I Lost Faith in Kagi • Hacker News Board

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#101

Post by Sakos » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 12:57 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #86

Sakos wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a "hard-core" Kagi user: 1) I legit can't fathom going back to Google or any other search engine. I don't know what I'll do if they go under. 2) Investing in integrating AI into their search is absolutely vital and I like a lot of what they're doing there 3) Everything else, including the insanity of the t-shirts thing, is a complete waste of time and money. I don't understand what their strategy is if it isn't to…

> Everything else, including the insanity of the t-shirts thing, is a complete waste of time and money. Presumably the tshirts are a marketing cost that they hope will lead to greater brand exposure and more subscribers.

They should've spent it on a marketing agency, because I don't know how a shirt which doesn't even have the name Kagi on it is supposed to give them brand exposure.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#102

Post by rsynnott » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 12:58 PM UTC

magistr4te wrote: post #85

nebulous1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make that argument for initial approach, but it falls flat on its face after the author told Vlad that they didn't want to communicate with them and Vlad responded with a lecture. Vlad comes off as fairly unhinged here.

Tldr: you can't just spread a very negative opinion about someones hard work and then plug your ears shut for any kind of non-symathetic interaction. In my eyes this rationale would make sense if there was no backstory to this. If there was no preceeding blogpost, I'd consider Vlads messages pure spam. But the context here is different: The author wrote a very critical, and clearly opinionated blogpost. There was cle…

You can criticise something without obligating yourself to have a conversation with the subject. In fact, that is generally how most critical writing has worked, for centuries. If you're unhappy with the review of your restaurant in the paper, you _might_ be able to convince them to publish a short owner response, once, but they're certainly not going to engage in a dialogue about it.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#103

Post by ImPostingOnHN » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

lijok wrote: post #73

Lori seems (from the blog post and the subsequent email chain with the CEO) to be unnecessarily combative and most definitely too emotionally invested in Kagi. You're paying, what, 10, 25 USD - are you getting a good service for it? If not, unsubscribe, if yes, what's the problem? Sounds like they're profitable now, so little risk of the service dissapearing. Unnecessary drama by people who live for drama. My only ad…

For a second there, I thought you were talking about Vlad!

Based on the exchanges, Vlad is both extremely combative and unwilling to accept the possibility that he is wrong (which he is here).

Being aggressively wrong is no way to go through life. Vlad should be more humble, and open to being wrong, rather than being unnecessarily belligerent.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#104

Post by abhinavk » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

tqwhite wrote: post #72

andy99 wrote: post #35

I stopped reading once I realized it was just a rant about their business. Why would I care? Their search is better, it's worth what I pay, if it stops being worth the money I'll stop paying. I could care less how their business is run. If I was investing I might look closer, until then, the maximum I have at risk is the $100 or so it costs a year, which I'm comfortable with. Did I miss something more damning later i…

[flagged]

Try some other AI. Maybe Clause couldn't read text in the screenshots.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#105

Post by Dayshine » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

infecto wrote: post #8

I still pay for Kagi for its search but this has kind of been the problem from the beginning with their org. - Search has been a breath of fresh air, I wish they dedicated more time to it. - Orion...is ok? I use it off and on and it is fine but would rather have better search. The premise of the browser is nice but it feels like this could probably be a whole separate company or a purely open source endeavor. It has…

Re the t-shirts: last time I checked the were private equity not VC and priced their product for profitability not growth.

Would you be upset if they had just donated that excess to charity?

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#106

Post by danpalmer » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #80

What I sense here is the same phenomena as when a famous artist gets a fan that turns into a hater that maybe turns into a stalker, but this time it is a small company that gets this kind of attention and zeal. There's some kind of psychological instinct that makes some people think that they are owed something and have some kind of personal relation to somebody famous or in this case a company, a kind of familiarity…

Did you read the post? I know this sort of fan/hater type, and this post comes across to me as very much not that.

I think Kagi have a lot of things to answer for, in particular, a large tax bill, possible GDPR violations, and potentially a future inability to pay their hosting bill in t-shirts.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#107

Post by carlinm » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC

fluentbyfire wrote: post #100

[flagged]

I haven't looked too deeply into perplexity yet. What do you find much better about it?

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#108

Post by rsynnott » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 1:01 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #10

I wonder if the t-shirts were basically a way to siphon some investor money directly into their own pockets. Or if someone just thought they can do it cheaper and then ran into sunk cost fallacy.

I mean, Occam's razor says they were just naive and didn't realise what a huge pain doing stuff like that is. There's a reason that pretty much everyone uses a third party for this.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#109

Post by danpalmer » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 1:01 PM UTC

tqwhite wrote: post #49

[flagged]

Sounds like Claude3 was trained on Hacker News comment threads – read the first 3 paragraphs and believe you've got the gist of the whole article.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#110

Post by catapart » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 1:02 PM UTC

magistr4te wrote: post #85

nebulous1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make that argument for initial approach, but it falls flat on its face after the author told Vlad that they didn't want to communicate with them and Vlad responded with a lecture. Vlad comes off as fairly unhinged here.

Tldr: you can't just spread a very negative opinion about someones hard work and then plug your ears shut for any kind of non-symathetic interaction. In my eyes this rationale would make sense if there was no backstory to this. If there was no preceeding blogpost, I'd consider Vlads messages pure spam. But the context here is different: The author wrote a very critical, and clearly opinionated blogpost. There was cle…

>There was clear intention in engaging with this subject.

Yes, and then that engagement - which very much took place - did not give the author any confidence that FURTHER ENGAGEMENT (via email) would change the situation.

If I talk to you back and forth about an issue I have and feel like I'm talking to a brick wall, so I then write a critical review based on those issues, why should I be forced to not be a brick wall, in return? If Vlad wants someone to listen to him, he should probably take some time to engage with (not just 'listen to') what is being said on it's fundamental merits (not whatever surface level bit he wants to latch on to).

Recontextualizing an issue is not addressing it. Explaining an issue is not addressing it. Describing a paradigm that contextualizes an issue is not addressing it.