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Seirdy’s Home
Personal blog · seirdy.one · on HN as Seirdysecurityweb
Seirdy’s Home is a personal blog at seirdy.one about security and web. Since 2020, 69 different Hacker News readers have linked it 150 times, most often “A look at search engines with their own indexes (2021)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-01-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 8 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite Seirdy's posts, mainly the 2021 overview of search engines with their own indexes, as lists and overviews of independent search options. Commenters repeatedly call them useful references.
- Recommended for · 8 comments
- Called an excellent list, a good overview, the best list of search indexes, and a good write-up on indexes; 'check out this post' and 'independent in-depth revi
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
My personal IndieWeb site. I write about and develop software to promote user autonomy. Topics include accessibility, security, privacy, and software freedom.
Most-linked posts?
- A look at search engines with their own indexes (2021)22 people · 33 mentions · first linked 2022-06-21
- A look at search engines with their own indexes9 people · 26 mentions · first linked 2021-03-11
- The right thing for the wrong reasons: FLOSS doesn't imply security (2022)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-06-20
- An opinionated list of best practices for textual websites4 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-11-24
- WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users4 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-01-28
- Becoming physically immune to brute-force attacks (2021)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-07-11
- Keeping Platforms Open3 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2021-02-24
- The right thing for the wrong reasons: FLOSS doesn't imply security3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-02-05
- Best practices for text-focused websites (2020)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-06-20
- WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users (2021)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-09-07
What Hacker News says?
Pretty much proof that OSS != automatically more secure. And proof that OSS projects can get backdoored. See this for more ideas on this issue: https://seirdy.one/posts/2022/02/02/floss-security/
Comment linking /posts/2022/02/02/floss-security/
on “Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server compromise”Submitted A look at search engines with their own indexes (2021) as a story · 271 points
HN discussionYes, but I'm biased. Your perspective is as valid and I respect it. DDG does have some great features and we stand with them in fighting for user privacy. What benefits us all is a variety of different search engines and search services. It is the search engines that subtly determine our informational pathways, so variety is healthy. For one independent review of search engines and syndicates, including DDG see: htt…
Comment linking /2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html
on “Google Search Is Dying”Submitted WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users as a story · 168 points
HN discussionThere's no need for an extension; plenty of websites are part of webrings or feature blogrolls. I'm in the process of adding one to mine. Throw in some microformats2 and/or schema.org structured data and you're good to go. Certain search engines specialize in this type of manually-curated content; I listed some in the "non-generalist search" section of my collection of indexing search engines: https://seirdy.one/202…
Comment linking /2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html
on “Google Search Is Dying”Submitted Two types of privacy as a story · 111 points
HN discussionI described a good set of similar practices for text/article-centric websites: https://seirdy.one/2020/11/23/website-best-practices.html I don't expect anyone to follow it 100%, but the gist is that the page layout shouldn't look too different from browser defaults or use advanced features.
Comment linking /2020/11/23/website-best-practices.html
on “The most underused browser feature: reader mode”Submitted Becoming physically immune to brute-force attacks (2021) as a story · 109 points
HN discussionI criticized both WhatsApp and Signal in an article linked here previously, and made the same points in a bit more detail: "WhatsApp and the domestication of users". Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25982860 A sequel [0] describes how an open platform/protocol isn't a silver bullet, since open platforms can become (or act) closed if we're not careful. It goes over XMPP, email, and Matrix; I described…
Comment linking /2021/02/23/keeping-platforms-open.html
on “Et Tu, Signal?”Submitted Best Practices for Inclusive CLIs as a story · 84 points
HN discussionYour choices are limited, and very few independent indexes. Most options are Bing alternatives: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
Comment linking /2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html
on “DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results”Submitted A look at search engines with their own indexes (2021) as a story · 77 points
HN discussionI'm biased so here's an independent take on your options: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
Comment linking /2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html
on “DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results”Submitted A look at search engines with their own indexes as a story · 53 points
HN discussionThat's just their corporate propaganda. For the most part, it's Bing with some additional features. Their crawler (DuckDuckBot) doesn't have much of an impact on the search results, it's mainly used to provide instant answers. [1] [1]: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
Comment linking /2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html
on “DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results”Submitted An experiment to test GitHub Copilot's legality as a story · 38 points
HN discussionThis has not been my experience. Comparing results with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled reveals that the results are almost always from Google. Sometimes they merge multiple results that share a domain. I decided to add them to the "Semi-Independent" category of my collection of indexing search engines: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
Comment linking /2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html
on “Brave Search beta”Submitted The right thing for the wrong reasons: FLOSS doesn't imply security as a story · 37 points
HN discussionIt does give better results. The filters can also be quite powerful. The problem is paying a steep fee to proxy Google's index... It benefits you and Kagi in the short term, but strengthens the Google/Bing/Yandex index oligopoly [0] long term. Bad search results are the symptom - scarcity and opaqueness of viable indices is the root cause https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-...
Comment linking /posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/
on “FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts”Submitted An opinionated list of best practices for textual websites as a story · 22 points
HN discussionBeing enrolled in a study should require prior informed consent. Terms of the data collection, including what data can be collected and how that data will be used, must be presented to all participants in language they can understand. Only then can they provide informed consent. Harvesting data without permission is just exploitation. Software improvements and user engagement are not more important than basic respec…
Comment linking /notes/2022/06/03/opt-in-telemetry/
on “VSCodium – Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VS Code”Submitted Misinformation about Permissions Policy and FLoC as a story · 19 points
HN discussionLaws exist ideally to limit freedoms whose exercise comes with externalities that end up reducing the freedom for others. These range from freedoms to cause harm to others (steal, assault, enslave), to freedoms to sell food without disclosing ingredients, to freedoms to run a business without transparently reporting financial information. The idea of greater freedoms depending on lesser restrictions is not novel. >…
Comment linking /2021/01/27/whatsapp-and-the-domestication-of-users.html
on “Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3”Submitted An experiment to test GitHub Copilot's legality as a story · 17 points
HN discussionNo, just one global stylesheet that all websites obey without breaking. The (dead) dream of the ideal user agent is a program that lets you browse with your preferred color scheme, fonts, font size, etc; websites look just like any other program. Or not, if you prefer. Content is dictated by the authors but appearance is dictated by the user-agent. The idea of the user agent dictating presentation rather than the co…
Comment linking /2020/11/23/website-best-practices.html
on “GitHub Releases Dark Mode”Submitted The right thing for the wrong reasons: FLOSS doesn't imply security (2022) as a story · 14 points
HN discussionActually seirdy.one added searchmysite.net to his excellent list[0] way back in March 2021[1]. [0] https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe... [1] https://git.sr.ht/~seirdy/seirdy.one/commit/ab92d8ded69fd869...
Comment linking /2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html
on “Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots”Submitted Becoming physically immune to brute-force attacks as a story · 13 points
HN discussionAgreed. > If I want to search for something topical and relevant, I go to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HackerNews, Instagram, Google Maps, Discord etc. The general Internet is dead: it's just legacy content and spam. The "general" Internet is not dead. Though if you just want to participate in just Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HackerNews, Instagram, Google Maps, Discord you might well think that. Users of marginalia (au…
Comment linking /2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes.html
on “Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots”Submitted MDN's AI Help and lucid lies as a story · 7 points
HN discussion
