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451 points imartin2k | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.43s | source
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m000 ◴[] No.44478629[source]
I mostly agree with TFA, with one glaring exception: The quality of Google search results has regressed so badly in the past years (played by SEO experts), that AI was actually a welcome improvement.
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iLoveOncall ◴[] No.44479259[source]
User issue. Every single time this comes up.

People don't know how to search, that's it. Even the HN population.

Every time this gets posted, I ask for one example of thing you tried to find and what keywords you used. So I'm giving you the same offer, give me for one thing you couldn't find easily on Google and the keywords you used, and I'll show you Google search is just fine.

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mittensc ◴[] No.44479341[source]
Allright, had this recently since i keep forgetting luks commands.

How do you set up an encrypted file on linux that can be mounted and accessed same as a hard drive.

(note: luks, a few commands)

You will see a nonsensical ai summarization, lots of videos and junk websites being promoted then you'll likely find a few blogs with the actual commands needed. Nowhere is there a link to a manual for luks or similar.

This in the past had the no-ad straightforward blogs as first links, then some man pages, then other unrelated things for the same searches that i do now and get garbage.

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hambes ◴[] No.44479459[source]
Is "How do you set up an encrypted file on linux that can be mounted and accessed same as a hard drive." literally what you put into the search bar? if so, that's the problem.

try "mount luks encrypted file" or "luks file mount". too many words and any grammar at all will degrade your results. it's all about keywords

edit: after trying it myself i quickly realized the problem - luks related articles are usually about drives or partitions, not about files. this search got me what i wanted: "luks mount file -partition -filesystem" i found this article[1], which is in german (my native tongue), but contained the right information.

1: https://blog.netways.de/blog/2018/07/25/verschluesselten-fil...

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1. IshKebab ◴[] No.44479757[source]
Google hasn't really worked like you imagine for a decade.
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2. hambes ◴[] No.44481391[source]
then why did my keyword-based approach work better than the natural language approach?