[HN Gopher] Kagi and Wolfram
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Kagi and Wolfram
        
       Author : cwmartin
       Score  : 424 points
       Date   : 2024-03-05 16:50 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.kagi.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.kagi.com)
        
       | elektor wrote:
       | This is a wonderful and fitting collab!
        
       | mannycalavera42 wrote:
       | kagi is the new apple: shut up and take my money
        
         | alchemist1e9 wrote:
         | Yeah I'm very seriously regretting passing on the private
         | investment opportunity that early adopters were given.
         | 
         | I love the idea of Wolfram throwing his brainpower and
         | associated ego behind this problem.
        
       | syntaxing wrote:
       | This is pretty damn cool. It might finally push me over the edge
       | to give the subscription a go.
        
         | paipa wrote:
         | Just do it. Kagi has been my favorite $10/mo spent before this
         | collab already.
        
           | drcongo wrote:
           | I pay for it for my entire company. Life's too short to make
           | people click through to page 9 of Google to get past the ads,
           | the spam, the malware, the made up AI bullshit etc.
        
             | Toutouxc wrote:
             | Just the other day I was searching for something on iOS and
             | the results were really suspicious, they mostly didn't
             | match the query or didn't make sense at all. My brain was
             | going on autopilot and it took me a few tries to realize my
             | Kagi extension was disabled and I was using Google.
        
         | Tarq0n wrote:
         | The cheaper 300 searches/month subscription is a great way to
         | try it out.
        
         | loehnsberg wrote:
         | I've been using it for two years as my primary search engine,
         | and they've been nailing it. Kagi's worth every cent. No ads,
         | no need for DDG g-bang, because Kagi search results are above
         | par, excellent support via email/feedback, ,,quick answer"
         | feature gives gpt reply, and now Wolfram.
        
       | digging wrote:
       | I'm excited for this. I've found Kagi to be very useful having
       | widgets like this, in addition to the search results being good.
       | I still have DDG as my search engine for ephemeral searches[1] on
       | my phone and I'm getting sick of it. I don't know if I'd say the
       | result quality has been getting _worse_ , it's just not good and
       | hasn't been for years.
       | 
       | Kagi on the other hand feels like an ideal subscription service.
       | It feels like what Google search wanted to become.
       | 
       | [1] To force me not to leave open tabs I don't really care about,
       | my default browser is FireFox Focus, which is strictly
       | "incognito" mode, which means I'd have to manually log in to Kagi
       | every time I did a search.
        
         | bauruine wrote:
         | You can use the session link [0] in incognito so you don't have
         | to login each time.
         | 
         | [0] https://kagi.com/settings?p=user_details
        
           | aesh2Xa1 wrote:
           | On mobile incognito you'd need to access that session link
           | and go from there. You cannot just use the address/search
           | bar, as mobile browsers like Chrome do not include a config
           | to put the link.
        
             | fs111 wrote:
             | Mobile Firefox allows it.
        
               | dingnuts wrote:
               | you have to love that the GP says "browsers like Chrome
               | don't allow" and the two responses under it are "Safari
               | does" and "mobile Firefox does" -- literally the only
               | other browsers in the mobile ecosystem
               | 
               | maybe this limitation isn't "browsers like Chrome". Maybe
               | it's JUST CHROME with the limitation, because Chrome
               | sucks, and has for awhile now.
               | 
               | It's almost like the developer of Chrome doesn't want you
               | to use a different search engine. Funny, that
        
               | aesh2Xa1 wrote:
               | It's true on Brave, too. When I said "like Chrome" that's
               | what I meant.
        
             | drcongo wrote:
             | On iOS Safari it works with the Kagi extension.
        
           | justusthane wrote:
           | Woah, what an awesome feature!
        
         | eco wrote:
         | You can get something somewhat similar to Firefox Focus in
         | regular Firefox for Android by enabling the option to open in
         | Private tabs by default and turning on tab auto-closing. That's
         | what I did for a while when there were indications that Firefox
         | Focus was about to be abandoned (which never actually
         | happened).
         | 
         | Even better though, now that Add Ons are opened up on Firefox
         | for Android you can install Cookie AutoDelete. Then you just
         | use regular tabs and can keep your Kagi cookies (and any other
         | sites you regularly log into) but have it nuke every other
         | site.
         | 
         | There is also a Kagi Add On. It didn't do pretty much anything
         | when I first installed it last year but it might work these
         | days.
         | 
         | Oh, and finally, there is the Kagi Session Link you can use
         | that embeds a token in the URL so that you can more easily use
         | it for something like a search provider in Incognito/Private
         | tabs.
        
         | BeetleB wrote:
         | > [1] To force me not to leave open tabs I don't really care
         | about, my default browser is FireFox Focus, which is strictly
         | "incognito" mode, which means I'd have to manually log in to
         | Kagi every time I did a search.
         | 
         | I strongly recommend the Tab Wrangler extension. I set it to
         | close any tabs that have not been visited in the last 6 hours.
         | Of all the methods I've tried to deal with too many tabs, this
         | has been the most effective.
        
