v/s DuckDuckGo war by posting this page. I once had an idea of having a smart Hacker News search. The idea is that the full web might have too much noise. Hacker News serves to be a collection of webpages that are interesting to us, and are intelligent. Moreover, each of them have a rating associated with them, and we don't need back-link analysis to rank them. If I search for startup ideas in Google(full web) or in Hacker News(the interesting subset of the web), I would have a much better result in the latter, that will ensure that only those articles come that have been 'approved' by the HN community, and not noise and fraud that Google might have picked up. Now, current hacker news searches like site:news.ycombinator.com or hnsearch fail to do this. I'm not just interested in things with this domain name, or doing exact string matches. I want to Search, and all the algorithms and techniques that made a proper search engine like magic. What hnsearch is doing is basically grep. This DDG plugin is the closest approximation to my idea, but still not perfect. Hopefully, some day I will find from my busy semester schedule and make something awesome from this idea and show you guys. :)