this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

note: tech sociopath apologists in this thread will be removed and banned for everyone's best interests

edit: or just acting like a pointless dipshit. jfc you people

[–] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can I ask a sincere question? whats a tech sociopath apologist, could you demonstrate an example?

Again, im sincerely genuinely asking

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Someone who takes it on themselves to act as apologist for the words/actions of tech sociopaths

Often seen as “weird nerds coming to defense of $x” (such as musk, or in this case the kagi dudebro)

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

(And then I glanced at your post history and noticed a trend of JAQing off so I now doubt whether you’re sincere in asking)

[–] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Im not sure what JAQing is.

I appreciate your response thanks

[–] Crazazy@feddit.nl 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Short for Just Asking Questions. Where people ask loaded questions that act as a veneer to their actual statements. If you want to accuse them of the fact they are talking shit, they'll say they're "just skeptical" and "asking questions"

[–] rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Just asking questions here, but do you think a wolverine would beat a mechabadger?

[–] self@awful.systems 1 points 10 months ago

yes, I’ve seen it

[–] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

that wasnt my intention. It was simply a phrase I hadn’t heard

[–] Crazazy@feddit.nl 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

that wasn't my intention

Ironically, by saying that you're just doing The Thing again

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The Thing in question has an element of intent that the user doesn't exhibit in this thread, or any of their history. Simply asking questions isn't JAQing off.

[–] aio@awful.systems 1 points 10 months ago

Simply asking questions would be SAQing off, which is totally different.

[–] MetaCubed@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Can I sincerely ask what we're supposed to use instead?

Kagi has given me the best search experience ive had in at least a decade, I'm not going back to the enshittification engine, and everything else is just bing in fancy wrapping paper. Is there something else like Kagi? Is there something like DDG or Searx that arent just slightly better bing?

[–] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

Also looking for answers. I've been a Kagi convert for 5 months now and it has absolutely saved me time and effort.

I was looking at Perplexity but it isn't exactly the same.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Feel entirely free to use Kagi, just remember that it's run by an idiot and could blow up at any moment.

[–] MetaCubed@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Apologies, my question wasn't rhetorical, I was genuinely looking for suggestions. I don't want to use kagi if this is who is running it... BUT all the alternatives that I'm personally aware of are not options for replacement.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 1 points 10 months ago

basically the whole area is gallopping enshittification. Until this blowup, I had seriously been considering Kagi too.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] 200fifty@awful.systems 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

ok but for real... it's not great for finding actual answers to queries, but I find like 800x more interesting results with search.marginalia.nu than any other search engine. It's the only search engine that I find actively fun to just browse around on recreationally.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

it’s not great for finding actual answers to queries, but I find like 800x more interesting results

Dunno if this is just poorly phrased or... Finding actual answers to queries is the only job of a search engine, what does "interesting" mean here?

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

For me instantly evoked the memory of using the internet from when I first got to access it (~92) until 2012..2014ish, years I could describe as “the party is emptying, not as big as earlier”, vs 2014..2016 which I’d describe as having definite “okay there’s only 3 people left on the dancefloor” vibes (and the downslope started being felt 2008..2009 already, but slowly, only later more pronounced).

It was a time when you truly could just randomly browse search results and find all kinds of interesting things. It’s hard to convey, in today’s ecosystem, what that felt like. The fedi scratches a similar itch, but it feels (and I don’t mean this as criticism) more “a diamond in the muck”, a glimmer of hope in a sea of awful. A general optimism was quite prevalent among the internet of then, even despite it also having its awful aspects

I have years of irc logs in multiple channels, filled with the shared experiences of years of people delighting and gaping and pointing at all kinds of stuff like this. And things rarely feel the same.

I will never forgive the walled gardens for what they took from all of us, for what they destroyed

[–] inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I've never had anothee CEO mansplain his company to me

🤣

Slayed me.

I haven't paid Kagi much attention up to this point, so I'm coming in cold to this. But gawd Vlad (makes himself) sound like a huge dork.

[–] Jayjader@jlai.lu 1 points 10 months ago

Copy-pasting the alt-text from one of the screenshots because I can't be assed to type it out myself:

Discord convo from 07/15/22, Vlad: people who really need anonymity are very rare. Probably less than a 100 in the entire world. Definitely not typical Kagi users. Unless they are criminals, in which case we don't care they don't have full anonymity (nor we want them as customers)

yikes, double yikes and triple yikes.

I guess he doesn't care to help women find a safe way to have an abortion in 14 out of 50 US states (source), for starters. Nor to help the doubtlessly more-than-100 queer folk in places that outlaw homosexuality.

Or maybe he's such a genius that he knows how to keep them safe without actually keeping them anonymous - and in that case, he should start selling such a technique as its own product /s

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 1 points 10 months ago

Seeing how successful Kagi is when run by someone who actively sets their own money on fire for no reason almost makes me want to try and start a search engine company. I mean I couldn't do it any worse right? And there is a market for it.

[–] prex@aussie.zone 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] gerikson@awful.systems 1 points 10 months ago

I'm in a forum where some person claims that the sealion is actually the reasonable one.

It's proof to me that this throwaway comic is such a good summary for certain online behavior that there's an entire subculture built around trying to subvert it.

(also Wondermark is great in general)

[–] Drinvictus@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The whole internet loves Kagi

Lol no

Also Kagi is a glorified Google front end.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 1 points 10 months ago

Also Kagi is a glorified Google front end.

The fact a glorified Google front end manages to be less shit than Google is a pretty damning indictment of Google, I'll give Kagi that. Quoting Cory Doctorow, gratuitous italics and all:

The implications of this are stunning. It means that Google's enshittified search-results are a choice. Those ad-strewn, sub-Altavista, spam-drowned search pages are a feature, not a bug. Google prefers those results to Kagi, because Google makes more money out of shit than they would out of delivering a good product: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I literally learnt about Kagi like a week ago from a Cory Doctorow's post. I was like oh, cool, someone there to fight google.

[–] shadow@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ah man, same. Thought I'd give it a go after reading about if from Cory...

Honestly, for what I search for, DDG is sufficient, and it's not gonna hassle me about subscriptions.

What I'd really like to find is something like a pihole for search, where you have your blocklist, cache of things you've searched already (your own mini search engine?), and then a fallback engine (DDG, bing, Google, whatever) for things it doesn't already know.

I dunno. Search and AI botshit is everywhere, and it's gonna keep getting worse. Self-hosting tools seems to be the only way to take control back.

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Isn't the DDG guy an asshole as well though?

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

He's not getting paid?

[–] prex@aussie.zone -1 points 10 months ago

Removed

I'm just trying to fit in