       | gyrovagueGeist wrote:
       | The steve jobs example has a typo, "place of dearth"
       | 
       | (https://kagifeedback.org/assets/files/2024-03-05/1709652268-...)
        
         | digging wrote:
         | Morbidly, it's still true.
        
       | JZL003 wrote:
       | I'm just happy if I can do some basic W|A without it being so
       | slow. Things like dates or solving simple equations with unit
       | conversion work great but is so slow on W|A. The actual wolfram
       | language is fast, I just find their website feels slow (it's
       | probably only 30 seconds)
        
       | 1970-01-01 wrote:
       | I tried Kagi and it was meh. I may try it again if they actually
       | integrated unit conversions in search results.
        
         | tucnak wrote:
         | Kagi does unit and currency conversion.
        
           | 1970-01-01 wrote:
           | It doesn't work that way in the actual search results:
           | 
           | https://kagi.com/search?q=iphone+case+%2450..%2460
           | 
           | All my results are in dollars. And they're not in range.
        
             | Toutouxc wrote:
             | Huh? How do you expect it to work? Do other search engines
             | support this?
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | How do you expect "iphone case $50..$60" to be interpreted
             | as not in dollars?
        
               | 1970-01-01 wrote:
               | Show in USD, CAD, EUR, GBP, BTC.. etc.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | I'm just confused why that would be expected behaviour
               | unprompted, and particularly after you specified "$."
        
               | 1970-01-01 wrote:
               | I don't _expect_ it to do any of these conversions,
               | however it would be a noticeable improvement in terms of
               | search.
               | 
               | There was an old article explaining how Google
               | interpreted "Polish" from "polish" in its search results.
               | Of course, kagi, Bing, Google, etc. can no longer find
               | this article..
        
             | oidar wrote:
             | Did you try quick answers? It works fine for your query.
             | You just need to specify the currency.
             | https://imgbly.com/ib/SfcLVHFMmV
        
       | wielebny wrote:
       | Pity it can't subtract time.
       | 
       | > 16:28 - 14:50 = 22 hours and 22 minutes
       | 
       | although, Google never could not too.
        
         | menthe wrote:
         | In WolframAlpha (no Kago subscription, but I assume it works
         | just the same), to achieve your desired result, you merely have
         | to use:
         | 
         | > 14:50 - 16:28
         | 
         | Or
         | 
         | > 14:50 to 16:28
         | 
         | It makes sense when you think of it.
         | 
         | I've been using this for years, and it works wonders for
         | datetimes too.
        
         | mongol wrote:
         | To me it seems to compute number of hours in the interval
         | between those times.
        
         | 0cVlTeIATBs wrote:
         | I don't use kagi. On WA, this search results in the answer with
         | a prompt with the engine's assumptions, and includes a link to
         | change the assumption to "math" from "word."
         | 
         | These prompts don't show on kagi? Seems like including them
         | would be an avenue for improvement.
        
         | 1970-01-01 wrote:
         | Yes, one vexing thing is the inability of search engines to
         | convert time. 5209s to hours and minutes? Oh, _I still_ need to
         | tell you how to do in steps. Why is this so?
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | > _inability of search engines to convert time. 5209s to
           | hours and minutes?_
           | 
           | Kagi just resolved "5209 s in h" quite perfectly.
        
             | 1970-01-01 wrote:
             | Yes that's the news here, it now does all the math for you.
             | Other search engines don't know how to do it -or- they only
             | do the first step. Your example doesn't do what I asked. I
             | want input to be converted to hours, minutes, and it should
             | ideally give me both outputs: additional remaining seconds
             | and the decimal. Wolfram Alpha's output has what I want,
             | but it also adds what I don't:
             | 
             | Input interpretation
             | 
             | convert 5209 seconds to hours, minutes
             | Results               1 hour 26.82 minutes <==OK
             | 1.447 hours <==Not asked for               Additional
             | conversions               1 hour 26 minutes 49 seconds
             | <==Acceptable interpretation
        
         | Toutouxc wrote:
         | I'm getting the correct result: "= 1 hour and 38 minutes"
        
         | viraptor wrote:
         | This is the amount of time between 16:28 today and 14:50
         | tomorrow. You got a correct answer. Just not the answer you
         | were thinking of.
        
       | ec109685 wrote:
       | How do new search engines like Perplexity and Kagi avoid getting
       | rate limited or hitting captchas as they build and maintain their
       | indexes?
       | 
       | Sites have to make exceptions for Google, but likely wouldn't
       | care enough to allow other search engines in.
        
         | geoelectric wrote:
         | I'm fairly sure Kagi reuses Google and Bing search results,
         | then de-craps and applies your customized preferences to them.
         | I'm not sure it even runs its own spider.
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | Kagi sends "anonymized API calls to traditional search
           | indexes like Google, Yandex, Mojeek and Brave, specialized
           | search engines like Marginalia, and sources of vertical
           | information like Wolfram Alpha, Apple, Wikipedia, Open Meteo,
           | Yelp, TripAdvisor and other APIs," and also maintains its own
           | "web index (internal name - Teclis) and news index (internal
           | name - TinyGem)" [1].
           | 
           | [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-
           | sources.htm...
        
