• shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    16 days ago

    Not loving the search engine but the phone browser is a life saver. I barely touch web sites on my phone, but fuck me, away from my home setup and Pihole, I want to scream.

  • TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    15 days ago

    Yet DDG still uses AI. Better use Startpage instead. It’s like what Google used to be before they became shit and evil. I find it has better results than DDG, next to that they don’t use AI. They also value privacy. And it’s Dutch, so non American.

    • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world
      0·
      15 days ago

      I just checked out startpage having never heard of it. They want me to log in. They want me to download an app. Their video search apparently censors NSFW content even with safe search turned off. The overall search results aren’t better than any other search engine as far as I can tell. This is likely the last time I check out startpage.

      • skidicarus@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        15 days ago

        I switched to Startpage a few months ago. I’ve personally found the search results to be better than DDG. I still use Google for shopping. Can’t say I ever use the video search function, though. Never been prompted to sign in or create an account. Never downloaded an app.

    • Drun@lemmy.world
      0·
      15 days ago

      Your phone keyboard also uses AI. And file search you use everyday.

      Please, don’t boycott the good company just because they have a separate fancy UI for a chatbot.

      • deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
        0·
        15 days ago

        It’s an old abbreviation for feet. A double quote is also an old abbreviation for inches.

        It’s a shorthand I learned from my father who was an engineer back before my country converted to the metric system.

        There’s a reply below making fun of this as the apostrophe and quote are also abbreviations for minutes and seconds too.

    • soupcon@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      15 days ago

      The first line was broadly right. But you blundered on the second, especially by phrasing it in a condescending way, because how many figures you should quote to depends on more context than just how many figures the input was quoted to.

    • TrackenDaKracken@lemmy.world
      0·
      15 days ago

      Not so good for building things, eh?

      The hard mounting points, set in concrete for a large generator are to be 60 feet apart, per the manufacturer’s instructions. The construction company rounds 18.288m to 18m because “significant digits, oi!”

      The mounting points are now 28 centimeters too close together. The generator shows up on site, and now needs to sit to the side for four days while the hard points are moved. Or, maybe longer, because concrete trucks need to be scheduled ahead of time. It could be two weeks.

  • _thisdot@infosec.pub
    0·
    15 days ago

    If you haven’t, you need to try Kagi search and that’s the best search engine in existence

    • TrackenDaKracken@lemmy.world
      0·
      15 days ago

      They should limit free searches to a certain number per day, maybe 10 searches. That way people would come back knowing they can try it again, making the free level actually useful, and perhaps eventually get pulled into paying for it. The 100 searches hard limit wasn’t enough to convince me that I should pay $5/mo., or whatever it is, for just 300 searches. I’ve never gone back to try it again. It should be $5/mo. for 100 searches per day. That would get many more people on board, since that’s more than most people would use in a day, and they could still have the higher tiers for the heavy users.

      They’ve priced it wrong if they want the site to grow. But, maybe they’ve priced it right for whatever size they want it to be.

  • gastroglizzy@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    16 days ago

    Yeah, that’s great and all, but consider the following:

    If I’m standing in the middle of a field and I need to measure sixty-ish feet for a fence, and I don’t have a meter stick, I can get pretty close by walking heel-to-toe for sixty paces. There’s no equivalent method for a meter and no metric unit that has a human body equivalent, while the most imperial length units all have human body equivalents.

    Also, even if I do have a meter stick, how tf am I supposed to measure and mark 0.288 of one? Sixty feet is easier to work with.

    There’s also the matter of a foot being equally divisible into 2, 3, 4, or 6 equal lengths, all of which also have human body equivalents. If you know them all, and measurements relative to other objects aren’t required, you can build things that measure up relative to themselves by just using fingers, hands, feet, marks, a square, and a straight edge, no ruler or tape required. I have projects close to ten years old built that way that are still standing strong.

    • Lectral@lemmy.ca
      0·
      16 days ago

      My step length is 0.8m. After taking 25 steps, I have travelled 20m (roughly 65feet). 5 times that is 100m. 10 times that is 1km. Notice how easy those numbers are to multiply and divide. And notice how much easier it is to take regular steps than heel-to-toe steps. You know you could memorize how big your body parts are in metric too, right?

      I’d argue that the only reason your preferred units are easier for you is because you are familiar with them.

    • BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world
      0·
      16 days ago

      A yard (3 feet) is .9144 meters. Since you’re throwing accuracy out the window using heel-to-toe of different foot sizes, it’s just as accurate, and just as usable.

    • Diddlydee@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      16 days ago

      Pretty close? If your foot is a UK size 12 and therefore 1ft long that will work, but any variance, say 1cm, equates to 60cm / 2ft across your 60ft.

