Google is losing it

The search results from Google are getting worse to a level that is annoys me. The reason is that Google search has been made “smarter”. While searching for a couple of terms, Google now supposes that the search results should include also search terms that are supposed to be related.

Some examples.

As I am interested in dragonflies, and I am Dutch (the Dutch word for dragonfly is “libel”), I do quite frequently use the search term “libel”. I am aware that this word has a totally unrelated meaning in English, but that meaning is mostly suppressed by using multiple search terms in Dutch, or for example adding the name of an area in the Netherlands. Or by setting the language to Dutch. But, searching for “libel Nederland” gives as the first hit a Dutch woman’s magazine called “Libelle”. Yes. I see the similarity in the words. Words can be similar but can have a totally different meaning.

Another example. Recently I was trying to find some information about legislature on internet privacy. The words “internet” and “privacy” are used in Dutch to, but legislature is “wetgeving”. That last word exists only in Dutch, so you’d think that it would return only Dutch search results. Well, it doesn’t. Check it out: searching for “privacy internet wetgeving” makes Google think I might also be searching for something wet, like “wet dreams poetry” or “wet women” or “wet ink printing”. So stuff like this is inserted between the results.

Google thinks it is smart by supposing I am dumb. That is really annoying.

Small annoyances on the internet

Here’s my list of small annoyances on the internet.

• Visit counter on 360.yahoo.com.
  I have a yahoo 360 page.  Sometimes that shows a visitors count. Sometimes not. So sometimes I keep on clicking on my account pages just to see the visit count. There are actually two versions of the visit count: one that shows only the overall visit count and one that also shows the visits for the current week and the current month.
  
• Reddit auto-downmods of submissions.
  Reddit.com sometimes is interesting, sometimes a bit boring. But interesting enough for me to occasionally take a look at it. I tried submitting a number of pages, but found out that they almost always were voted down instantly to zero points. Only recently, after two years and something like 20 submitted urls, I actually got a karma above 1.
• Everywhere this Google login.
  Google is everywhere. I do use some Google services, search mainly. But also occasionally gmail, blogspot, analytics, picasa. Maybe some more. But wheneever I log in to one of them, I am logged in to all of them. I am even logged in to Google search. I do not want to be logged in to Google search. Mind your own business Google!
• Impossible captchas.
  I understand the point of captchas. But it happens more and more often that I am not able to decipher it. Usually I need a few tries before ‘breaking’ the code. I read that I’m not alone in that.
• The obviousness of my mediocracy.
  Of course I always knew that there was someone better than me for each of my qualities. But with the internet, it becomes so painfully clear.
• Stolen content in blogs.
  People who embed a video from YouTube,  a photo from flickr or a text, created by somebody else and presenting it as their own in their blog. Usually with no reference to the source and with no or very little explanation. People doing this and getting away with it.

Look at all the lonely people (or their blog)

Looking around on all kinds of blogs, it is amazing how many people continue blogging while they are getting no responses at all. Yes. I admit, it is the same here with me. There is an occasional response on my ramblings. I can see in the stats page that somebody occasionally opens this thing in a browser.  But my guess is that most people do that by accident, and that they quickly depart elsewhere.

On the other hand there is a limited number of blogs which are visited very often, and I hear people even make a living from the revenues from ads on their blog. Interestingly enough, those blogs are not more interesting than the non-visited blogs. In fact, many such “popular” blogs have a 100% stolen content. An entree is just displaying a clip from youtube or some photos from flickr, which have been submitted there by some else. It even happens that blogs steal complete blog entrees from another, lesser known blog. Don’t be original, but get rich. That’s the idea. At least I understand it.

But why do people keep on blogging when they have almost no readers and even less responses? Is that a sign of loneliness. A sign of trust that in the future, one day, people will massively see the talent and originality of the blogger – and that is just a matter of time. Or is it stubbornness (thinking about this, it is actually almost the same as the previous reason). Is it a need to write, a need to go public with whatever it is that is blogged about, because there is no one else around who would listen. Your partner prefers the TV to listen to, your kids have their own friends and those who are supposed to be your friends have their own life – so they say.

Blogging is telling stories to no one.

Group sex and prostitution on Flickr

Rode brug

Dear internet user,

My photos on flickr must be a disappointing experience for you. They often are just not exactly what you were looking for. I apologize, but I have to say that I was not aware of the problem. Until yesterday. Flickr opened up the referrer statistics for views on photos. Now I can see what you were looking for when you opened one of my photo pages.

While you were looking to satisfy your sexual needs, I could not offer you the slightest release. You were looking for prostitution at the “rode brug”(red bridge) in Utrecht, I could only tell you that the prostitution is taking place one bridge further, at the Marnixbrug. My photo of this Red Bridge just shows you simply a red bridge. Oh yes, I have a photo of the boats of the prostitutes too, but – I apologize again – you have more trouble finding it, and what is worse, it just shows the backside of the boats. No flesh. Sorry.

