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Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month

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Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month

#591
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the search result quality be quantified somehow? I remember when Google was new, and I used to use Altavista and Hotbot and those older search engines, the difference in results were like night and day, and Google's results were "wow!" Does Kagi give a similar impression as Google did then?

In my experience it's not that there's better quality results found, but rather low quality results are skipped. There's a lot filtered by default + it's easy to click "block this domain" when you run into yet another stackoverflow copy. It means that when you're searching for code related things, you often get small relevant blogs in position 3+ rather than SEO spam. For example searching for "current time on JavaSc…

> when you run into yet another stackoverflow copy

OMG. Why doesn't Google filter out the likes of geeksforgeeks for instance? How is it possible that it always come before the genuine SO answer?

Even without offering the possibility to filter out a domain (which they had, and later removed), how does the ranking algorithm not see those horrible, zero value clones??

Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It feels really nice using products that respect me, as opposed to services that are actively hostile because of advertisers. Hot take, but IMO Windows has far more respect for the user than Linux does. Everything is far more QA'd (and designed to be QA-able) and at least tries to minimise user frustration. There are exceptions to this, like "suggestions" in the Start menu, but outside of this it's designed in a use…

None of what you said is true. Use gnome and a popular distribution. Everything will just work out of the box.

With popOS maybe, but I would never hand Ubuntu Desktop to a non-dev. I can't remember the last time where it properly installed (including getting NVIDIA drivers working) without using the terminal.

Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month

#596
post #87
post #6

Happy customer here. Kagi is by far the best search engine there is. When I first started using Kagi a year ago or so, I compared results with Google every now and then. Now? Never. 10 bucks a month for a tool that I use multiple times every single day is more than reasonable. The results hit home virtually every time. There are variety of features to customize your searches but truthfully, I never found the need for…

That's awesome that it's so flexible. Can you search using symbols? Like if I'm trying to search "what is %" will it bring back results regarding the percentage sign, or results that start with the words "what is"? That's my major problem with google. Sometimes I need to search info on a symbol, and I don't know what it's called yet, so I have to perform another search, just to perform the one I actually care about.

I've sometimes found that including quotes around the symbol gives me more relevant results since Google should interpret that as "find results that contain this exact string". However I just tried it with your % example and the results were unchanged, I have found this to work myself in other instances so perhaps it's a mixed bag

Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this satire?? Respect for the user… While it forces a reboot While it tries to trick you in to upgrading to 11 While it sends huge amounts of telemetry to Microsoft When it forces you to sign up for an non-local account When it use dark patterns to get you to use Edge and upgrade to Windows 10 When it forces updates on Home users …

That list mostly seems a bit odd. This Windows computer doesn't force reboots (though it does nag me), it hasn't tried to trick me to upgrade to 11, it isn't sending telemetry to MS, it has never forced me to sign up for a non-local account. I think it does force security updates on me, which I think is clearly pro-user , though arguably not respectful. I also decided to use Edge to access my job's shitty Outlook stu…

Previously when I installed Windows, I had the option to create a local account. I had to click on a few misdirections but I was able to do it.

Recently though, I had to reinstall Windows to do something, and I could not find a way to create a local account at all. AFAIK they removed the option now, or made it much harder to find.

Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month

#598

Reading more about this lately; does it have an API and/or can it be automated? I would like a search engine in my workflow, not via their interface.

Yes, they have, but it's billed separately and more expensive than a subscription, depending on how much you use it: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/api/search.html

Edit: also, looks like you have to be in the 'Team' plan for access. But who knows, if there is demand I'm sure they'd open this up, so maybe just ping them.

Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month

#599
post #56
post #11

I think Kagi sounds interesting but the business model is a tough one outside of niche HN types. E.g. I am interested but can't be bothered to pursue it as it seems like an unnecessary additional SAS model cost to my monthly budget. How does search quality really change my life? Entrenched behavior is tough to overcome especially ostensibly free products.

> How does search quality really change my life? Ask this to someone who remembers when Google first appeared. I am not a Kagi user, but am seriously considering it after a number of months having to dig through at least 8 results of paywalled or possibly AI-generated pages for almost every Google query; seriously, I just did a search for 'python concatenate list' on google and it was worse than I expected - the offi…

That's a very common example, but python official docs are bad, so it's not a sign of anything bad if they're not at the top

And on free duckduckgo I get "instant answer" example from SO http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1720421 Though the official docs are also not on the first few pages

(Btw, you could also use an extension to 1-click filter garbage out from search if it has a high impact on life)

Re: Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My goodness, I thought you were exaggerating. I've been using ad blockers for so long, I forgot the web had this many ads. Or has it just gotten worse over time?

I wonder if adblockers have contributed to this. In theory we users can reward non-horrible advertisers by whitelisting their ads, but in practice we tend to block as much as possible. The remaining ad-viewing audience will be partly composed of people who are ethically opposed to adblocking or are held back by a lack of tech knowledge, but it will also be relatively insensitive to ads (both in the sense of being abl…

> ethically opposed to adblocking

How can you be ethically opposed to something that ruins your experience? It’s obviously their choice, I just can’t imaging browsing without adblock, I’m ethically opposed to the pages filled with crap I guess.

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