Not sure about Logitech, but most other companies where I need to download driver software it’s an absolute crapshoot. Search engines used to be good for implementing complex search on your site without need to spin up a custom search logic yourself.
Another problem with everyone doing a search engine is that they can have a widely-disparate featureset, and I’m very unlikely to spend enough time on any one site to familiarize myself with a given featureset. Maybe one or two sites, like github.com. But if I’m just looking for a download of software for a given product? Nah.
Maybe if everyone used local Search Engine X – like Harvest or something. Or if everyone agreed on a search syntax to support.
Google also used to, in their early days, sell a search appliance that companies could use locally to provide searching. I’d guess that that probably contains enough trade secrets and stuff now that they don’t want to hand it out any more.
Sometimes brand websites are done well and you find what you’re looking for within a few clicks, but more often than that, the website will be a horrendous experience.
Google search results used to usually bring up the direct link to the download page on that brand’s website. Pretty much as the first search result.
To be fair, that also was a time where brand websites were really bad.
Winget is built-in, doesn’t require an elevated command prompt, and will actually update stuff installed from outside of winget if you want.
I use chocolatey for some kubernetes tools (fluxCD and helm) because they get updated a little bit faster (like a day or less) but it’s pretty much been made obsolete for my use.
That being said, if my job didn’t require me to use windows, I’d probably just use NixOS full time.
Given the “unfortunately”, I assume that you’re talking about search engines becoming worse rather than product manufacturer sites getting better.
I use Kagi; they’re commercial and don’t do ads, so they don’t have the malware ad stuff. They do have some generative AI feature to try to answer questions directly, but I don’t think that generative AIs are nearly at the point where they’re better than looking at search results, and I can turn that off.
If I weren’t using Kagi…I don’t personally want to create an account with a search engine that doesn’t have a no-log policy. But some people don’t care, and sometimes with an account, you can turn off some features. So for some search engines, I bet that that gets the AI-generated answers out of the way. Google has a lot of hard-to-find parameters that you can insert into your search URL to toggle search functionality without needing an account – in Firefox, by editing your quick search bookmark, and while I don’t know if that includes stuff like AI-generated answers and “featured snippets”, which appears to be the latest thing, I’d guess that Google might have a way to toggle things.
There’s spam – maybe a year back, when I was using Google more, I remember Google really melting under a shit-ton of AI-generated spam sites. I mean, a significant proportion of my searches included not-very-useful-and-sometimes-wrong AI-generated text sites in the top results. Was the first time in a long time that Google was starting to lose to the spammer crowd. I haven’t been using Google much since, but the few times I’ve hit it, I haven’t seen that, so my impression is that they’ve managed to push the spammers back.
In some cases – and I realize that a lot of people just aren’t going to bother with this – the GreaseMonkey addon permits pages to be mutated, and people often write scripts to hide unwanted content.
On the company website side of things getting better, which I assume isn’t what you mean…
Well, the world does appear to have adopted some conventions for navigation. I don’t like all of them, but at least it makes various sites somewhat more predictable.
To find software associated with a product, it’s almost always possible to go to the support section, maybe select your region of the world. Then sometimes you choose a product category, sometimes just search the product catalog directly. For very small companies, sometimes there’s no search, just a list of products. Sometimes the search can be very obnoxious, like requiring one to look up a model number, but that’s in a minority of cases. That will take one to the product page, and then there’s usually some sort of links to firmware and manuals and such. It’s not common these days to require registration to get access to them.
Another downside is that it’s very common for companies to want to have large promotional images and sometimes video on their main page and sometimes product pages. That’s obnoxious if I’m on a slow cell link at the time.
So…it’s not terrible. But a search engine can generally get me to the relevant page in the top results, without needing to traverse the rest of the website.
Finally, while it’s not an issue with Logitech, it’s not always obvious where a company lives. For the US, yeah, it’s usuallycompanyname.com. But that’s not always true. For the UK – and sometimes I buy products from abroad – it’s often in .co.uk. In the US, due to an infamous trademark fight, “nissan.com” is owned by a small auto company who the much-larger auto manufacturer tried to take the domain from. After an acrimonious fight, the small company is now determined that Nissan Motors is never getting the domain, so Nissan Motors is at nissanusa.com. Sometimes companies spin things off or sell divisions; Thinkpad used to be an IBM product line, until it was sold to the Chinese Lenovo. And one of the more-convenient ways to find a company’s domain name is, well…to hit a search engine. Yeah, I know some domains off the top of my head – kernel.org, microsoft.com, apple.com. But for most manufacturers of most products, I don’t. The domain name is still useful, helps me validate that this is an official site. But it’s not necessarily the ideal way to get there. So if you’re potentially already going to hit a search engine to find the company domain, you might as well just jump directly to the product support page.