           | snewman wrote:
           | This does not seem to be correct. I asked Kagi "does kagi
           | build its own index". From the first result (on
           | help.kagi.com):
           | 
           | > Kagi Search includes anonymized requests to traditional
           | search indexes including Brave, as well our own non-
           | commercial index (Teclis), news index (TinyGem), and an AI
           | for instant answers. Teclis and TinyGem are a result of our
           | crawl through millions of domains, focusing primarily on non-
           | commercial, high-quality content.
           | 
           | [Edit] I guess it is possible that Google or Bing are hiding
           | under "traditional search indexes including Brave".
        
         | mminer237 wrote:
         | I believe Kagi just pays to use Google's and Microsoft's
         | indexes.
        
           | bigyikes wrote:
           | Google sells their index??
           | 
           | (Microsoft famously sells theirs to DuckDuckGo, right?)
        
             | manquer wrote:
             | Bing index has always been licensable , Yahoo was using it
             | too, and they have other customers .
             | 
             | I don't think Google has a publicly known licensing deal ,
        
             | ilaksh wrote:
             | They sell API access to Google searching.
        
             | mrweasel wrote:
             | Microsoft sells Bing to a ton of search engines, it has
             | been the go to for everyone who wanted to run a search
             | engine.
             | 
             | Ecosia have also been relying on Bing, but recently
             | announced that they've now added Google as well.
        
         | neocritter wrote:
         | Kagi's internal index seems to focus on sites that wouldn't
         | necessarily block spiders.
         | 
         | https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.htm...
         | 
         | I've crawled small web sites (even hosted on major providers)
         | to archive them and never hit a wall.
        
       | flkiwi wrote:
       | I've spent money on things because I had to, I've spent money
       | because I wanted to. I have rarely spent money on something
       | because the idea just sounded good and been so consistently
       | pleased with what I received for my investment. It's not free,
       | but Kagi is a small investment for a vastly improved (and
       | customizable) search experience.
        
         | TradingPlaces wrote:
         | Best $10 I spend every month.
        
         | x0x0 wrote:
         | But how will you live with yourself when every search for
         | library documentation or a programming language doesn't flood
         | the first page with expertsexchange, w3schools, geeksforgeeks,
         | favtutor, freecodecamp, and a pile of other tissue-thin content
         | covered with popups?
        
           | hnrodey wrote:
           | medium is the 2024 expertsexchange
        
           | pandemic_region wrote:
           | You haven't lived until you searched and found something
           | useful on expertsexhange. The euphoria is unparalleled.
        
             | flkiwi wrote:
             | It's like spotting a beautiful unicorn!
             | 
             | I should boost expertsexchange.com in my kagi search
             | results just for the joy.
        
             | smsm42 wrote:
             | I'm so old I remember the times when it was useful...
        
           | darkwater wrote:
           | TBH with a uBlock Origin + PiHome and some ctrl+f you can
           | even find useful information in those SEO/spam sites ;)
        
           | throwup238 wrote:
           | Sex changes aren't just for experts anymore!
        
       | andrelaszlo wrote:
       | I love using WA as a calculator since it's so good at handling
       | units.
       | 
       | Silly example: I just tried "average distance to moon/Eiffel
       | Tower height" in Kagi and got "= about 1.167 million" (powered by
       | WA).
        
         | rqtwteye wrote:
         | Good to know! This will help in figuring out when reading the
         | news and they describe everything in tennis courts , school
         | buses and football fields. How do you convert from tennis court
         | to school bus?
        
           | ziddoap wrote:
           | You forgot Olympic swimming pool as both a length unit and a
           | volume unit.
        
         | rgovostes wrote:
         | It can't handle non-numeric quantities like "average distance
         | to moon" but Google's calculator has handled calculations with
         | units very well for 15 years at least. It definitely puts
         | Apple's Spotlight calculations to shame.
         | 
         | I find that W|A works fine until it fails to parse my query and
         | then I have no idea how to fix it, because the syntax is
         | unclear.
        
           | 7thaccount wrote:
           | There should be some doc on the English syntax. I wonder if
           | WA lets you fall back to the proper Mathematica
           | representation. Something like the below but in reverse as WA
           | typically does the free form by default I think.
           | 
           | https://wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-8/free-form-
           | linguisti...
        
             | rgovostes wrote:
             | You can input Mathematica (ahem, Wolfram Language). I
             | suppose yet another use for LLMs: better translation of
             | natural language input into structured Wolfram
             | calculations. Unsurprisingly, they're already advertising
             | "Wolfram GPT" and have added LLMSynthesize[] etc. to
             | Mathematica.
        
               | 7thaccount wrote:
               | I assume the translation is a bit more rigorous than
               | running through an LLM.
        
