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Launch HN: Exa (YC S21) – The web as a database

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: Exa (YC S21) – The web as a database

#41

Post by xp84 »

This is super cool! It took a while, but did a great job of evaluating the results, and the airtable-like results UI feels great.

Congrats on your launch. With the natural way this lends itself to comparison shopping this is an amazing tool for people trying to find "the best X for me" whether that's a TV, a school, etc. So much content that you find on Google when trying to answer that type of query, is designed to trick, bamboozle, and to hide the facts that you might use to answer this question (but most of all to get you to click affiliate links).

Re: Launch HN: Exa (YC S21) – The web as a database

#43

Post by liam-hinzman »

esafak wrote: post #31

I suggest caching and enabling the sharing of results. I am not signed in so I don't know if that is feature I am missing. I searched for "alternatives to jq with a functional API" and one of the criteria it came up with was "Provides technical details or comparisons relevant to the alternatives" but the table only listed the repo's url and description. And the description was truncated with ellipses with no way for…

Without signing in you’re only able to view the preview table, which is just Exa’s regular search.

If you sign in each result will be graded by an LLM, supporting references will be found, you can get agents to add arbitrary data to each result, and the table UI is much better.

Understand if you don’t want to sign up, I’d just look at the examples linked in the OP in that case

Re: Launch HN: Exa (YC S21) – The web as a database

#47

Post by philipkglass »

oofbaroomf wrote: post #46

How big do you think your index is compared to Google?

A smaller index could actually be a benefit if it's missing all the "mailing list archives rehosted with more ads" sites that pollute my Google search results in recent years.

Re: Launch HN: Exa (YC S21) – The web as a database

#49

Post by 85392_school »

liam-hinzman wrote: post #28
85392_school wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while your product is incomparably slower than Google Exa was originally just a search engine. They try to hide it these days to promote Websets, but you can still use it at https://exa.ai/search .

We hid it because the UI wasn’t maintained. I joined recently, and live-streamed myself designing and shipping the new search frontend in 5h32m https://x.com/LiamHinzman/status/1911244983291514941 Added a link to it on our homepage, thanks for pointing that out!

Oh, good to hear. I've been waiting for its return.
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