M*crosoft's search engine is borderline unusable

People are going to see this, so here's the answer.

Logitech's web UI is crap. See that tiny, unlabled triangle on the list on the left?

Click it and pick your OS version.

Then you get the download.

Google: 🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑💰💰💰💰💰

Just so I understand. I should not be downloading anything from there?

I clicked a link just yesterday, but something felt off so I backed out and went to the MSI page to download afterburner.

Well that was a spectacular read in your link, keep calling attention to it, 'cause it's gonna be a constant drip-drip-drip of people finding out. I didn't know, but starting today, I'm gonna experiment with SearXNG as my primary search engine, see how that goes!

Thanks

Yacy seems to be what I want but I am worried about the content that would get indexed

Thanks for making such an interesting guide! I'll read through this and hopefully learn more about search engines and what would work the best for me.

Does anyone know exactly what malware they are serving? I'm tempted to run it though virustotal.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

.

Doesnt Duck use bing?

Is it still good for porn, at least?

Thanks, I've never heard of this. I've been using Brave Search + DDG + Marginalia

Yeah, you're totally allowed to cuss on the internet.

Also try to use Firefox (or a fork of Firefox) together with uBlock origin.

Can you paste as text?

Not sure, but I am a fan of Mpcrosoft's search

Clean up your tabs please. Omg

This is the first time I've seen Kagi, I'll check them out. I've been pretty happy with SearxNG.

I feel like most commenters here would think "no one wants the stupid ai response", but obviously some people like it or they wouldn't do it. I think if your searches are more general kind of "can I catch chicken pox from chickens" type questions it might be helpful ?

That's good only if their choice wasnt even worst

Who'd use Chrome anyway?

They do?

Isn't Edge based on Chrome?

Can't you add it manually?

Dude. When you're looking at whatever search just right click in the url bar and there will be an option to add that search engine. Then in settings you can make it your default if you wish.

The reason I don't use SearXNG is because the public instances always seem to be slow and or broken.

So, did it never occur to you that you can manually add custom search engine into Firefox?

Settings>search>manage alternate search engines>add search engine

we got woogle which is a frontend for google

Try this https://social.tchncs.de/@miaplan/108808480948809477

It does, look it up in the addon marketplace- been working great for me

Ugh. Do you really want that though? They do have a store don't they? Just no one wants to use it.

Debian has had a browseable catalog since forever but it's still waaay better to just go to a third party's website and see how they say to install whatever thing.

Can someone ELI5 how searx works

It sends your search query to a bunch of different existing search engines, and shows you all of the results in one combined page

if it’s worth the hassle of hosting

Personally idk, maybe someone else can provide their opinion about this

Searx (as others have said) is an aggregate of multiple search engines all bundled into one, with very finetuned customization (ie: you can toggle every search option you want or not within each category).

You also don't need to host your own, though I'm not sure what the significance of being self hosted in this case is.

As far as usefulness over other search sites, it's generally better with some caveats. Search engines as a whole are in a pretty awful state, so combining them is better, but still not that good. It does offer some very niche search engines that can be extremely useful when pooled together though, which is nice.

Searx also has some captcha issues that I haven't quite figured out. My understanding is that essentially, search engines don't like when you use their engine without being on their site, and it'll stop working via searx (until you go to the site in question and do the captcha maybe?).

There's also a few different domains for searx with varying degrees of availability as far as what engines they reliably connect to.

All in all, searx is great by comparison to mainstream trash, but it can be a headache to setup, and a headache to maintain. There's a masterlist of searx hosts somewhere, I'll try and see about finding it if someone else doesn't link it.

It scraps other search engines either locally or remotely from someone else's server. I used it for a while, then switched back to duckduckgo. Duckduckgo is what I recommend if you are lazy.

...Nnnnno, there is literally a tool from Logitech called "Logitech Unifying Software," which is the applet you need to reassign a Logitech Unifying receiver to a different device.

https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025297913-Unifying-Software

Not as garbage as your critical thinking abilities it would seem.

Maybe you should inform Logitech about that?

