Best search engine for EEs?

Hi Joerg,

I have seen malware mess with google search results like this...

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John Devereux

I've been using duckduckgo.com as an alternative to google at times. There is a firefox plugin. It has a secure link version if you want to hide your searches oh like "sexy naked teen mosfets."

Google as of late is not being very strict about the search terms having to be in the linked website. If you put a + in front of the term, it gets a bit more serious. Duckduckgo strictly adheres to the search terms. At the end of the search, it provides a link for the other search engines.

You might also want to try ghostery.com if you don't like being tracked. It is a bit awkward to set up, but it blocks tracking sites on a case by case basis. You have to select that you want a particular site blocked. You can whitelist sites you don't want blocked. [I whitelist sites that I know need the money from the hits.] In the upper right hand corner, it will show you the tracking site that it sees. A blocked site has a line through it. For instance, you might not want to block twitter, facecrook, dig, whatever if you actually like those services.

It sure is a bitch these days to find manuals for stuff you see on ebay. The ebay ads appear all over the net, often not explicitly calling out ebay. And heaven help the fool looking for datasheets on old parts. All those damn surplus peddlers put in every part number known to man on their website. If you sign into google, you can block those vendors.

I saw someone listed scroogle. My understanding is that is a google search without the cookies. They just proxy the search. So your search will still suck, but your cookies won't be piling up. I haven't used scroogle myself, but it's on the list of things to evaluate.

That's what I suspected and ran the scanner but it found nothing. Also, most links are again Google links but "sponsored" sales links. I guess sponsored as in they give them money.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Thanks! That seems to work and is fast. I don't search for anything sinister, I just do not like to be thrown a stash of advertising pamphlets when I want to to check out a technical publication.

The deterioration began a few months ago, and then accelerated when they hid the "cached" option in some submenu that is not accessible on some highly protected computers. Time to change horses, I guess.

Well, I am not paranoid about tracking :-)

I don't use Twitter, Facebook and such. For professionals there's LinkedIn.

Those peddlers have become utterly useless. What they do not understand is that they are actively undermining their credibility. When I discover one doing that it immediately enters my mental no-traffic-list. Meaning no business, although I never trusted them in the first place anyhow.

Yeah, I've tried it. Not very good, IMHO.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Hello Joerg,

I have sent you an email with the screenshot of my Google-page. It shows where this mentioned icon should be checked.

Best regards, Helmut

Thanks, Helmut. I've tried switching that to Google. Unformtunately it made no difference.

What the heck is "blendersearch.com"? Some Google result links lead there and all it shows it a blank page. None of the other search engines does this stuff.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

No! That's the whole point! They know you are one of XX people who use that pool of IP addresses from which *your* current address was drawn! Since, chances are, the other folks in that pool *also* use google, they are similarly fingerprinting

*their* browsers and search patterns. You aren't as "ambiguous" (anonymous?) a client as you think you are! :>

And, the more atypical you configure your browser (e.g., I don't support Flash so I tend to "stand out" more than my "IP neighbors"), the more unique your fingerprint.

Again, no! You're assuming the site doesn't conspire with other sites to track you. E.g., akamai.net's whole purpose in life is this goal. Since the IP address you are using "now" is probably being used by the same person (i.e., you!) who was using it a few minutes/seconds ago when akami.net was called upon to serve up that script/image on the foobar.net site, they can tie two, er, "bits" of information together about "this user" -- he/she has an interest in site A *and* site B!

I don't think I've ever been directed to an "ad site" surreptitiously via google. I look at the actual URL's (appear at the bottom of the browser window when moused over) before clicking on them. I also tend to cut and paste links into the "address bar" instead of clicking (eliminates the "referer" header so the destination site doesn't know how I arrived at it -- unless, of course, they intentionally expose certain URLs to google and others to other search engines, etc.)

Unless it's *off* (or has low enough signal strength that the signal can't reach the road), you can't be sure. E.g., hiding the SSID doesn't make you invisible.

So, you just figure what its worth to you.

Personally, I find the "cards" at grocery stores more insidious (ditto PayPal). You're not *giving* me anything (at least not anything that I consider worthwhile) for the information that I'm leaking to you!)

Well, yeah, now they know that I am an AT&T customer. That must be a rare species :-)

So how do the reason then? Guys with flash disabled like cheeseburgers more than others? Or they buy more red sports cars?

But the thing is, this serving up isn't happening. Even with this latest Google hullabaloo the sales sites they throw at me only sell what was spelled out in that one search. Not in the ones before. So if they indeed track me they aren't particularly smart about it.

They'd have to park the car and try to decrypt the traffic. If there is any, which is very rarely the case. Maybe an email from the living room once in a while. I don't like the Tuesdays results shows of Dancing with the Stars but my wife does :-)

And if they do park the car there are three large dogs that would become rather vocal.