               | rgovostes wrote:
               | Which is the problem: It is using natural language
               | processing techniques that were state of the art in 2009,
               | but have been completely eclipsed in the past couple of
               | years. The "rigor" tends to be at odds with the fluidity
               | of user input: typos, search query-ese, ambiguity, etc.
               | 
               | The challenging problem that Wolfram|Alpha tries to solve
               | is conversion of natural language queries to structured
               | ones. Although I doubt Wolfram's parser has been
               | completely static for a decade, the most recent
               | generation of language models are vastly better at
               | translating natural language queries to structured ones.
               | See also: how terrible Siri is at everything.
        
         | dawnerd wrote:
         | I just tried some time math and it got it wrong
         | 
         | 3:38 - 0:10 = 8 hours and 32 minutes
         | 
         | I'm guessing it was trying to convert it to times of day
         | instead of 3 minutes 38 seconds.
         | 
         | Interestingly if I click the quick answer button it gives 3:48
         | as a result.
         | 
         | Google - doesn't even try.
         | 
         | WA directly also had to nudge it to use it as a unit instead of
         | a time of day.
         | 
         | Still some work to do here it seems!
        
           | jjtheblunt wrote:
           | > got it wrong
           | 
           | But your query was ambiguous as written.
           | 
           | 8 hours and 32 minutes is how long it takes to go from 3:38
           | pm to 10 after midnight? Perhaps the am/pm thing is also
           | underspecified, so it chooses the shorter time delta?
        
             | dawnerd wrote:
             | That makes sense, ideally it should come back saying it's
             | unsure but here's the best guess. I like the way WA
             | explains it directly. The problem with these quick answers
             | is you still can't blindly trust them unless they show
             | their work.
        
               | jjtheblunt wrote:
               | Exactly!
        
       | daft_pink wrote:
       | I'm really curious if they still maintain their privacy promises
       | with wolfram results
        
         | martinky24 wrote:
         | Wolfram isn't really in the ad business, as far as I know. They
         | probably retain queries blindly for metric tracking, but my
         | (informed) guess would be that it's very separate from and PII.
        
       | dewbrite wrote:
       | > To ensure result quality, we automatically downrank pages with
       | advertising and tracking, which are often associated with low-
       | quality or machine-generated content.
       | 
       | That is one of the most compelling things I've ever heard about a
       | search engine.
       | 
       | How well does kagi work for niche "reddit queries" like "best
       | waterproof midi synthesizers reddit"?
        
         | cngn wrote:
         | There are built-in bangs for reddit, and users can prioritize
         | reddit.com as a domain if they'd like.
        
           | paradox460 wrote:
           | Not only that, but you can make it rewrite _all_ reddit links
           | to use old.reddit.com
        
             | lolinder wrote:
             | Yes! Instructions here (old.reddit.com is one of the main
             | examples):
             | https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/redirects.html
        
             | tiltowait wrote:
             | I do the same for Youtube links to Invidious.
        
               | nerpderp82 wrote:
               | Interesting https://invidious.io/
        
             | kevincox wrote:
             | You can also change your Reddit settings to use the old UI
             | for www.reddit.com.
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | > _How well does kagi work for niche "reddit queries" like
         | "best waterproof midi synthesizers reddit"?_
         | 
         | I've started using their quick answers to sort through the
         | crud. In most cases, it catches and filters out the obviously-
         | bought Reddit recommendations, surfacing bloggers and niche
         | industry publications that did their own lab work.
        
         | Terretta wrote:
         | It has "lenses" that you can tailor yourself. Just pay and try
         | it. Cancel if it's not your goto in a month.
        
           | andrewstuart2 wrote:
           | They have a free trial as well. I didn't even finish half my
           | 100 free search queries before I decided to pay.
        
             | freedomben wrote:
             | In my case 100 was not enough. I almost didn't sign up for
             | Kagi because I hadn't yet felt the value and configuring a
             | browser to use Kagi as the default search engine isn't a
             | zero effort task.
             | 
             | It probably took me about 200 to 300 searches before I was
             | firmly decided that paying for Kagi is worth it. If I
             | hadn't been freshly mad about Google's declining search
             | quality, and displeased with DDG for something they had
             | recently done (can't remember at this point), after the
             | trial I probably wouldn't have paid and just would have
             | gone back to DDG.
        
               | nerpderp82 wrote:
               | The latency of Kagi is so much better than Google or DDG.
               | Just for the responsiveness and ball of "stuff" that
               | Google tacks onto the front of search is an abomination.
               | Worth if for the latency and the kruft ball removal
               | alone.
        
         | xaro wrote:
         | I configured Reddit as a "Lense" (similar to what Kagi uses for
         | things like searching across Forums, or news). With that, now I
         | have a simple toggle at the top of Kagi which allows me to
         | immediately turn a search into a Reddit search.
        
           | dvngnt_ wrote:
           | i just pinned reddit, wikipedia to top so my searches will
           | usually display them first.
        
