From what I could garner it uses the public DuckDuckGo Instant Answers API[0], which only returns results for specific queries (try "Microsoft", then try something obscure). This is most likely causing your issue.
For people that are looking for a nice search TUI, may I point you to Googler. It's made by the author of NNN and a couple other fantastic terminal tools. Highly recommend. It's amazing how clean you can make the interface
It's a CLI, not a TUI. I put quite a bit of thought into that decision, and whether to integrate a pager. See [1]. The workarounds are (1) limit the number of results per page with -n <num>; (2) use the -r, --reverse option to show the top results last.
It would be nice if there was a way to run a terminal command without auto-scrolling. So often I run something that spits out tons of error messages, only to have to scroll back up again to find out what happened.
I was about to say, the main issues with the DDG view is that it's all formatted in a single colour. One colour for links and one for titles is so much better on the eyes! This is a great project!
Didn't work for me so I followed the link to https://git.io/googler-no-results . It looks like it uses a screen scraper. That does not seem like a viable solution to me.
I'm a maintainer of googler (though I haven't put in much work for quite a while) and the author of the linked document. No, it doesn't use a screen scraper, and I don't know how you even got that idea.
Is this perhaps a semantics issue? The linked document mentions parsing HTML, and that layout updates can break it. How would you describe the way googler operates?
Edit: Would ”web scraping” be a more apt description?
Yeesh, the ignorance of the folks in those threads. Painful.
Anyways, if someone can't get to non-v6 resources, they have bigger problems than not being able to use DDG. There is a single class of operator for whom v6 deployment actually makes sense, which is large-scale ISPs for whom CGNAT presents an onerous burden on their reporting/monitoring requirements to law enforcement.
Everyone else is just rolling v6 out to meet the requirement of a client (typically government) contract. It's purely additive complexity and for most people, doesn't actually solve any problems they really have.
Home internet in Japan is IPv6 only. Usually you have to sign up for a separate NAT-like-thing that the ISP runs as well, sometimes for an additional charge.
Most common and ubiquitous FTTH service (Flets) only provides fiber but no internet connectivity so customer also need to sign up ISP to connect internet. Even without ISP, Flets provides IPv6 address and network service without internet connectivity, but can use VoIP, IPTV, VPN, and other non-internet services.
But generally no individuals sign up only Flets without ISP. Nowadays it's bundled. Most ISP provides IPv4 connectivity via PPPoE. Many ISP also provide IPv6 connectivity, and IPv4 connectivity via v4-over-v6 technology like DS-lite, MAP-E. AFAIK no consumer ISP charges v4-over-v6 service fee if it provides v6 connectivity.
The weird point in Japan is that sometimes said that "IPv4 connection is VERY slow!" because Flets don't want to invest old PPPoE infrastructure much. Instead, Flets and ISP recommend v4-over-v6 service for IPv4 connectivity because they invest it. As a side effect (maybe not side effect), ISP could save usage of global IP addresses.
Still there are some homes use slow v4 and fast v6 connection, due to equipment doesn't support v4-over-v6 or need a global IPv4. So I recommend content providers to enable IPv6 connectivity, especially for CDN.
Wow here in Spain it's the opposite. My provider (JazzTel, part of Orange) still does only IPv4. IPv6 isn't even available if I'd want it. Not that I do, really.. there's no need yet
Everyone else is just rolling v6 out to meet the requirement of a client (typically government) contract.
I'm holding out for ipv8, where someone sensibly just slaps a 1. in front of ipv4 style addresses, which to stacks means route to old ipv4.
Then we have all we need with an extra octlet. We could even reserve a bunch for off-planet communicates, eg 100. = moon, 101 = mars, etc.
All existing tools, code, etc would see, route, etc 4 octlets to 1. addresses. Anything encountering 4 octlets would do the same. Old stuff could function forever, just with no ability to connect beyond 1.
No dual stack, no crazy issues, no 30 year old, broken attempt to re-engineer what didn't need to be done.
What were they thinking?! Yay! Let's eschew simplicity, and instead make a massive change as difficult to upgrade as possible!
One thing to consider is that when IPv6 was invented, there wasn't nearly as big a userbase on IPv4 as there is now. At that time a clean-slate approach made more sense than it does now.
But yes these days things are different. And not all its features imagined to be big have panned out that way (and to be fair, even IPv4 contains several features which are no longer in use).
Is that surprising? A TTY can be built and shipped as a single component - no ISP changes, no revisiting your entire network model, no reviewing every single thing that touches TCP/IP directly (load balancers, logging, HTTP libraries). IPv6 is a big thing to add in comparison.
While both are technical issues, these are orders of magnitude apart in implementation difficulty, scale, etc. There is no reasonable comparison to be made here.
When visiting this using Chrome for Android, how do I open the keyboard? Typically it's just a matter of giving focus to the input area, but not in this case.
As a diehard terminal user, I think this headline should interest me. However, I am assuming this is some sort of JavaScript perversion? Visiting the link with lynx gives an empty page. Can anyone explain whats going on there to a non-GUI user?
Keyboard doesn't open on FF Android, so I can't use it (right now) either, but it seems to be a faux shell & TUI for searching DDG.
(I see green on black terminal aesthetic, $ prompt and a flashing cursor - banner text (in the 'shell') above explains I can (if the keyboard would open) run :help (or :send-feedback to tell them the keyboard doesn't w-- oh) which I assume would tell me how to query the search engine.)
