> The top 10% of men in the dating pool end up dating 80% of the women. […] Most men have no dating or sexual prospects at all - it's very binary.
I do not believe this to be true just based on what I observe in my social circles. It might be a bit skewed but these numbers sound absurd - do you have any source to back them up?
I joined the Kagi beta two weeks before it ended and have been a paying user ever since. I find the price to be quite steep but so far it have no regrets and will most likely continue my subscription. I average over 2000 queries per month.
- Search result quality is at least equal to Google for most queries and far superior for queries involving discussions or technical topics. Sadly, it is inferior for queries in my area of expertise (Swiss law).
- Kagi is the only alternative to Google that I know of (and I have tried many) which is able to produce good regional results and mix them - when appropriate - with international results. Most privacy focused search engines are very US centric.
- Blog spam and copy cats are not completely gone but the situation is at least bearable, especially after continuosly filtering them and boosting credible sites instead.
- Customization options, filtering options, speed and site layout are also far superior when compared to Google.
Apart from the lower quality results from queries involving my area of expertise, the only thing that still keeps me using Google Search are the reviews from Google Maps.
I also have been using since beta, and agree with you. For me, the ability to boost and block certain domains is a killer feature. (There are probably solutions for other services, but to have it built-in is great.)
For developer-related queries I`m pleased with the results!
Odd you say the price is steep - I have been using it mostly exclusively for a few months now and I haven't even thought about it cost. It must come out to under 0.1¢ per search.
I was struck by their pricing page [0] which says that "it costs us about $1 to process 80 searches" and that "at USD $10/month, the price does not even cover our cost for average use". I don't think they're going to be right that beta testers will do more searches than average users, and I think that they'll attract heavy searchers (the ones most noticing and disliking Google's quality). I would be surprised if I search less than 50 times a day, and that's probably just during work. If I was a paid Kagi user they'd be losing money on me. They say their price might have to go up, I don't see how they're going to avoid that.
That sounds unsettling, given the normal trajectory for software companies running at a loss (get VC, adjust goals to match VC desire, etc). For a privacy focused company it feels like they already lost the normal leverage line item of doing "something" with user data.
I dunno, "if you're not paying, you're the product", but how does that fit if you are paying, but what your paying isn't actually enough? Whats the other product?
I agree that it was an impressive product but couldn’t justify it based on the cost of living where I live and relative to other things I subscribe to (including my Fiber connection). I do hope things like this succeed.
Honestly there has to be something wrong with software pricing. Slack cost per user is similar to giving everyone in company sim card, while cell operators have to maintain both, massive physical infrastructure AND software infrastructure. Seems like most of SaaS environment is horribly inefficient.
Not sure about "likable", but most of the high-profile people in crypto behave professionally. For my taste they are actually far too timid when it comes to talking about projects other than their own. Everyone is always super positive and hyped and agreeable and sure, there are "tons of scams out there" and "99 % of projects will die" but you rarely hear names.
Yep, I avoid mentioning specific names as much as possible so I don't come off as a maxi or a shill. Also very uncomfortable mentioning anything specific to friends because I don't want them to interpret it as financial advice or get FOMO when I have no idea what a token's price will do
In my view it is quite difficult to find insightful and civilized long-form discussion on the topic of crypto, compared to most other "controversial" topics I'm personally intersted in (e.g. geopolitics or economics). I might be mistaken – but it is my impression that the blockchain-space is fast growing and attracts a ton of intelligent people. Surely there must be a lot to talk about?
On reddit, the crypto-themed subreddits (that I know of) are almost entirely comprised of doom-and-gloom-sentiment and astroturfing, while subreddits outside of this bubble are reminiscent of HN, where specific crypto projects almost never reach the frontpage and if they do, the discussion is seldomly about specifics.
I've found that all the smart crypto people congregate on twitter and discord, which is sort of a shame because it results in a lot of the conversation being ephemeral.
There is plenty of interesting discussion, both on Twitter and in community-specific areas like blogs and Discords and such. It’s just drowned out by the nonsense, which is inevitable due to the association so many people have with getting rich quick with cryptocurrencies. It’s the same with retail traders buying options - there is some interesting discussions happening in some places, and interesting strategies being run, but it’s hard to find over the masses of spam.
I think the issue is more nuanced. Many of the arguments against cryptocurrencies (or blockchain technologies) do have merit in my view (e.g. Theter being a scam, economic concerns such as deflation or the problematic envrionmental impact of PoW) but that does not mean that the entire space and any further innovation in it should be dismissed outright. However, I agree with you that this is the prevailing sentiment on HN. I find this quite sad because substantiated discussions on reddit about cryptocurrencies gets drowned out by all the shilling that is going on.
I'd really like to discuss arguments against blockchain as I view some very valid (especially long-term deflation concerns) others not so much (Tether, PoW), but sadly not here (or reddit for that matter). I wonder if just stating my views around Tether (eg. not a problem, not relevant, not really a scam) will be enough to trigger knee-jerk reaction.
Sad that it has to be like that, I view HN as the #1 place where engineers, technologists, geeks and nerds meet. Looks like they all enjoy some blockchain bashing.
This is not my area of expertise but I am a Swiss lawyer.
- Switzerland does indeed have freedom of speech and press but this does not mean that you can say "whatever you want", not to the same extent as in the US at least.
- What could follow here is either civil or criminal litigation or both. Relevant are Art. 28 ff. of the Civil Code [1] or Art. 173 of the Penal Code [2].
- However low the chance of success for Proton AG might be here, do not "open a dialogue" and do not "explain" or "justify" your arguments further, as other commenters have suggested. I cannot stress this enough, OP.
- Faced with a lawsuit, your best option by far would be to consult with a lawyer. If that is too expensive or disproportionate for such a small blog, your second best option would probably be to ignore them to see if they acutally file a lawsuit. In this case you will still have ample time to seek counsel later.
Thanks for clarifying - I appreciate the correction to my admittedly non-local knowledge.
But I'd love to hear more rationale why it would unwise to open a dialogue? Not specific to this scenario, of course, but in general what risk does that expose?
Any statements made in writing could end up being admitted as evidence. Since OP might have to prove that what they stated was factual or that they had reason to believe it was factual, they should exercise utmost caution in their correspondence. What is beneficial and what is not is almost impossible to evaluate for a "non-lawyer". People are often naive when it comes to the legal process and end up dumbfounded when the opposing party twists their every word.
Amendment to my original comment: It just crossed my mind that the federal law against unfair competition (UWG) could also be applicable.
All of the dialogue will probably be admissible should this eventually be litigated, OP will be corresponding with a lawyer, OP is not a lawyer, OP has substantial risk to consider about whether this dialogue would make their situation worse through e.g. admitting some of the article isn’t factual or is defamatory.
I do not believe this to be true just based on what I observe in my social circles. It might be a bit skewed but these numbers sound absurd - do you have any source to back them up?
Men and women are not so different.