             | paradox460 wrote:
             | Thats the best way, because then what you're looking for
             | gets surfaced rather organically, and its right there, so
             | you don't have to go out of your way to find it.
             | 
             | Generally I've started using bangs and lenses for changing
             | searches in a wholly categorical manner. I.e. the !i bang
             | for image search.
             | 
             | I did change the !p bang from podcasts to activating the
             | programming lens, because programming tends to have a lot
             | of terms that overlap with more general language, and so
             | sometimes its nice to swap in and out of that mode.
        
           | throwup238 wrote:
           | I did the same and added a custom bang so I can use it from
           | the address bar directly (!r pointing at
           | https://kagi.com/search?q=%s&l=8 where 8 is the lens id).
           | 
           | Probably least a third of my queries are preceded by an !r
           | now. A third of the rest are now question mark queries that
           | activates their AI fast answer. It's like the google info box
           | on steroids since it can answer any query and it works with
           | lenses to restrict the fast answer to specific domains.
        
           | MostlyStable wrote:
           | oooh, I didn't know I could do this. Doing it now. Thanks!
        
           | EasyMark wrote:
           | I've been using site:reddit.com for ages now on ddg.
        
           | mmcclure wrote:
           | It took me way too long to start using Lenses. I've been a
           | Kagi user for a while now, but lenses never really seemed
           | that useful. The unlock for me is that I'm often looking for
           | 3D models, so I added one for all the usual 3D model suspects
           | (Thangs, Printables, etc).
        
         | x0x0 wrote:
         | I think quite well. I've been using kagi for a couple months
         | and I'm super happy with it, esp for programming-adjacent
         | searches. You should give it a try! (not an investor, just a
         | happy user).
        
         | ericd wrote:
         | Really well, I just have Reddit pinned so it's (almost?) always
         | one of the top results, without having to add "Reddit". HN is
         | another. Similarly, I have lots of domains that I've always
         | hated seeing in results, nuked, so I never see them anymore.
         | Kagi is amazing.
        
         | smsm42 wrote:
         | Just entered this query as is, without configuring any lenses,
         | and got a bunch of results from /r/synthdyi. I suppose it's
         | good? I imagine if you use reddit a lot, you should bump its
         | relevancy and add a lens for it, as other folks here described.
         | But from that I see, it does decently even without that - even
         | for topics where there's a lot of garbage contents, like
         | reviews, it returns mostly the legit review sites, even though
         | choosing which one do you trust would be a challenge. If you
         | have your preferences, then bumping the relevance for these
         | sites is easy.
        
         | pants2 wrote:
         | Kagi has a built in 'Forums' search that limits results to
         | Reddit, HN, and other high-quality user discussions. It's
         | probably my favorite feature.
        
       | thomassmith65 wrote:
       | Does Kagi use Google to host their blog or am I misinterpreting
       | the log entry of my pihole?
       | 
       |  blog.kagi.com (blocked ghs.googlehosted.com)
        
         | freediver wrote:
         | Yes, Kagi is using GCP (+ AWS + some baremetal)
        
       | sdo72 wrote:
       | Why am I starting to see a lot of promotional statements within
       | HN? Are there any bot or some army of manual labor around?
        
         | andai wrote:
         | I think mostly a lot of cool stuff is being launched lately.
         | But if I were a tech company, I'd definitely have a HN Plan ;)
        
         | dotnet00 wrote:
         | Kagi just happens to be pretty popular here, it's how I found
         | out about it.
        
           | sdo72 wrote:
           | I have tried Kagi and I don't find anything magical. And I
           | see a lot of testaments saying how good Kagi is, and most of
           | them aren't in any specific comparison.
        
             | dotnet00 wrote:
             | For me just the ability to filter/downrank certain domains
             | and the ability to rewrite urls (universally, without
             | having a separate plugin setup on mobile devices) is a very
             | specific example of what I like.
             | 
             | Makes it easy to ensure that I'm always on old reddit and
             | wikipedia with the better (older :p) layout. Also allowed
             | me to clean up a lot of the results that I knew were from
             | low quality domains, such as getting rid of pinterest since
             | results from it almost never led to anything useful.
             | 
             | I also enjoy the lenses, I hated how the Google results for
             | recipes tended to only make already frustrating recipe
             | sites even more frustrating to dig through. The small web
             | lens is also very nice for when I'm already searching for a
             | niche topic.
             | 
             | Besides that, I also reflect the vague description of the
             | search results seeming to be better.
             | 
             | And of course on top of that, there's the lack of tracking
             | and putting my money where my mouth is regarding preferring
             | to pay for a good privacy preserving service.
        
             | lolinder wrote:
             | What exactly are you looking for in a testimonial? Do you
             | want a side-by-side comparison of results or something?
             | 
             | My experience has been that Kagi's customizations are the
             | key selling point, allowing you to block and bump domains
             | to meet your needs:
             | 
             | * I have Wikipedia pinned, so if there's a Wikipedia
             | article it's always the top result, whereas Google has
             | lately started downweighting Wikipedia much of the time (as
             | a simple example see COVID-19).
             | 
             | * I have Pinterest blocked entirely, so I never see results
             | from them. As an example, try "living room refurbishment
             | ideas".
             | 
             | * I have MDN upweighted, so it tends to rank higher than
             | random people's blog posts for web dev queries.
        