Yeah, presumably JS if you can't load it. Though from what I can see without typing anything it could be done in CSS. (I suppose it's probably a SPA - results loaded in place without a page reload which, to be fair, would ruin the faux shell aesthetic.)
A long time ago I wrote goosh (https://goosh.org) which does the same thing for google. It's nice to see something similar for DDG. After a first test it looks like it only searches DDGs public API (so definitions, etc) and doesn't return results from the bing index (a search for "test2" e.g. turns up nothing).
For as much as I love the terminal UI, I don't think the next quantum leap in search functionality can be delivered with it. Assume you have access to an index that is objective / transparent and serves you a (typically) long list of results. The next step is really to make sense and work with the results: you need to quickly and easily filter, order, search within, group or classify or do other bulk operations with all the returned items.
Just like with other "information firehose" environments, like social media feeds, email clients etc, its the "meta search" powers that matter and those are probably better served with GUI's.
93 comments
[ 7.5 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadI have not tried it yet, but might fill your need.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28941294
[0]: https://duckduckgo.com/api
https://github.com/jarun/googler
Screenshot of Googler in action when it's nice and clean
https://snid.es/2021OCT/YG4OXAlXg4INZWPe.png
[1] https://github.com/jarun/googler/issues/281
Works in gnome terminal: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-terminal/stable/adv-keybo...
The top 5 of each, to make a top 10 (deduped).
For dev work I think this would be best.
Edit: Would ”web scraping” be a more apt description?
https://github.com/jarun/nnn
Shouldn't there be some kind of message if there are no results or an error? Instead of just showing the next prompt?
Hmm. Well, learned stuff. Still don't know why the above don't work.
https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/search/?q=ipv6&restrict_...
Anyways, if someone can't get to non-v6 resources, they have bigger problems than not being able to use DDG. There is a single class of operator for whom v6 deployment actually makes sense, which is large-scale ISPs for whom CGNAT presents an onerous burden on their reporting/monitoring requirements to law enforcement.
Everyone else is just rolling v6 out to meet the requirement of a client (typically government) contract. It's purely additive complexity and for most people, doesn't actually solve any problems they really have.
And JPNIC recently discusses how v4 translation is still necessary: https://blog.nic.ad.jp/2021/6406/
I would be super interested to read more about 6to4 translation as an additional charge on residential service, if you have a link I could check out.
Most common and ubiquitous FTTH service (Flets) only provides fiber but no internet connectivity so customer also need to sign up ISP to connect internet. Even without ISP, Flets provides IPv6 address and network service without internet connectivity, but can use VoIP, IPTV, VPN, and other non-internet services.
But generally no individuals sign up only Flets without ISP. Nowadays it's bundled. Most ISP provides IPv4 connectivity via PPPoE. Many ISP also provide IPv6 connectivity, and IPv4 connectivity via v4-over-v6 technology like DS-lite, MAP-E. AFAIK no consumer ISP charges v4-over-v6 service fee if it provides v6 connectivity.
The weird point in Japan is that sometimes said that "IPv4 connection is VERY slow!" because Flets don't want to invest old PPPoE infrastructure much. Instead, Flets and ISP recommend v4-over-v6 service for IPv4 connectivity because they invest it. As a side effect (maybe not side effect), ISP could save usage of global IP addresses.
Still there are some homes use slow v4 and fast v6 connection, due to equipment doesn't support v4-over-v6 or need a global IPv4. So I recommend content providers to enable IPv6 connectivity, especially for CDN.
I'm holding out for ipv8, where someone sensibly just slaps a 1. in front of ipv4 style addresses, which to stacks means route to old ipv4.
Then we have all we need with an extra octlet. We could even reserve a bunch for off-planet communicates, eg 100. = moon, 101 = mars, etc.
All existing tools, code, etc would see, route, etc 4 octlets to 1. addresses. Anything encountering 4 octlets would do the same. Old stuff could function forever, just with no ability to connect beyond 1.
No dual stack, no crazy issues, no 30 year old, broken attempt to re-engineer what didn't need to be done.
What were they thinking?! Yay! Let's eschew simplicity, and instead make a massive change as difficult to upgrade as possible!
"IPv6 was a failed standard, an attempt to.... " "replaced by more sensible IPv8..."
But yes these days things are different. And not all its features imagined to be big have panned out that way (and to be fair, even IPv4 contains several features which are no longer in use).
While both are technical issues, these are orders of magnitude apart in implementation difficulty, scale, etc. There is no reasonable comparison to be made here.
<https://zserge.com/posts/js-editor/>
(I see green on black terminal aesthetic, $ prompt and a flashing cursor - banner text (in the 'shell') above explains I can (if the keyboard would open) run :help (or :send-feedback to tell them the keyboard doesn't w-- oh) which I assume would tell me how to query the search engine.)
Yeah, presumably JS if you can't load it. Though from what I can see without typing anything it could be done in CSS. (I suppose it's probably a SPA - results loaded in place without a page reload which, to be fair, would ruin the faux shell aesthetic.)
There's also these JS-free interfaces: https://html.duckduckgo.com/html https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite
https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/features/n...
Just like with other "information firehose" environments, like social media feeds, email clients etc, its the "meta search" powers that matter and those are probably better served with GUI's.
> curl wttr.in/berlin
for the weather and
> curl cheat.sh/python/yield
for cheat sheets