And also you have been searching for “group sex”, and must be totally disappointed by my photo of four couples of damselflies, sitting on a branch. They are having sex. But I don’t think that damselfly sex will turn you on. However, maybe you find it interesting. Somewhere else I have written some explanation about Dragonfly Sex. Just read it, it is fascinating stuff.

Damselfly group sex

One other thing I have vastly deceived you with, is the 10 million megapixel camera. Yes, you searched for a camera with millions of megapixels. That is about four or five orders of magnitude higher then the current digital cameras have. You see, one megapixel equals one million pixels. Current digital cameras have about 10 million pixels, which equals 10 megapixel. Some have a bit more But you do not have to be that ashamed of your ignorance. That photo that you were looking at, was of a poster hanging at the window of a professional photography shop. They made the same mistake.

What else should I write you.Well. Some of you have found what you searched for. You searched for “Evernia prunastri” or “Euphorbia cyparissias“. That gave me a good feeling.

Regards, Taka

Euphorbia cyparissias	Evernia prunastri

Your own robot on the moon?

Doesn’t it sound like a very cool thing to be able to sit behind your computer and control the actions of your very own robot on the moon? I recently read about this idea, which originally is from the Dutch Nobel prize winner Gerard ‘t Hooft. I am not totally sure where he first launched this idea, but it might be in his book ‘Planetenbiljart’, published in 2006 (not sure if it has been translated, the title translates as ‘Billiards of the Planets’). The idea is based on the much older idea of colonizing space with the use of robots, it only democratizes it: each of us will have our own robot on the moon and we can use it to build a civilization there. Very much like Second Life, but for real this time.

In one of the articles I found while trying to Google the idea, I read that a US company has developed plans to have your robot on the moon, but I haven’t been able to figure out which company that is. Suggestions are welcome.

The mysteries of reddit.com: all my new comments are made invisible

I have an account on reddit by the username TakaIta. Very seldom I submit a link, a bit more frequently I make a comment.

Recently I noticed that my comments are being downmodded at the moment I submit them. Normally your own comments get 1 point automatically, because it is supposed that you upvote them. But in my case, they got zero points even though they are marked as upvoted by me. First I was just a bit puzzled, but didn’t care so much. But then I tried to figure out what was happening exactly.

Here is what I tried and what I found out.

First I figured that it might have to do with ad-blocking. Reddit wants me to see their ads, and I use Firefox + adblock to get clear of them. Maybe they found a way to check if I am adblocking, and if so, everything gets downmodded automatically. So I openend Internet Explorer – no adblock – logged in into my account and submitted a comment. It got downmodded automatically. I suppose that it has to do with my account.

Next I created a new account, still in Internet Explorer. First I submitted a comment. It worked fine: it got 1 point. Then I surfed to the threads on which I had commented with my original account. Interestingly, my comments were totally invisible. Check out for yourself: go to my account mentioned at the top, and click on the “permalink” of any of my recent comments. While you can read my comments on my userpage, if you click the permalink, there is nothing to see.

What is happening? And why is it happening? Have I been too rude in my comments? Maybe. But I got no official notice of that. And I am not that rude.

So far it remains a reddit mystery.

Update June 25
Something has changed. My reddit account works again as supposed. But the strangeness is now on the additional account I created to find out more about what was going on. So now you can go to this other account (Hindeloopen) and click the permalink on the last (and only) comment made with this account. Then the text of the comment is not there.

I took my camera and shot back

Finally I had the nerve to do it after thinking about it for months. My response to the violation of my privacy. The interweb is getting everywhere, it’s logging all that I do, based on anti-terrorism laws. Yes, I am a suspect, I need to be controlled because I might be dangerous just like anyone. Who knows what I search for on the interweb, what I post, about what I discuss, which nick names I use, what my real name is, what my number is, where I live, who I love, what I do for a living and how I spend my money, where I post my photos (with EXIF-data and preferably geo-tagged), what I think and of course what my garden looks like. Yes, that is right. I looked up my house on Google Earth and I clearly saw the two garden chairs which I own, standing in my garden. I must have been lucky that I wasn’t there when the Google satellite passed by. But who knows when i comes along next time. I can no longer sit quietly in my garden, because every moment that satellite might fly over and photograph ME. They’ll know what I am drinking, what I read and in a while the satellite might even monitor what I think.

I am just sitting in my garden.

What can I do? How can I hide? Can I hide at all? I just want to be by myself and with the people I chose to be with. Not with some spying satellite around that will post me and my garden on the interweb.

So slowly my plan took form. It took me weeks to think about my little revenge. Then I started planning, the weather must be just fine, the colors of the sky just right. And I had to overcome my fear. What if….What if that satellite just was there. Or what if it just wasn’t there. I needed luck. The satellite should have to be there, but it should photograph something else, not my garden.

Then one day I dared. I took my camera and shot back.