               | sdo72 wrote:
               | If you need specific domains, you can always search
               | within that domain. With Chrome, you can even setup
               | shortcut to search certain places like Wiki. Most
               | features I can do within Google or Chrome, and many
               | things are still better within Google search and
               | sometimes being paired with Chrome browser.
        
           | ziddoap wrote:
           | > _Kagi just happens to be pretty popular here_
           | 
           | _Pretty_ popular?
           | 
           | Outside of Rust, Kagi might have the most fanatic following
           | of any topic on HN. Which, while I'm sure Kagi is very happy
           | with, is really rather annoying as a someone who doesn't care
           | for it. Every conversation search-adjacent is just comments
           | of "I pay for Kagi and it was the best dollars I've ever
           | spent".
        
             | dotnet00 wrote:
             | Yeah that's fair, I can see how the gushing might be
             | annoying to someone who isn't interested.
             | 
             | I tend to just ignore or hide the posts I find very
             | annoying, but I understand that isn't necessarily how
             | everyone is.
        
       | JumpCrisscross wrote:
       | I pay for Kagi's duo plan, $14/month or $151.20/year [1], a
       | discount which implies a 10% cost of capital.
       | 
       | At that discount rate, a lifetime membership at $1,680 would be
       | rational for Kagi ($600 individual). And at that price, I'd pay!
       | Hell, do $3k flat (5% cost of capital; ~$1k individual) and throw
       | in an annual in-person event and I'd call it a great deal. For
       | Kagi, moreover, it would be permanent capital.
       | 
       | (I would also love for Kagi to launch a K-12 education product,
       | possibly marketed at first to PTAs.)
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://kagi.com/settings?p=billing_plan&plan=family&period=...
        
         | freedomben wrote:
         | I don't think this would ultimately be healthy for Kagi. The
         | continuing pressure to maintain the value of the subscription
         | since people can cancel at anytime IMHO drives their success.
        
       | andai wrote:
       | Did kagi recently (past 12 months) add the unlimited plan? Last
       | time I checked even my human search usage was way beyond their
       | limits (Google regularly accuses me of being a bot!), and my
       | primary interest was in 100Xing that volume with autonomous
       | agents.
       | 
       | Now it says unlimited, but I'm not sure "you and a swarm of a
       | thousand digital clones" counts as fair use...
        
         | golf_mike wrote:
         | yes https://kagi.com/settings?p=billing_plan
        
           | andai wrote:
           | To rephrase my question, was the unlimited plan _not_
           | available about a year ago? Otherwise I don 't think I would
           | have disqualified kagi at the time. I recall the volume being
           | too low for my needs, even _without_ hooking it up to any
           | automated systems (which for me at least, was the whole point
           | of looking into paid search engines).
        
             | throwup238 wrote:
             | Iirc it was available but more expensive as part of the
             | Ultimate $25/mo plan.
             | 
             | They made the $10/mo plan unlimited in September 2023
        
             | golf_mike wrote:
             | was it not available about a year ago? I'm not sure. Maybe
             | the wayback machine can tell you. But I have a gut feeling
             | that there is a slight misalignment between your use case
             | and their intended use of their service :)
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | > _I 'm not sure "you and a swarm of a thousand digital clones"
         | counts as fair use_
         | 
         | It obviously does not. You're a commercial client.
        
           | andai wrote:
           | > You're a commercial client
           | 
           | No, I'm broke and have no income. But about a year ago I
           | wrote some 20 line Python programs that use GPT (feed it text
           | from web searches) and was surprised to find they worked
           | significantly better than Bing's AI search...
           | 
           | I used it at a small scale with Python's (unofficial?)
           | DuckDuckGo API, but I was looking for a way to scale up
           | (ideally for free or very cheap). At the time, Bing's API was
           | the best option I found, and it was pretty expensive.
           | 
           | I think it would be really cool if I could have an autonomous
           | agent doing research on my current interests in the
           | background 24/7, but it seems my best option is a very low
           | volume of (free) web searches to seed a small web scraper,
           | plus possibly a custom-built search engine (see also
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38703943 )
        
         | dotnet00 wrote:
         | There was actually an outage due to this (their first major
         | outage!) a few weeks ago. Someone was scraping via their API a
         | little too hard, which had unexpected effects on upstream
         | systems. So 100x human search volume is likely to be an issue
         | unless you discuss it with the devs first.
        
           | jamessb wrote:
           | The page with the post-mortem for that outage now gives a 404
           | error, but was archived by the Wayback Machine: https://web.a
           | rchive.org/web/20240121000935/https://status.ka...
           | 
           | (It was discussed on HN at the time:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39019119)
        
         | MostlyStable wrote:
         | >regularly accuses me of being a bot!
         | 
         | >swarm of autonomous agents.
         | 
         | So....Google is right?
        