      I would measure the 60ft using a lifesize printout of Johnathan Edwards 18.29m triple jump world record from 1995 which I keep handy.

    • yesman@lemmy.world
      0·
      16 days ago

      Also, even if I do have a meter stick, how tf am I supposed to measure and mark 0.288 of one?

      If only there was a way to calculate 0.288 of a meter. Maybe we could get a mathematician to draw up some kind of formula that’d let us cypher 29% of a meter.

  • G_M0N3Y_2503@lemmy.zip
    0·
    15 days ago

    I’m convinced the Imperial system is like those languages they make up for fantasy novels. I’ve only ever witnessed it in D&D and it seems impractical to learn for the day to day.

    • Spice Hoarder@lemmy.zip
      0·
      15 days ago

      You usually don’t convert the units in the day to day. Either something is a few inches, a few feet, or a mile away. Construction workers can usually measure stuff out by hand (literally) if they’re doing stuff like framing.

      A cup is quite literally a standard cup size. Any modern recipe will just be like “2 ¼ cups of milk” you can measure it or eyeball it. Anything smaller and you’re using measuring spoons anyway, so conversion doesn’t matter again.

      • Molvorin@feddit.dk
        0·
        15 days ago

        Construction workers can usually measure stuff out by hand

        Why dont they use feet? 😉

      • jobbies@lemmy.zip
        0·
        15 days ago

        Construction workers can usually measure stuff out by hand

        This is how not to construct things.

        • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          15 days ago

          Measure twice, cut once. Then start over cause you measured with your hands like a buffoon.

          • matlag@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            15 days ago

            Alright! Alright! I’ll do it again! So… one… two… three… four… five… six feet and… yeah, that ought to be six feet a half.

        • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zipEnglish
          0·
          15 days ago

          Why do non-US people get weirdly emotionally invested in it? I mean, if we’re criticizing, it’s worse that US recipes use cups and tablespoons (measures of volume) for ingredients (like flour) that should be measured by weight.

          • matlag@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            15 days ago

            I’m an immigrant in Canada. Canada officially adopted the metric system, migrated from 1970 to 1985, when the commission was abolished.
            40 years later, due to inertia AND the proximity to a larger country that still uses a backward metric system, we have a mash-up of both systems here.
            So yeah, I kind of feel it strongly.

            But well, it’s like people: you like them for their inherent qualities, you love them for their quirks.

            • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zipEnglish
              0·
              15 days ago

              It’s the same here in the US, and I’m not sure that everybody realizes it. We officially adopted the metric system, too, but we haven’t undertaken the massive effort needed to replace all of the legacy systems. For instance, all of our food labels have the volume in (milli)liters, and weight in grams; true, mostly that’s listed as the conversion of the fluid ounces or ounces, but a few products have only the metric units. The required nutrition information label on the back is entirely in (milli)grams. Electricity is metered in metric units, and the electromagnetic spectrum is demarcated in them, too. All of our cars, motorcycles, bicycles, computers, and electronics use metric dimensions. (Hence the joke among mechanics about the 10mm socket always going missing.) Randomly, I’ve been looking for a couple of different light bulbs to buy online; every specification of a US bulb (base size, globe size, electrical requirements, luminous flux, color temperature) is a metric unit. Our money is metric, not just the denominations, but US law specifies the size and weight of coinage in metric units. (The dollar coin, for example, is 2mm thick.) Heck, even the US customary units are now officially defined in terms of SI units!

              It’s pretty much the units that people interact with day-to-day that we’ve kept the US customary system. Except for, y’know, drugs and ammo. The most-American of all things, cars, food, money, drugs, and ammo, all metric. What more do you want from us?! 😉

  • marcos@lemmy.world
    0·
    16 days ago

    Seems useful for those cases you don’t know what a furlong even measures.

    I wonder how well it handles ounces.

      • marcos@lemmy.world
        0·
        16 days ago

        It converts into another imperial weight unity, and an international volume unity…

        It didn’t ask for clarification if you are dealing with precious metals…

        I’m not sure any system like that can really work for ounces. But well, that’s not bad.

      • altkey (he\him)@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        16 days ago

        One spawns a pre-coded widget with obvious math equations inside, the other puts out values in a way you can’t tell if it calculated stuff or made it all up. I am sure it triggers a side-calculator too, but I can’t know if it exists, and if it was properly triggered this time after they presented the output like an answer from their Search Assist LLM tool.

        This, and that you get a working multi-unit converter widget you can use again and again without asking DDG once more. I think the old way clearly wins.