Don't dismiss those cards. My wife has that down to a science. Sometimes she comes home and says "I paid $62 for all this" and my eyes pop out. Filet mignon, numerous microbrews, Brie cheeses, amazing. Almost every morning she has some coupon in her email and it's like $5 off of some deli sausage that we love. Meaning instead of $8 we pay $3. But the next person in line pays $8.

Oh, and my wife bought the large WWVB clock here in my office including external temp transmitter for $3. Card in hand. I didn't even bother to enter it into the income/expense ledger.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

No. They look at the actual IP address and see *which* pool it belongs in. Only *small* domains have pools that are practical to allocate in one "pool".

E.g., an AT&T customer in Massachusetts probably *never* gets a chance to use the IP you are currently using. Likewise, you will never have a chance to use the IP that *he* is using.

Note that google *openly* admits to using their street view droids to gather SSID's and MAC addresses while they are cruising all over town. They *boast* that this allows their google clients (software) to get a fix on where the user (think: smart phone) is actually located. (i.e., the device tells google: "I am near access points advertising the following SSID's and MAC's ..." Google's servers then use that information to figure out what's nearby -- that they can advertise to you)

They only are trying to come up with "identifications" for individual (human) clients. They don't care (currently) what your name is (though if you use gmail, they care greatly! :> ). They just want to be able to say, "This is the same person that was looking for information on Buicks, yesterday" -- with some degree of confidence.

If your browser configuration is identical to The Mindless Masses, then that configuration information (which your browser freely discloses to all web pages that it visits) offers no additional information to narrow down the user in question.

If their technology gives them reasonable assurances that they can reliably identify a particular user (not by *name* but, rather, some arbitrary google assigned identification number), then they can begin to build a profile on that person.

If that person willingly *gives* them additional personal data (e.g., a gmail account name; their REAL name as presented by

*others* sending mail to their "bogus" gmail account name; etc.), then they can squirrel that away, too, if they want to map their "google identifier" to a "real person identifier".

(Love is transitory -- only *data* lasts forever! :> )

It is entirely possible that the *site* is the entity that is making the pitch. It can examine the referer header to see how you arrived at the site ("Ah, he came here by searching for 'bird+seed' on google. Let's put some bird seed ads on the page(s) that we show him!") and use that to pitch stuff to you.

I often encounter sites that *boast* about knowing that I arrived via google: "Welcome googler! Your query about ______ has brought you here..."

E.g., try going to the site *without* clicking on google's pointer to the site. Type the URL in by hand and see if the page appears the same.

No. You keep thinking that they *care* about "Joerg". They don't! :>

Whatever they manage to "sniff" WHILE DRIVING BY is all they care about. They don't want to read your email. They don't care what file(s) you are FTP-ing, etc.

If your machines are connected to your access point, then there is regular traffic between the AP and your machines even if you are doing nothing. That traffic contains SSID and MAC information.

And the guy who goes where the items are those prices *normally* saves every day!

Coupon shopping is fraught with peril. You have to be very disciplined to *only* buy those items that are "on sale". Stores aren't stupid. They lower one price and hope you will purchase something else that

*isn't* on sale -- to make up the difference in their "loss".

If you stores are present in sufficiently high density in your area, then you can avoid this trap by being disciplined and buying selectively from different stores (e.g., our weekly shopping trip allows us to visit a variety of stores without incurring any additional travel costs: "We can stop at Sunflower when we go to Home Depot. Then, The Bread Store on our way home from there..."). We've been careful to chose our location to provide access to most "amenities" without the downside of high density living. (this will get harder in the years ahead as we seek to shed some of the household maintenance activities)

Unfortunately, the time involved can't be optimized away. You still have to wait in the checkout for N stores, park the car N times, etc. I imagine this would be a LOT harder in places with inclement weather (the idea of trudging through rain or snow several times on a shopping trip doesn't sound appealing)

Wouldn't be so sure. I've sometimes looked at "my" IP address. It is always vastly different, no discernible blocks in them. It would also not make much business sense if a company reserves too many of those just to be able to allocate blocks.

Then why hasn't that happened in my case? If they had all this intelligence on me they surely would not leave that money on the table.

Ok, lets take that example: I was looking extensively for carpet tiles over the last couple of month and still haven't found any good stuff for the living room (we have guide dog puppies here at times, so there will be "accidents"...). I was all over the home improvement links on the web. Now why did this not result in "You might also be interested in ..." type of ads? Here they _could_ actually sell something to me. It can't possibly be any more obvious that I am in the market. If they do have this intelligence on me and still haven't figured that out then they don't know what they are doing.

Either they haven't been able to squirrel much away about me or they forgot where they put it :-)

Don't tell my wife ... :-)

Well, Google has made that impossible for many sites lately. They abbreviate them with dots so you will not see the whole URL. Super annoying for PDF links you want to send someone else and clicking on it puts a google.com address in there that is half a mile long. They started that many months ago.