           | andai wrote:
           | I haven't launched the swarm yet. Google is reacting to (as I
           | said), my "human" search usage.
           | 
           | (Also possibly Brave browser's anti-tracking, which their
           | captcha system hates and actively punishes.)
           | 
           | Apparently the average person does 3-4 Googles per day.. I
           | checked my search history and I'm somewhere in the 100-200
           | range.
        
       | pmzy wrote:
       | I've been a paying Kagi customer for a few months now. It has
       | reconciled me with search. Result quality is great, and the tools
       | like fastgpt and the summarizer are precious.
       | 
       | I was a bit reluctant but I don't regret doing it.
       | 
       | Really happy to see Wolfram added to it!
        
         | paradox460 wrote:
         | It feels like a glass of water on a hot day, when you didn't
         | even realize you were thirsty. Suddenly you can find things
         | again.
         | 
         | Recently I've been adding ? to a number of queries, to play
         | with its knowledge graph and answering capabilities. It's been
         | remarkably useful at surfacing information.
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | I think it was Scott Galloway who said that advertisement is a
         | tax on the stupid and poor. It's been true for news for a long
         | time. It's becoming, with Kagi, true for search.
        
       | martinky24 wrote:
       | This is probably similar to the Wolfram|Alpha + Siri integration
       | (which AFAIK no longer exists):
       | 
       | - Kagi will rely on Wolfram's okay-ish stack to immediately add
       | features to their engine
       | 
       | - Kagi will, over time, 1-by-1 remove the reliance on the
       | (generally slow and expensive) Wolfram API with built-in features
       | 
       | - Once the meat of the features have been rewritten internally by
       | Kagi in more performant and self-controlled ways, remove the
       | dependence on the slow and expensive Wolfram API
       | 
       | Not saying that's a bad thing, but it's quite likely this is how
       | it plays out. We've seen it before.
        
         | 7thaccount wrote:
         | I can see them doing that for some things, but kind of doubt it
         | for the more mathy things.
        
           | martinky24 wrote:
           | There are things that move the needle (unit conversions) and
           | things that don't matter as much ("how many tea cups of water
           | would fit inside the moon"). It's the "things that matter"
           | that get implemented and make the rest of it not worth it.
        
       | zero0529 wrote:
       | I bought it as I needed it for an exam that needed me to do a lot
       | of research and it combined with bing gpt really was a big help.
       | I probably won't use at as a main driver as I only have the 300
       | search a month plan and I get a feeling like I wasted a search
       | when I searcg something stupid like x documentation.
        
       | jxy wrote:
       | > welcome Stephen Wolfram to Kagi's board of advisors
       | 
       | This is interesting. I guess we will soon read a longwinded post
       | about it from the first person perspective.
        
         | jerpint wrote:
         | A new kind of search engine
        
         | throwup238 wrote:
         | Kagi-Wolfram derangement syndrome here we go!
         | 
         | The Kagi goes first to get under his skin just a little bit.
        
         | BeetleB wrote:
         | Complete with how he played a major role in the early history
         | of search engines.
        
       | qwertox wrote:
       | Wolfram Alpha still has the same old bug:
       | 
       | https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2016-04-04+to+2019-01-3... =
       | 2 years 9 months 27 days
       | 
       | https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2019-01-31+to+2016-04-0... =
       | 2 years 9 months 26 days
       | 
       | The duration should be identical but is off by one day.
       | 
       | One day a space mission will fail due to this bug.
       | 
       | Reported several times, they never cared.
        
         | nuancebydefault wrote:
         | Both show 1032 days. Do space missions depend on such fuzzy
         | defined time stamps as (calendar?) months? I think time
         | dilation would be a much more serious factor.
        
         | timthelion wrote:
         | Is that a bug? I interpret it as from midnight 2016-04-04 to
         | the first time which has the date 2019-01-31. That includes the
         | full day of 2016-04-04 but nothing from 2019-01-31. This is
         | contrasted with the opposite direction which is midnight
         | 2019-01-31 going backwards, thus not including 2019-01-31 and
         | all the way up till the first time which is 2016-04-04 non-
         | inclusive.
         | 
         | Date time arithmetic is weird ;)
        
           | timthelion wrote:
           | OK, I see, but it shows a different value for the absolute
           | number of days, that's weird.
        
           | qwertox wrote:
           | If that were true, then this would be false:
           | 
           | https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2019-01-31+to+2015-10-2.
           | .. = 3 years 3 months 10 days
           | 
           | https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2015-10-21+to+2019-01-3.
           | .. = 3 years 3 months 10 days
        
         | EntropicBrew wrote:
         | This is fascinating. Even sillier example,
         | https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2019-01-31+to+2016-04-0...
         | and
         | https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=2019-01-30+to+2016-04-0...
         | 
         | both show an identical duration of 2 years 9 months 26 days
         | (edit: despite reporting 1032 and 1031 days respectively).
        
