I am and I do, but I didn’t mean to say DDG is just as good. It’s just been good enough for me.
True, I think I probably just skip over those results and don’t even register them anymore. They definitely happen a lot but it’s not something I even remembered when I thought about search results.
The problem with search is not that it’s broken. The problem is that an effective search system like google had on the early days is only truly effective for “power users” who try to understand how to use search effectively.
The majority of people have been using Google as if it was an AI long before it turned into one. People search for questions expecting to see answers, so search engines tried to adapt to that. And then when you’re trying to guess what the user wants to search for instead of just searching literally for what they asked, your search engine will never be 100% effective for anyone.
Like, on the old days for each person who could get great search results from Google you had 9 people who failed to use Google at all. That was one happy user and 9 very unhappy ones. Nowadays they have all 10 of them getting mediocre to ok-ish results. They are never getting anyone as satisfied as that one person used to be, but in general the average satisfaction has gone up.
Suck in what way? And what kind of stuff do you usually search?
I used to think search was kind of an universal thing but after looking at some people’s examples of what is a good or bad result I noticed that is definitely not the case.
For me a good search result is a list of sites that contain the words I typed on the search bar, sorted by how closely the words match and then perhaps subsorted by some website ranking system. For that, DDG has been quite decent.
Yep, it’s like that saying about the infinite number of monkeys. AI is extremely ineffective in general, but if you don’t care about the time and resources it consumes, it can be used for a lot of stuff very well. You just need to be a little bit more creative than simply asking it to do your job for you.
Sublime Text can do 98% of what Notepad++ does and then a lot more too.
And then there’s Fedora in the corner, quietly getting the best of both worlds.
Chrome is in a similar position that IE used to be. It uses its majority position to move web development away from standards and so devs need to write extra code to support both chrome and others - or make chrome only sites.
The only new thing for me in this article was learning that Niantic started calling themselves game developers in 2025, ending the one thing I could respect them for (self identifying as a data collection company).
I’ll let the opportunity pass, as the game is no longer mine and I’m not proud of how it ended up.
When I first published a game on steam, valve kept blocking it because I had checked “controller support” and they tested it and said it didn’t work with controllers. I tried to find any controller that didn’t work, asked a lot of people to test it for me as well, no issues whatsoever. Gave up and unchecked that option. Game got approved. Players used controllers just fine, I went back and checked it and never heard anything from valve again.
My wife lost her amazon account (with all her ebooks) twice and she still buys ebooks there. I managed to import a Kobo from Paraguay to try and get her off the hook but it only worked for like 3 months as almost everything is amazon exclusive these days.
(both times she lost the accounts for disputing credit card charges that were not tied to her account)
Which makes sense. The stock market is gambling and most odds do not factor in the imminent AI IPOs.
I started writing this comment with the intention of praising Nintendo for what they do well, but after the comparison I realized that “at least their toys aren’t broke or a risk” is also a very privileged thing to say…
Nintendo has always been generally consistent with their approach to things: they try their best to make good stuff (with some exceptions to “their best” like the Pokémon company), and then charge premium prices for it.
As a customer it is more expensive than other videogame companies but there are usually no bad surprises with their business model. You just pay for what you want (if they provide it). Their ugly side is usually detached from the relationship with customers.
To make a stupid comparison, Ubisoft/EA and the sort are like a playground with some broken toys and occasionally some meth users or a pedophile. Nintendo is a private fenced off park where every toy is in pristine condition and is protected by snipers who shoot any adult or non-paying kid that gets too close.
They built the whole thing? Did nobody warn them there’s no wind underwater?
Oh I was just talking about those particular examples.
No OP, but I have never done any of those things in your example.
And only because of portable devices like the steam deck. If the software scene was exactly the same but these devices didn’t exist, I don’t think they would be doing this. They wouldn’t care windows is heavier if it was about standard gaming computers only.