Welcome to Logitech global! It looks like you’re searching for this article that talks about how Logitech is the global leader in ending climate change and ending world hunger! Here’s a link to our press releases.
is it based on your searches or something? both in the browser with fingerprint protection where it thinks im from Usa and from the one where it detects my correct location the first result is from logi.com. I really hate bing, specially since they started pushing ai, but dunno, doesnt seem like the normal user experience what you are getting.
Okay, totally off topic…what is it with this annoying trend of censoring a company/name with an asterisk when it’s a subject of ire? It just bugs me - and not in a way that focuses my anger to Microsoft.
With stuff like Tesla and Twitter, it can keep away the weird nerds who search those terms in hopes of white-knight-sealioning a conversation into oblivion. I think it just became part of the lexicon.
The inverse of this is that people who filter out specific words in their feeds will be tricked into seeing it. You get to piss off 2 groups of people by doing it!
Sea-Lioning is an Internet slang term referring to intrusive attempts at engaging an unwilling debate opponent by feigning civility and incessantly requesting evidence to back up their claims. The term was coined in September 2014 by anti-GamerGate Internet users to mock perceived online discussion tactics employed by GamerGate supporters.
I gotta be honest, the sea lion is not the bad guy in this comic. Lady randomly says some racist shit, and a member of the group she’s being racist against calls her out for being racist. And then the fact that the sea lion called the racist out is apparently justification for the initial racist statement.
Racism justifies harassment and home invasion? I don’t think I can necessarily agree with that. Consequences, yes. But harassment? I’ll have to think about it.
The point Malki was making, I think (and the way I take it) is less about the purpose or content of the discourse and more about the harassment veiled in false civility as a means of silencing discussion.
There’s also an element of Person C inserting themselves into a private conversation between Person A and Person B, even if that conversation is being held in a public place.
Pretend he’s not a sea lion, but a conservative, and you’ll get the intended effect.
Yeah. Not gonna cry over what the victims of racism do to racists.
and more about the harassment veiled in false civility as a means of silencing discussion.
How is the sea lion silencing discussion? They weren’t discussing anything, they were having a racist circlejerk. The racist lady said a racist thing and the sea lion invited discussion by asking, “Why did you say that racist thing?” and then they refused to actually explain why they’re racist against sea lions, treating it as self-evident that being racist against sea lions is correct and thus that it is unreasonable to question it.
Pretend he’s not a sea lion, but a conservative
He can’t choose not to be a sea lion. This is kind of incoherent. “Pretend he’s not black, but a conservative.” This sea lion could also be conservative, that doesn’t really have anything to do with the fact that he’s being criticized for immutable properties he was born with, not for anything of substance.
Not gonna cry over what the victims of racism do to racists.
Eh…I dunno. I’m not going to tone police anyone, and consequences for bad actions are definitely good, but do two very-wrongs make a kinda-right? I’m not sold.
[the rest]
Look…if you don’t vibe with the comic, that’s fine. It’s just obviously not about all the stuff that you seem to think it’s about.
It’s just obviously not about all the stuff that you seem to think it’s about.
But it literally is? You’re the one coming up with weird interpretations about “what if it was actually about xyz”
What is actually happening in the comic is that a character is being racist and the victim of that racism is portrayed as being wrong and annoying for calling out the racism. That’s literally what’s happening in the comic. It doesn’t require any kind of gymnastics or interpretation, that’s the surface level reading of what is occurring in the comic.
No. What is actually happening in the comic is that a character is having a discussion with another person (not a racist conversation, because sea lions are not sentient beings despite what is about to happen). Treating it as anything more than that is reading something into the story not intended by the original comic. Not everything is so literal, particularly with Malki comics.
not a racist conversation, because sea lions are not sentient beings despite what is about to happen
sea lions literally are sentient beings in the context of the comic. the only justification the comic gives for why sea lions are bad requires them being sentient beings so that they can speak up against random racist tirades about them.
