this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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[–] TidBit@mander.xyz 32 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Without Google's grubby paws across most the web, it'd be much more like the initial intent of what the internet was supposed to be, a welcoming place with open and accessible info!

If you don't want to pay to access a web search service, just use docker and run your own SearXNG instance! This will also allow you to host our own AI model that searches the web through SearXNG. While it may sound like a lot of work, it truly takes an afternoon and some unused RAM on your PC to make happen, then you're set up!

[–] zout@fedia.io 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

the initial intent of what the internet was supposed to be

A communication network for scientists and the military?

[–] TidBit@mander.xyz 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Good call, I should have worded that better. While the government and scientists were instrumental in creating the foundation for the internet, I was thinking more along the lines of the early PC era. When the internet was more or less a tool for openly sharing and discussing information as well as ideas.

But a lot of tech stems from governmental need and/or government funding. I mean, the modern refrigerator was a result of NASA problem solving for the environmental conditions found in space! GPS, LASIK, MRI's, LED's, barcodes, closed captioning, and the human genome project were all also thanks to government research too!

[–] zout@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks for taking my trolling in good stride. I actually loved the internet of 20 years ago. It was totally different from today, it's actually a shame a lot of the way it was is gone forever. I vividly remember frequenting a few blogs, just slow chatting in the comments, making your own response images, hosting your own stuff like these images, sound clips and whatever else. Most ISP's would give you some server space to host your own static html pages, and lot's of people used this. The blogs would host photoshop contests, link to stuff they liked, reported on news or music or whatever their niche. The blogs I visited are mostly still around today, but they just don't draw the engagement anymore.

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago

I'm just sad I'm too young to have ever seen that old internet, and what it was like...

Makes me more determined to try and steer the current internet back in that direction though.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

I mean, 44net is a rather early thing, a subspace for packet radio part of it.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Unless general-purpose Internet services will be banned.

Have you noticed that laws about providing data on bad-bad criminals yadda-yadda implicitly ban everything not allowing to get that data?

And have you noticed that Russian bans of things that can't be filtered not only implicitly allow whitelist ban of protocols and services, but are also not very far from what EU and US lawmakers want?

In any situation, if what powerful guys are doing seems to promise good things for you, first consider the possibility that you don't understand what they are doing.

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

While it may sound like a lot of work, it truly takes an afternoon and some unused RAM on your PC to make happen, then you're set up!

This shit is why open source software has a bad reputation.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

You can make an installer like the one Freenet has. Maybe even a wrapper with a tray icon in Tcl/Tk or something like that.

[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Docker enshitification coming in 3... 2... 1...

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Meh there's a ton of other services like opentofu, podman, vms, ect...

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Im going to look into this. What's the benefit of hosting your own searxng instance?

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

It's yours, no issues trusting a public instance with your searches. Pages full of settings to tweak as you like. Less problems with an algorithm 'helping' you. It averages searches over multiple search engines that you choose, you can set up your own (or a curated) block list of crappy AI slop sites, don't like fandom.com or something, gone. Manage your own bangs, e.g. !aa for annas-archive. Pipe it through a VPN with gluetun for better isolation. If you have your head around docker already it's more like half an hour to set up, so why not?

Can hook it up to perplexica and a local LLM for a fully local AI search that you define, use it as a MCP server, do deep research with it...

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

That is awesome. A little beyond me but I've played in docker a bit. Is a VPN needed to keep your ip from being exposed ?

Is just using an existing searxng instance just less secure then?

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Is a VPN needed to keep your ip from being exposed ?

No more so than using any search engine directly, it's a nice to have. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.

Is just using an existing searxng instance just less secure then?

By the time you've investigated it, you could have stood up your own instance...