I’d be more convinced if the project explicitly scoped itself as “best possible frontend + governance model” first, and treated a custom index as an aspirational, separate phase.
Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
71–80 of 80 posts
Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
#72Why would I use this over Brave search if I were already using it? Especially when all it seems to add is a childish rant against LLMs, "G**gle" and "D*ckD*ckGo".
> all it seems to add is a childish rant against LLMs, "G*gle" and "D ckD ckGo" What's childish is the way you're characterizing what was said.
The odd censorship was his, I only copied what he typed.
Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, it is pretty much just a better frontend for existing search. I want to build my own index and ranking algorithm in the future, but sadly it's quite resource intensive so it will depend on financial viability a bit in terms of timeframe.
There's tons of these frontends, including SearXNG and proprietary (but very good) Kagi. Kagi are working on their own index; this will be their meat. I am convinced LLMs are the way forward for searching, with a caveat: what they summarize isn't very relevant (it is overrated). It just gives a (hopefully accurate) semantic context. What matters is the sources it directs to. These are your links normally on top of yp…
I'm genuinely curious why "LLMs are the way forward for searching".
Is it that the results won't be stack ranked lists anymore and instead a conversational output? Personally that's not what I want. I want results that are contextual to my search. If there's a use case for LLMs in search this would be, at least for me, what I'd be looking for. It seems, however, that all of the AI in search results today are not that.
I do pay for Kagi and will continue if the quality of the product continues to offer the quality product that it is today.
Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
#74I think this distinction matters less to users than to builders. From a user perspective, what’s novel here is policy and intent (no ads, no AI, privacy-first), not whether the index is first-party yet.
Many projects start as thin layers over existing infrastructure and only later take on the hard parts as resources allow. Being explicit about that roadmap feels like the right tradeoff early on.
Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
#75Awesome project, I have a quick suggestion but can you please make adding custom ddg bangs into your project itself rather quickly? There was this project on hackernews which was recently shown where they (scraped?) the internet and then created an really efficient embedding of the search engine. I wish if you could look more into it or contact the creator of that project perhaps. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…
(replying to dead reply downthread)
Kagi (custom) bangs[1] already supports `!cobalt `
I just added !cobalt to my custom bangs as `https://cobalt.meowing.de#%s`, and it works.
Kagi also accepts new public bangs: https://github.com/kagisearch/bangs#contribution-guidelines
Kagi bangs are free for everyone (a subscription is required for custom bangs and regular search).
- Example of how to use Kagi bangs without subscription: https://kagi.com/search?q=!chatgpt+TEST
- https://zbang.leftium.com/ uses Kagi bangs under the hood.
[1]: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/bangs.html#custom-bangs
Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
#76Awesome project, I have a quick suggestion but can you please make adding custom ddg bangs into your project itself rather quickly? There was this project on hackernews which was recently shown where they (scraped?) the internet and then created an really efficient embedding of the search engine. I wish if you could look more into it or contact the creator of that project perhaps. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…
(replying to dead reply downthread) Kagi (custom) bangs[1] already supports `!cobalt ` I just added !cobalt to my custom bangs as ` https://cobalt.meowing.de#%s `, and it works. Kagi also accepts new public bangs: https://github.com/kagisearch/bangs#contribution-guidelines Kagi bangs are free for everyone (a subscription is required for custom bangs and regular search). - Example of how to use Kagi bangs without subs…
Oh thanks for sharing but it seems I would still need to get kagi if I wanted to do !cobalt and I just wanted it to be something which can be used by just about anybody. (Imagine seeing someone downloading something on shitty website and being like oh let me help you and boom)
I think kagi's nice but this is some real pain which I feel like could be solved via nilch with not much pain as well.
Perhaps you can add the cobalt bang to kagi's global list so that people like us who don't use Kagi can use it as well too since the bangs are free for everyone.
Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
(replying to dead reply downthread) Kagi (custom) bangs[1] already supports `!cobalt ` I just added !cobalt to my custom bangs as ` https://cobalt.meowing.de#%s `, and it works. Kagi also accepts new public bangs: https://github.com/kagisearch/bangs#contribution-guidelines Kagi bangs are free for everyone (a subscription is required for custom bangs and regular search). - Example of how to use Kagi bangs without subs…
Oh thanks for sharing but it seems I would still need to get kagi if I wanted to do !cobalt and I just wanted it to be something which can be used by just about anybody. (Imagine seeing someone downloading something on shitty website and being like oh let me help you and boom) I think kagi's nice but this is some real pain which I feel like could be solved via nilch with not much pain as well. Perhaps you can add the…
I'm not sure if !cobalt would meet Kagi's guidelines for public bangs.
Eventually, zBang will execute bangs locally before falling back to a Kagi network call. It's open source: https://github.com/Leftium/zbang
I just remembered my other project can support cobalt. Just enter the youtube URL and press ENTER (or click the buttons): https://mm.leftium.com?p=C4S2BsFMAIF5oEQGED2AjAhuY0AikBbFBAK...
- The link above embeds the cobalt "launch plan" (config) in the URL, but it could also be added as one of the built-in plans like https://mm.leftium.com/svelte.
- Also open source (and very simple to deploy): https://github.com/Leftium/multi-launch
---
But what's the difference between these two?:
1. Go to https://nilch.org and search for `!cobalt YOUTUBE URL`
2. Go to https://cobalt.meowing.de and search for the YOUTUBE URL
I think #2 is actually simpler for that person you are trying to help.
Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
#78Interesting project. Thanks for sharing. I am also a fan of DDG bangs and I see two missing features: 1. DDG supports bangs at any place in the query (even in the middle of it). I can search "topic !wiki" and it will work as expected. 2. DDG also supports following the first result in a query if a bare '!' is present in the query. Searching " hacker news !" will land me in the actual website without having to click a…
I thought ddg supported !s at arbitrary locations, but came across enough exceptions that I now invariably put them at the beginning or end.
Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
#79"No AI, no ads, just search."
Clicked to give it a try, only to be greeted with this LLM authorship trope.
If "sick of AI", rehumanize the slogan?
And carry on! "We were there" when DDG and Kagi got started; hope you enjoy carving a niche as well.
// Yes, LLMs learned it from SEO and marketing slop predating LLMs, but the "No A, No B, Just C" association is too dominant for your brand.
Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are paid, but the end used doesn't pay.
End user are corporate linux users and they pay for maintenance? Perhaps you mean all the end users doesn't pay.
They don't pay to the full group of Linux devs, they pay to companies like redhat, which does not represent the Linux kernel dev community.