I love the profiles feature of Safari. I find it a bit odd that profiles are entire browser instances in Orion, unlike Safari which I find a lot easier to use. Maybe I just need to get use to it…
Orion 1.0
241–250 of 283 posts
Re: Orion 1.0
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? Since when was asking questions to clarify someones position considered "pushing back?" Can you help me understand what about the questions make you uncomfortable? I am completely unaffiliated with Kagi. I find it concerning that we've come to a world were we can't ask questions without it being taken as something hostile to the person/people/idea being questioned. Is that not what science is?
If you don’t think “you can just audit the binary with tools” is pushing back, then I don’t know what is, and especially so when you’ve framed the invitation with “I'd rather listen”. I’m reminded of the number of times I’ve had vendors sit across the table from me and argue that our fixed requirements for are just a preference or a nice-to-have. This generally doesn’t bode well for their prospects.
> you can just audit the binary with tools”
That statement also said you have to audit binary even if the code is open source. Which isn't entirely true as other comments pointed out - reproducible builds - but the idea doesn't seem like pushing back to me. It was to point out that open source doesn't automatically imply any level of trust when it comes to security/privacy.
Re: Orion 1.0
#243I love Kagi, but is this necessary? Another browser, really? I wish they'd spend their eng resources as a small startup on their legitimately great primary product - ad-free search.
Oh well TIL they did the browser first!
Re: Orion 1.0
#244Re: Orion 1.0
#245Extensions still default to the English language, this is a bug I reported two years ago and it's still there... kinda disappointed. Not everyone uses or wants to use English.
Re: Orion 1.0
#246> Most people switch browsers for one reason: speed. Is that true? Maybe it is and I'm out of the loop but I can't remember the last time someone complained about browser speed. The bottleneck seems to be website bloat more than anything else. Would love to see this argument quantified.
I use Kagi as my daily driver on mobile, and have it constantly as my second browser (next to FF Dev) on desktop for the same reason I use Kagi Search, support of the concept. It doesn't hurt that the browser is pretty good performance and experience-wise.
Re: Orion 1.0
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Windows? And Chrome?
tbh, it's been 10 years I don't use Chrome... When I used Windows, my main browser was Edge, and was quite fast to open as far I remember, but I believe on Windows Edge stays open in background all the time anyway...
Also, what's "instantly", how much time exactly on a cold/hot start does it take after you press a key and a fully drawn/functional window is shown?
Checked on an old Windows desktop (hot start), and while the empty window is shown in 0.8 sec (not too slow, but still not instant, those would be some old native apps taking 4 times less time), the fully drawn/functional window takes 2-3 sec, so definitely nothing instant
Re: Orion 1.0
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm assuming the people who are asking for Orion to be open source are not paying for it. I think this is an odd/slightly-disingenuous statement. I mean, I'm on linux, so I'm not, I'm happily paying for kagi though, and would pay for Orion+ if it was available to me :) I would also very much like it if Orion was open source, it would make me feel a lot better committing to and recommending a browser if I had actual…
> I would also very much like it if Orion was open source, it would make me feel a lot better committing to and recommending a browser if I had actual assurances it's behaving appropriately, beyond a company saying "trust me", no matter how nice/cool they seem at the time. Kagi isn't 100% open source but you still use it and recommend it? How do you know they aren't spying on the backend?
There's not really a reasonable local alternative to running something like Kagi, so one kind of just have to hope for the best with the least shady looking option or not use web search at all. It would be nice if they at least had a 3rd party audit validate their privacy claims... but Kagi is at least a step in a better direction than any common search option, even if they might still actually be spying on you for all you know (and keep that in mind if you choose to use it).
The same is not true of browsers, to the extent you can even build/use privacy conscious versions of Google's browser project because Chromium is open source! To trade that away for closed source on the promise of another company who was only able to build a browser because of an open source engine is an unnecessary step backwards and should be bothering people, as much as Kagi appears like the nice company for now.
Re: Orion 1.0
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trust with regards to...? Orion doesn't have any telemetry, doesn't force any updates on you, doesn't require any account. You can audit the application's behavior with standard tools to verify that it isn't "phoning home", etc., it doesn't need to be open source to do that, nor would making it open source obviate auditig the final executable anyways. What do you perceive as the risk to "trusting" Orion in this case?…
I'm assuming the people who are asking for Orion to be open source are not paying for it. I think a blog post on Orion's transparency is enough. The fact that there is Orion+ is enough to warrant no need to have tracking or 'enshittification'. If you like Kagi and Orion, supporting development by paying for it makes sense. Open sourcing everything of Orion means that Orion+ will be open source which defeats the point…
> I'm assuming the people who are asking for Orion to be open source are not paying for it.
I don't know about the others, but I'm an Orion+ lifetime purchaser just because I like what they are trying to do and it's a good phone browser for my work phone. I'm not sure I follow why specifically people who pay are supposed to be uninterested in it being open sourced?
> If you like Kagi and Orion, supporting development by paying for it makes sense.
> Open sourcing everything of Orion means that Orion+ will be open source which defeats the point of supporting development of Orion directly.
Sure, one should support the development costs. Can you elaborate why you feel that relates to Orion being freeware vs open source or why it defeats the point of Orion+? The two aren't differentiated by functionality, Orion+ is a token of development support.
> I've seen projects start open source, change to closed source and then add in the enshittification later. It doesn't matter if the code is 'open' the source code would eventually be unmaintained and have security holes which there is no time in the world for anyone else to maintain.
Open source isn't a promise that the code will be maintained forever, nothing can guarantee that, it's a promise if the company decides to go closed source the community can decide what to do. Or, even if you don't care about that, a promise of easy/public auditing and hacking. Just look how many Chromium/Firefox build customization, UI tweaks, and forks people have made despite the possibility Google stop contributing to Chromium in the future.
Re: Orion 1.0
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
??? why does any company do it? Money?
Any company? Don't you think if Kagi introduced spyware it would ruin their reputation quickly, why would Kagi want to quickly ruin that brand reputation? The answer is that there is no incentive for 'spyware' on Orion as you can pay for Orion+ to support development. https://kagi.com/onboarding?p=orion_plan
My concern is Kagi isn't/doesn't make as much as they need/hope to with their brand model. If they are ever disappointed in the results of building their brand, it's quite easy to see why they would be fine selling out.
Hell, WhatsApp started out as a privacy focused messaging app before selling out to Facebook/Meta. Now it's getting ads, nobody believes a privacy focus anymore, it's had a commercial message channel push, and so on. They are far from the first example of a tech company/product trading the mission/brand value for more money.
Bless the VLC developer for refusing offers for millions of dollars to put crap in VLC even though he knows the project could just be forked after and bless Gorhill for the same on uBO but the real trust in these things comes from the code being open source rather than faith the developers would never sell out.