collaborative

Thanks for letting me know. Oh yeah, I can see in the logs that someone was summarizing a 100-page PDF. It slowed things down for a few seconds. All should be well now (I need to tweak the PDF function to prevent this, it seems to cause issues)

I don't know, my experience is that there is a group of people who don't mind paying for things online. I can generally group them in "people who own a mac, an iphone or an ipad"

I still am clueless as to how to generate a network effect without giving things away for free. And as you said, once it's free, it's expected to remain free

The cynical me says that some people are able to generate a network effect because of fame or because of an existing network to which they belong (i.e. being chosen at YC or published in a newspaper). For example, FB was promoted to death in all US campuses for free during the 2000s. I wonder how that happened (honest question)

I recently built AI Search with 0 frameworks and dependencies (please don't hate because of the word AI)

For comparison, similar sites are a lot heavier (not criticizing anyone here)

phind.com = 1.09MB

you.com = 1.3MB

aisearch.vip = 0.035MB

I still find the ~1MB of other sites to be ok, but 35kB is the smallest I've ever made a full SPA and that's simply because every single letter in the code is specifically made for this one and only site (and uses vanilla everything)

Plus, in the case where you'd choose to build a real business, now you'd have to meet user expectations of everything being free because that's what they get everywhere else.

I am trying something different that might work for you with aisearch.vip

The challenge will be staying true to not showing ads, respecting user privacy, and not requiring a subscription. So far, the only thing that works is free daily quota + pre-paid

Thanks for the free accusation. I did try to join the community because I don't want to simply post and leave. For example, I posted on the sister subreddit deMicrosoft and engaged other users on how to best set up my daughter's first linux PC

I suppose you failed to read the bit where the mods specifically asked me to create the post. Either way, the overwhelming majority of the village enjoyed the post

I rarely visit Reddit or any other panopticon (this one however - HN - keeps tricking me into posting)

Anyway, I recently contacted the mods of deGoogle to see if they would like to add to their side bar the ad-free search engine I have been working on all the time for a couple months now

They basically said they didn't trust me (again, no karma) but asked me to post on the board to see feedback

The post quickly drew ire from a user who accused me of disrespecting the community (although he later calmed down once he learned that the mods had "given their blessing" for me to post)

Anyway, even though the post largely received positive feedback and was really upvoted (and user retention from that post has been amazing), the mods ended up dismissing me in a pretty cold way

That's why I fail to feel sympathy for anyone involved in these "villages". As a "stranger", I fail to comprehend their struggle for fairness and virtue. As a side note, HN is starting to feel a bit alienating too. Lately, I find myself not posting for fear of being downvoted - or worse - downvoted and search indexed

Here is the post I am talking about anyway (subreddit is currently on strike)

https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/13qpzy4/a_new_sea...

I misunderstood. Yes, that's not ok

what payment method would you prefer? I find Stripe to be one of the least invasive payment SDKs. Am I wrong?

I love it. I hope the internet one day will move to paid models. The current state of affairs is untenable. Ads, privacy issues, the lot. One thing I have tried doing recently is using a pre-paid model + free tier. Perhaps I am in the minority, but I absolutely dislike subscriptions. They make me stay up at night wondering if I have some subscription still active I no longer need. With a pre-paid model, users can pay for usage and not have to worry until next time they come back. It can be very cheap, too

ps. text box background colors look better when they are different than main page background colors (slightly darker or brighter)

Probably not a coincidence. However, HN is also strangely slow. Are reddit users coming here to check perhaps?

Would be cool to have a "federated" group of people offering their endpoints to route things like this API. With enough of them, they wouldn't be able to block it. Actually now that that I think of it, we could already use the Tor network for this

sure, but what do you consider to be an ad company? is a newspaper that places sponsored articles an ad company? accounting for "marketing" expenses might be easier to track and at the end of the day, companies use accountants that are liable and so need to report accurately

The point is that "openly" advertising would be capped. That would reduce the price of doing so, making it more affordable to smaller players and removing the insane profits ad monopolists enjoy today. Plus, "openly" advertising is one of the most effective ways of advertising. Lastly, by diverting marketing budgets to non-traditional routes (charity donations, etc), the economy would benefit as money would be spread more evenly across

It honestly escapes me how these companies can be sustainable. The whole market is sooo inefficient. Companies also pay crazy money to appear in privileged positions in supermarkets shelves, and they will often pay crazy money for simply being in the supermarket at all

I just don't get where all the marketing money is coming from. Bootstrapping is clearly not an option these days

@h4kor one of my crazy ideas is to cap money companies are allowed to spend on Marketing once they reach a certain size. It would encourage a better form of decentralized capitalism and prevent monopolies

It's a monopoly on eye balls. People don't casually walk in front of domain names, they must find them on Google

As a result, spending ad money on Google is ridiculously expensive, but companies accept this because there is no alternative hoping to "build long lasting relations" with the people who make them pay upwards of 1 dollar per click

Actually I wish many of my colleagues used GPT to write their emails

I think you're right

AI has replaced 90% of my SO searches. I now don't contribute anything back and have to trust unvetted code that tends to have defects

Coincidentally, SO seems to be worse. But then again, I only use it 10% of the time so I might be wrong

Then you wouldn't exist. Even the smallest business goes through years of losses before it (hopefully) reaches profitability. Pay to sell is the only way nearly 100% of incumbents have to simply exist. If they don't do it, someone else will

Traditionally, businesses build a reputation and customers learn where to find them (a physical location). They then become and stay profitable. Anyone depending on a monopolist for its pay-to-sell strategy won't usually reach profitability. The monopolist might be as small as a greedy feudal lord in the middle ages. Today we have Apple/Google etc

Someone in the comments section here explains they will be no later than Spring 2024

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/25/apple-forced-to-allow-t...

Blatantly written by Bard (via Bard API)

Interesting. What I mean is that forums used to feel welcoming and moderators were much more hands off - usually only acting because of general outcries

People would also usually post from multiple users whereas now it's all about tanking karma

Distribution is blocked by big tech and even mentioning what you are working on will get you perma banned from most subreddits because of "spam"

In fact, HN is a rara avis in that it allows "Show HN" posts

I am sorry this happened to Neeva. My much less known search engine costs me little $ + my time. This makes a huge difference vs VC funded ideas that need runway and hype to IPO. And nowadays hype is in high supply. It almost feels like people are experiencing hype overdose

As sad as it sounds, people contribute because they want Karma, validation, and to be challenged. This goes away with regurgitators

The benchmark says the fastest model takes 0.3s for 20 tokens. