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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • The page you link to talks about the search results that come at the top of the page, eg a Wikipedia or Trip Advisor result. The actual search itself comes from Bing, and it’s more than likely that the top page banner also is processed via Bing.

    Edit: However, the Wikipedia page does provide more detail, which proves you right and my assumption wrong:

    DuckDuckGo’s results are a compilation of “over 400” sources according to itself, including Bing, Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, and its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); but none from Google. It also uses data from crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the search results.


  • If I understand DDG correctly, they use Microsoft Bing as their backend for search results. So while they may be branded DDG, the results are in fact out of DDG’a control. It also means we are more subject to Microsoft’s privacy policy than we are to DDG’s.

    This is exactly right. DDG is basically a front end that’s supposed to strip out identifying information and then submit your request to Microsoft. [Edit:] Apparently they have expanded from this, according to their Wikipedia page. [/E]

    However, after seeing TV ads for DDG not that long ago I kind of lost what faith I had left in them. As a rule of thumb, I’ve never trusted products and services advertised on TV - TV advertising is expensive, and the business expects to make that expense back and then some from their customers.



  • If this is what I think it is, the hard drives are used data centre drives that are sold as “renewed”. They wipe the drives then use manufacturer’s tools to reset the clocks, effectively the same as winding back the mileage clock in a car. They are sold cheaper than new drives, but not really at a price that reflects their age and true used status.

    I bought 4x 14TB drives of this type, pretty sure they were listed as new, although some show as used. 1 drive was DOA and I’m still waiting on the refund.

    You can see tons of them on diskprices.com

    Edit: oh wait, this is a different scam. This is like a combination of the classic size scam with the data centre scam. Fun!

    It’s probably related to Amazon’s practice of binning all products with the same barcode together. So when someone sells something through Amazon their products get bundled with everyone else’s, and when someone buys they get one from the bundle. A counterfeiter basically poisons the stock, and you end up with counterfeiters selling legit products and legit sellers selling the counterfeit ones.





  • I’m not saying people shouldn’t be disappointed with the US’ relationship with Israel, I’m merely saying that the blame for that shouldn’t be constantly lumped with the current president. People are chomping at the bit to say things like that whenever there’s a story about Israel, as if Biden was directly responsible for the situation and could oh so easily change things (with no other consequences).

    Meanwhile, such bullshit directly aids Trump winning election shares. So the people complaining aren’t altruistic and making things better, they’re directly pushing towards something far worse.

    This is different to someone walking in your door and shitting in your face. This is like your parents giving your friend permission to shit in your en suite toilet whenever they like, so long as they pay you for it in advance, with you accepting payment and then getting angry when they leave a particularly stinky poo that doesn’t flush.


    Gotta love the discourse on Lemmy. So rational and well thought out. I’d love it if people would actually engage and argue the ideas, instead of just circlejerking with literal shit takes.




  • The content about white phosphorous is also somewhat overblown. According to the person they interviewed, they used white phosphorous in Lebanon “every day for a month” back in October 2023. This was also around the time they were accused of using white phosphorous in Gaza.

    Obviously any use of white phosphorous is reprehensible, and the fact that they were doing it more in Lebanon than in Gaza (where everyone’s attention was at the time) is even worse, but I think it’s hard to claim that the use of white phosphorous is what’s going to cause the current conflict to boil over.



  • Not so much another, this is about them using white phosphorous “every day for over a month” over a village in Lebanon back in October 2023.

    I saw reports of them using white phosphorous in Gaza back in October 2023, Israel denied that’s what it was. It was only the one time, though, and I guess they stopped as all the cameras were looking that way. Apparently they didn’t stop so quickly in the other direction.


  • Looking through the article, it doesn’t suggest this is a new event. The photo is from October last year, where Israel was previously accused of using white phospherous, alongside an interview with a farmer who professes the same:

    He says Israel fired white phosphorous shells at his land in the village of al-Bustan every day for over a month, robbing him of breath, and his livelihood.

    So, not again, but more confirmation of the same previous event. Also, I wasn’t aware of it being done over Lebanon in October, and not every day for a month, I only saw the stuff about them using it one time in Gaza.