Yeah, but what _do_ they get when they drive by at 5pmh like they did last time? "Oh, there is a WLAN. It's encrypted so we don't know anything about it. But we do know it's on 2.45GHz". Wow, the KGB would probably spend big bucks on that intelligence :-)

Minor problem: Most doesn't go over that point, plus it's encrypted.

Not possible. The sausage isn't available for $3 anywhere. You also cannot get good quality meat for $2.49.lbs anywhere unless you know exactly when the sale will come on and/or where the coupons are.

Even if some stuff was available somewhere at "normal everyday price" that comes close, that does not help if you have to burn four gallons of unleaded plus more than an hour to get there. We buy most stuff locally, two miles from here.

That's why my wife watches it like a hawk. She knows very well when what goes on sale. That in combination with a chest freezer saves a ton of money on groceries.

Same here. There will come a point where we get older and a more urban setting may be appropriate. And I do not like urban living.

Get a big chest freezer. Seriously. When meat we like goes on sale we buy lots of it but then have enough for months. The mistake that most people make is that they only keep a week's supply of everything. Then they pay through the nose.

[...]

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I think it was Thursday, I was getting an extra link in the pages I clicked on in google. I had use the drop down history list to get back to google. Just using the back button didn?t work.

but duckduckgo.com seems to deliver more relevant results than google.

Cheers

[...]

Oh, so that means I am not the only one? Wednesday around 6:30pm Pacific time Google became very weird but dinner was ready so I shut it all down. Then Thursday morning Google because nearly useless, and still is.

Most links I click end in a blank page with a long URL and it mostly starts with "blendersearch.com". So I looked up that domain and it appears to be taken by nobody, parked with some company in Waltham, MA. Really strange.

Yeah, if Google won't clean up it's outta here. I am using other search engines right now and they also work better for me. Much better.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I haven't had any problems. though cached view is indeed gone. Possibly there is something going on with your computer - corrupted cache or something causing problems?

Nothing I've ever found comes anywhere near to what Google offers...

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There's such a thing as too much point on a pencil.
		-- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"

I don't really understand the reluctance to be identified on the Internet. As far as I can see, it's more or less unavoidable, unless you're willing to do without many online services, and to use publicly available computers and a variety of free e-mail sources, etc. Most of the supposed anonymizer features or services seem to wind up having gaping holes that make them ineffective. I saw somewhere that even such things as encrypted VoIP can be analyzed to identify the speakers, even though the conversation remains encrypted.

As for the "cards" - well, I got my cards maybe 10-15 years ago, and have moved several times since, changed phone numbers, etc. They're welcome to send me junk mail at my old address. I still get my discounts.

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There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on 
Monday.

No intelligent being would go to Texas...

Duckduckgo has live human beings that answer email. How long this will last I don't know.

Sometimes google attempts to do a partial attempt to match a number that you explicitly want to find. I could handle this crap if they provided a "no fuzz" options. In the meantime, it is duckduckgo when I need a perfect match. No amount of quotes or a + sign will make google behave.

INSPEC is the definitive one for EEE.

Hardy

Organizations request blocks of IP addresses from the IANA. In making that request, they indicate how many of those addresses they need, currently, along with their projected growth. This determines the block(s) of addresses that will be set aside for them out of the complete set of addresses. The address block is delimited by a base address and subnet mask that acts as a filter to select only "your" addresses for "your" subnet.

[actually, all of the IPv4 addresses have now been assigned :> ]

The range of addresses can be artificially extended by network address translation (NAT). This is similar to how your 12 computers at home can co-operate and appear as a single IP address when viewed from your ISP.

The limit, here, lies in the capabilities of the NATd upstream from you as it has to keep track of which connections from *your* "address" are mapped into which connections from *the* address that the NATd presents to the upstream network. (this depends on how many ports you are likely to have open, how many of "you" there are, how much state the NATd can track, etc.)

[N.B. NAT often makes operating a server *behind* the NATd difficult since it's port(s) don't necessarily translate directly to ports on the "publicly visible" side of the NATd -- hence the need for DMZ]

NATd can be configured to support any number of private IP addresses. And, any (lesser!) number of "public" IP addresses. You need to see what you look like to the outside world to know, for sure, what your connections are routed as.

[I think grc.com's "Shields Up" utility will probe your IP address and disclose these sorts of things -- if it is still available...]

These services are used by *mobile* devices. I.e., take your iPhone and contact a google-powered service and it can tell you where you are located -- even if the GPS function on your phone is "off" (if your phone can tell google about any networks that it senses nearby)

You weren't offered any "sponsored links" about "carpet tiles" when you did your carpet tile search? I googled '"carpet tiles"' and was offered three sponsored links:

at the top of the list of hits -- along with another 8 along the right side of the page (I assume google moves them off to the side soas not to overwhelm users with a long list of *ads*)

Buy her a nice silk scarf with stylized 1's and 0's on it!