Again sea lioning is a type of behavior not a type of person or being. As a form of humor they rather than have a person embody the behavior be a literal sea lion because whimsical tension between the metaphorical sea lion also being an actual sea lion is funny.
That just doesn’t work, because the sea lion’s behavior in the comic is entirely reasonable, and it is the other characters who are being unreasonable. If the point of the comic is that the sea lion’s behavior is bad, they should have actually made the sea lion do something bad instead of call out someone being racist against him
Sea lion is slang for a type of behavior a person exhibits not an immutable characteristic of the person like the color of their skin. They didn’t have to prove the behavior because the behavior expressed IS the behavior.
It’s mocking the type of people that try to turn anything and everything into some sort of formal debate when it was just a casual conversation then act like they’ve won some sort of argument when you don’t engage.
Those are generally used for bypassing filters on TikTok and Instagram
But like, come on man, no matter how much you censor it I know the word and I get the message. Because that’s why you wrote it, you want me to read and understand it
It conveys “I have such a disdain for that thing that I’m asterisking its name like it was a slur or swear word”.
I’m not a big fan either, even if you can find some secondary roles for that (as keeping someone from finding it, like ilinamorato exemplified). It distracts the reader from what is being said to the author’s personal opinion about what is being said.
It’s ironic, except for when we’re talking about the Fr*nch. It’s self aware humor that you’re being ridiculous. The tone it’s supposed to convey in situations like thisis that you’re being hyperbolically obtuse.
DDG image search feels a lot loke Google image search 20 years ago. Absolutely wild stuff that isn’t even related, or just straight up porn in the reaults.
The first adware result is blocked with any ad blocker, the fact you see it means you might not have your ad blocker on, or disabled in incognito mode.
The second and third copilot bullshit sections can be toggled off from any search result page, on the sidebar settings there’s a toggle.
I do appreciate the bing rewards thing, basically every few weeks I get a gift card because you earn points by using bing
it’s not fake, bing rewards has been a thing for many years. It’s literally just using bing to search things, each search gives you points, and then you redeem giftcards (amazon, uber, etc)
I guess most here don’t particularly care, but the points mechanic it’s nice
“THIS JUST IN!, credit cards offer reward points to soften the effects of data mining on individuals. It highlights the advantages of using custom lubricant on the broomsticks they are fucking you in the ass with.”
Um, acktually, all you have to do to use the product successfully is to follow my bespoke instruction set that I posted to the premiere federated platform where I carefully enumerated the steps necessary to……hey wait why are you running away from me I’m actively helping you!!!
Do you have uBlock or some similar ad blocker installed?
EDIT: I went and looked myself. I do have an ad-blocker installed. I don’t see the ad. But I do see more noise than OP (desktop, Firefox):
There’s a set of steps at the top left telling me to download and install the software, which is what OP was complaining about.
At the top right, there’s a large, blue button with a link that guesses incorrectly that I want to know about Logitech Unifying Receiver Pairing, and just sends me to another Bing search.
Beneath that, there are a list of several questions that Microsoft incorrectly thinks I might be wanting to task and their answers.
Then there are two “Explore more” links linking me to pages describing how to pair with the software. One appears to link to “logi.com” with apparently is a Logitech business support page that links to the software, albeit only the Mac version, which I’d guess isn’t what OP wanted.
Back on the left, I have what appears to be an AI spam question-answer site at thewindowsclub.com and another page on “how to unify” at robots.net.
Beneath that, I have a link to the Logitech download section. So it’s in my top results and on my laptop, visible on the first screen of results, though beneath some not-really-desirable stuff.
The screenshot is from Microsoft Edge running in Windows 10 (virtual machine) with no/little browsing history and no account connected. I’m hypothesizing here, but maybe these are the reasons:
You don’t see the ??? section because you’re not on Edge. Bing AI only works on edge (it checks your user agent)
You don’t see the ad because you have an adblocker
Sometimes you just can’t guess the domain name of a company you know. Also, it doesn’t help that most companies website are fucking nightmare to navigate so having the relevant page on the first click is nice too
using a searchengine helps avoid domain squatting phishing. this is why I like domain bar as a search engine. if it’s new I search it, if it’s a place I’ve been to before it autocompletes the url.
Yeah but then I would have to navigate logitech’s stupid website to find the download button… and then navigate it again, because turns out the software for pairing standard receivers is completely separate from the software for pairing unifying receivers… Sigh… But hey, at least it doesn’t force you to make an account!
mildlyinfuriating
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