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I Lost Faith in Kagi

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Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#141

Post by mbStavola »

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 are right... up until maybe the second reply.

Vlad saw something critical of his hard work and wanted to put in the effort to clarify his stances and mend a relationship. I can absolutely understand that, your work is a reflection of yourself and nobody wants to be judged on misunderstanding. He might've even felt like he let someone who cared about Kagi down and wanted to make it right. Again, all understandable!

However, twice, the blog post author said they did not want to engage. At this point, regardless of how you feel about what was said, you should probably move on; they said their piece, you tried to engage, they rebuffed, oh well, do something else! To continue on is both incredibly annoying and a bit unhinged.

If Vlad absolutely felt like he needed to respond to this, he should've digested the main points of the original blogpost, reflected on them, and written his own blog post to a more general audience. Not necessarily in _response_ to the author, but understanding that more people probably feel this way as well and want to hear clear answers. Perfect examples of this would be an "Our stance on privacy" or "How we're ensuring Kagi's future," again factoring in the criticism from the author.

I write all of this as someone who pays for and likes Kagi. I think it's a good product, if a bit scattered at times. But the blog post does hit on some concerns that I have (privacy being the biggest) and seeing the follow up leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#142

Post by TimTheTinker »

yreg wrote: post #29

I've read the first third of the article and I didn't get what's the author's problem with Kagi. What do they care how many employees Kagi has or how much they spend on t-shirts. Then I scrolled through the rest of it and read the very last screenshot. That one looks pretty bad. > people who really need anonymity are very rare. probably less than a 100 in the entire world. definitely not typical Kagi users > unless t…

Those who have "nothing to hide" still close their curtains at night and shut the door to the bathroom when on the toilet.

Granting and fiercely protecting privacy is a simple matter of respect for your fellow human beings. Doing so also has the side effect of slowing descents into various forms of totalitarianism.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#143

Post by sumeno »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #113
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.

Perhaps we live in different worlds, but there's a world of distanced between unhinged and roughly 3 emails to someone who wrote a peice targeted specifically at your business. If anything the replies in that Mastadon thread make the author and others appear petty, combative and immature imo, and I do not say that as someone who agrees with all Vlad's perspectives.

If someone tells you to stop emailing them after 1 email don't send 2 more. It's that easy

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#144

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

lolinder wrote: post #116
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't get the sense that Vlad is combative, just (over)confident. There are no personal attacks, no aggression, no flaming or flamebait. He just is very confident in his approach and doesn't slow down to listen to criticism. Not the best approach as a founder, but not combative.

Combative in this case means treating the exchange as combat: a fight to win; rather than an opportunity to be humble and listen to others and learn.

The exchanges all read like Vlad derives a lot of self-esteem from being right, which isn't as good as deriving it from ability to learn when wrong.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#145

Post by Tempest1981 »

Sakos wrote: post #101
iamacyborg wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Or advertise on a billboard along Hwy 101 as you enter San Francisco.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#146

Post by mfiro »

lolinder wrote: post #78

The T-shirt thing is dumb and a waste of funds, but TFA describing it as "owning" a T-shirt factory is an exaggeration that makes me question most of the framing of the rest of the article. They partnered with an existing entity in Serbia, what they did set up was the means to distribute them. Still not a great look and definitely still a waste of funds, but if every criticism takes this same form—take a legitimate c…

> If not, I'll get to enjoy it while I can.

Sure, but what happens with your information after that is also very important. What's for me very concerning after reading the article is not a T-Shirt factory or burning budget, but the their attitude towards privacy.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#147

Post by edgyquant »

laborcontract wrote: post #137
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…

Kagi’s killer feature is somehow managing to get literally every post about them featured on the front page of HN. If they fail with all of the free marketing they’ve been gifted by this community I can only shake my head.

A lot of us either use them or have used them in the recent past

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#148

Post by ceejayoz »

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]

I had ChatGPT read your comment and asked it "Is this a useful methodology of evaluating articles?"

It cautioned me that "it's important to recognize the limitations of such tools" and said:

> Tools like Claude3 may struggle with understanding the context of certain claims or the overall tone and intent of the article. They might flag statements that are not actually problematic or miss important context that affects the interpretation of claims.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#149

Post by fluentbyfire »

carlinm wrote: post #107
fluentbyfire wrote: post #100

[flagged]

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

On any query, you get a summary answer from the latest LLMs (Claude 3, ChatGPT 4 Turbo, Mistral Large) and the list of sources. Very thorough, highly efficient, and no ads.

Re: I Lost Faith in Kagi

#150

Post by sph »

As a paying user since day 1, I do not give a rat's arse about AI. In fact, I have moved away from Google because they have focused so much on AI their search got worse to the point of being useless.

I paid for a good search engine that respects my queries and does not try to outsmart me. The more Kagi focuses on AI, and making an """intelligent""" search engine, basically replicating Google's missteps, is the day I stop giving them money. I've already been noticing some of my keywords are being ignored or reinterpreted. Please stop that.

I don't care about email either. I am paying Fastmail for it, and I certainly know better than to attach my search history to my email account, especially when it's from an AI company. Is the goal here to copy Google?

To all startup owners: there is more to software quality and user experience than trying to fit the AI buzzword in anything you do. Stop following the hype and focus on building a damn good product.

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