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/resource-center/what-is-unifying.html

Unifying is absolutely the name of software

Is there a ConfidentlyIncorrect in here already?

That seems to be untrue.

Unpopular opinion: dead internet is not only real, but GOOD. Once robots get good enough to autonomously sign up for websites and make convincing posts, this will force us humans to go actually outside, make friends, form deep social relationship, and build lasting, resilient communities. Meanwhile on the internet, websites that are willing to allow AI content for money will eventually die out due to lack of actual users. The only remaining websites will be run by individuals and organizations with non-profit motives, and a strict human-only policy with verification based on word-of-mouth / invite system.

On robots.net too

With stuff like Tesla and Twitter, it can keep away the weird nerds who search those terms in hopes of white-knight-sealioning a conversation into oblivion. I think it just became part of the lexicon.

I like the classic Usenet “Micro$oft.” Producers of Microshaft Wind-blows.

It conveys "I have such a disdain for that thing that I'm asterisking its name like it was a slur or swear word".

I'm not a big fan either, even if you can find some secondary roles for that (as keeping someone from finding it, like ilinamorato exemplified). It distracts the reader from what is being said to the author's personal opinion about what is being said.

It's ironic, except for when we're talking about the Fr*nch. It's self aware humor that you're being ridiculous. The tone it's supposed to convey in situations like thisis that you're being hyperbolically obtuse.

Honestly, it's better than: fck, blly and s*icide

speak of the devil and he shall appear

Yes it is.

I unknowingly downloaded some software from there when I was a kid, and, from what I remember, it came bundled with some sort of update manager or something. Even if it's not outright malware, I would wager most people who are looking to download logitech's utility don't want some irrelevant third-party garbage on their system. So AT BEST it's crapware / bloatware

My elderly dad fell for something similar trying to call HP support, he googled the number and the top result was some bullshit. They had him set up remote access and compromised all his data. Old man had to reset everything.

He called me saying what happened, I had him shut down and unplug. I recovered what I could but he lost a lot of data.

This shit should be illegal. Like, I'm sure it is technically but there shouldnt be unofficial sponsored results above legitimate sources.

The latter.

It's just a mirror for software that is or was free. Though it's been around for years, and hasn't been relevant or needed by most people for a long time now so it very well could contain viruses and shit these days.

The screenshot is from Microsoft Edge running in Windows 10 (virtual machine) with no/little browsing history and no account connected. I'm hypothesizing here, but maybe these are the reasons:

• You don't see the ??? section because you're not on Edge. Bing AI only works on edge (it checks your user agent)
• You don't see the ad because you have an adblocker

Do you have uBlock or some similar ad blocker installed?

EDIT: I went and looked myself. I do have an ad-blocker installed. I don't see the ad. But I do see more noise than OP (desktop, Firefox):

• There's a set of steps at the top left telling me to download and install the software, which is what OP was complaining about.

• At the top right, there's a large, blue button with a link that guesses incorrectly that I want to know about Logitech Unifying Receiver Pairing, and just sends me to another Bing search.

• Beneath that, there are a list of several questions that Microsoft incorrectly thinks I might be wanting to task and their answers.

• Then there are two "Explore more" links linking me to pages describing how to pair with the software. One appears to link to "logi.com" with apparently is a Logitech business support page that links to the software, albeit only the Mac version, which I'd guess isn't what OP wanted.

• Back on the left, I have what appears to be an AI spam question-answer site at thewindowsclub.com and another page on "how to unify" at robots.net.

• Beneath that, I have a link to the Logitech download section. So it's in my top results and on my laptop, visible on the first screen of results, though beneath some not-really-desirable stuff.

Thanks for the tip! I use startpage already, it's pretty good. From what I understand, it uses Google's search index under the hood.

There's also Brave search which (claims to be) privacy friendly and (claims to) have their own independent search index, so you could give that a try as well. I wouldn't say it's better that startpage or google tho

Damn I'd love to use it but it does not have my country as an option to select region so pretty much useless to me sadly. Stuck to DDG abd google/bing it seems.

I wouldn't call bing mainstream

sadly it seems that most other search engines (like ddg) can be quite lacklustre in their image results