           | pizzafeelsright wrote:
           | Counting months and days are two very different metrics.
           | 
           | Months are lunar. Days are solar.
        
             | EntropicBrew wrote:
             | Depends on the calendar system, as far as this discussion
             | goes, the Greogorian calendar system is solar even for
             | months.
        
       | djha-skin wrote:
       | > ...We are even thinking of providing a consumeable API for
       | users to add their own widgets to Kagi search results triggered
       | on demand (and shareable with others via an open-source
       | repository[1]).
       | 
       | Neat!
       | 
       | 1: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/support-and-community/open-
       | source...
        
         | loehnsberg wrote:
         | I'd love to see an IMDB widget.
        
       | ckbishop wrote:
       | Kagi is well worth the money. Just converted my monthly sub into
       | an annual. It just flat out works better than any other search
       | engine I've come across. Also, the ability to just filter/weight
       | sites that it returns is incredible. I'm not sure how Google is
       | this far behind at search, but here we are.
        
         | sharkjacobs wrote:
         | This is trite, but the simplest answer is that Kagi's product
         | is search and its customers are users, and Google's product is
         | ad impressions and its customers are advertisers.
        
       | swyx wrote:
       | TIL that Wolfram Research has 1000 employees. what do they... do?
       | what is Wolfram's revenue? i'm completely out of the loop. This
       | is the size of Automattic - which makes Wordpress. is Wolfram on
       | that scale? idk.
        
         | nullstyle wrote:
         | Mathematica is a commercial product:
         | https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/pricing/
        
           | caycep wrote:
           | Who uses Mathematica, in this age of python/Julia etc? The
           | Grad student world seems to be captured by Matlab
        
         | aheckler wrote:
         | > This is the size of Automattic
         | 
         | Automattic has almost 2000 employees.[0] I believe that number
         | even automatically updates as folks come and go, but I could be
         | wrong.
         | 
         | [0] https://automattic.com/about/
        
       | Thoreandan wrote:
       | So.... this is about a pay-subscription search engine called
       | 'Kagi' out of Palo Alto, founded 2018.
       | 
       | Made me think and have to do some digging for the 'Kagi' out of
       | Berkeley founded in the 90s where you could register your
       | shareware purchases in the days before PayPal. Which seems to
       | have been largely scrubbed from history outside of some WayBack
       | snapshots.
       | 
       | https://www.macrumors.com/2016/08/01/kagi-shuts-down/
       | 
       | https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling...
        
         | dickfickling wrote:
         | The two are unrelated, but they do reference the shareware
         | platform in their FAQ.
         | 
         | https://help.kagi.com/kagi/faq/faq.html#are-you-affiliated-w...
        
       | the__alchemist wrote:
       | Hey! This is off-topic, but I'm not sure where else to post it.
       | 
       | Does Kagi hang indefinitely for text searches for y'all? I
       | experience this behavior about 1/4 searches. No error; just no
       | page load. I am about to cancel my sub and switch back to Google.
        
         | freedomben wrote:
         | This does happen to me sometimes! Not 1/4 though, more like a
         | few times a day. At first I thought it was my internet
         | connection but it happens often enough and is usually
         | reproducible for about 15 to 20 seconds, so does seem to have
         | something to do with the query.
        
         | PcChip wrote:
         | Works perfectly for me on various browsers and operating
         | systems, and for my friends as well.
         | 
         | Hopefully the kagi team will see this though and chime in, or
         | you should report the bug
        
         | freediver wrote:
         | That sounds like a good bug report for https://kagifeedback.org
         | 
         | Make sure to include example searches when this happens.
        
         | bubu-bln wrote:
         | Try getting on contact with them. They've been helpful when I
         | had a problem. I've born tried kagifeedback.com and their
         | e-mail support (two separate questions), and in both cases I
         | received help promptly.
        
         | Tarq0n wrote:
         | I get sent to the login screen maybe once per day. Very
         | annoying if you searched from the address bar because your
         | query isn't preserved anywhere. Not actually logged out,
         | resending the query works.
        
         | anotherhue wrote:
         | @the__alchemist emailed you
        
       | stainablesteel wrote:
       | i love kagi results, its a great search engine, and wolfram is
       | quickly becoming the backend of the internet - which is fantastic
       | 
       | fantastic news, really glad to hear about this
        
       | omoikane wrote:
       | I just tried all those demo queries in Google and it had similar
       | output for all of them, except "MangoldtLambda[11]". Looks like
       | that's a function specific to Wolfram.
       | 
       | Bing couldn't answer "MangoldtLambda[11]" either, and it also
       | couldn't answer "differentiate x^2 with respect to x", and didn't
       | show a graph for "norway gdp".
        
       | laserson wrote:
       | One thing I miss from Google is relatively seamless integration
       | with maps. Sometimes the address queries just fail for me on
       | Kagi. And even when they don't, Google's maps are still far more
       | useful IMO.
        
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