The only "google" URLs that I see are for the "sponsored links". Note that the actual URL is usually present in body text on the page (but you would have to select and cut/paste it). If the URl is just too long to display like this (for the carpet tile search I just did, one example of such a URL is: "

? ... ? Home Improvement ? Flooring ? Carpeting" ) then you have to "copy link location" from the actual link itself: for this example.

If you are seeing google-based URLs *everywhere*, I can only assume that, in your market, google might be trying to subvert MS's leaching of search results (newer versions of IE trap google searches and report the results back to MS for their bing service!).

If this is the case, the joke's on MS as their "search database" will be full of google links -- meaning google will be able to insert itself *into* the search results reported back to the MS user. "These bing search results brought to you by your friends at google!"

Apparently, they were able to "accidentally" intercept a fair bit of *data* traffic (emails, etc.) -- claiming it was an "honest mistake". Even at 5MPH, you are in range of any one AP for probably 10 seconds. At 11/54Mbps, that's a lot of potential data!

This information is sent in the clear.

We've never had to go out of our way to get anything at a "good price" (a notable exception is bulk popcorn simply because NO stores sell good popcorn in large -- 50 lb -- quantities. You have to have it shipped directly from the appropriate farm).

We have cards for all of the local stores (hint: you can get a card without giving them your name, address or phone!). We have found that we never use them as the other stores that *don't* use cards know that they have to compete with the "card bearer prices". So, those other stores offer sales that are just as good -- *without* a card.

[of course, Costco/Sams is an exception as there is no practical way to buy, there, without a card]

This works if you have access to a variety of stores nearby. Or, if you are willing to purchase in bulk from suppliers located farther away (e.g., our popcorn importing)

We've had one for 30 years. We don't buy/eat much meat so don't usually have much of that in there. OTOH, we buy dates in 40 pound lots and freeze them for use throughout the year. We'll buy 50 pounds of flour in the upcoming month(s) as the "holiday" sales come up. Ditto for other baking supplies (butter, nuts, sugar, etc.).

We understand how we will use goods out of the freezer and how we will need freezer space in the future. E.g., once the holiday baking is finished, the space set aside for those baking ingredients will be replaced with freshly squeezed orange juice, etc. So, it's almost second nature to keep the freezer filled with whatever we *will* need.

But, its not just access to a freezer that makes it possible. It's a different mindset (plus sufficient storage space and storage containers -- esp things that have oxygen barriers). E.g., I buy tea in 5 lb lots (I use half a pound of tea every week or two); spices in 1 or 2 lb lots (I make marina sauce in 4G lots); popcorn *salt* in 25 lb lots, etc.

Buying in smaller lots is just silly -- esp if you use a lot of something!

OTOH, buying in big lots isn't always wise; why keep more than a few cu ft of potting soil around the house?

That was my point. Joerg's avoidance of cookies doesn't seem to buy anything. Recall that cookies are just an efficiency hack to provide client-side storage instead of server-side. A firm like google can easily afford to handle that load!

There are *lots* of pattern recognition algorithms in work everyday and in many different places. E.g., when I need to hide my identity (e.g., to prevent someone from piecing together parts of a design I may be working on and jeopardizing an NDA I may have signed), I change my writing *style*, vocabulary, etc. in addition to my "posting location".

[I've read of techniques to analyze program *binaries* to identify likely authors -- though not in a global sense]

But, chances are, you didn't *need* to give them a name/address/phone. I haven't for any of the cards that I have. *And*, chances are, the other stores that *don't* have cards have comparable prices! (that's the case, here) Recall that there is nothing standing in the way of *everyone* having a card. So, the non-card stores have to consider "card holders" as potential customers for which they are competing. As such, they have to offer items at their non-card prices that are competive with the card companies -- else they risk losing EVERYONE as a customer (since EVERYONE can freely get a card from their competitor).

The card puts pressure on the card *holder* to shop at the store that issued the card. Otherwise, the card has no value. But, the card holder often doesn't objectively evaluate the non-card offerings because he has assigned some irrational value to the card he holds.

[I've also noticed that you can walk into a "card" store, buy the items that are on sale and simply tell them that you "forgot your card". The cashier will typically scan *their* card to award you the discount. They want the business and are *ready* to offer those items to the next person in line WITH a card; so, why not offer them to you, as well? Or, would they rather gamble that you might just walk away and *abandon* the sale??]

Exactly. IMO, this is counterproductive for engineering searches. "No, that's not what I was looking for. I want '\a\b\-\c\d'" (assuming \ is used to escape a character literal)

Worse, yet, when you *want* to search for certain important punctuation (like a hyphenated part number!)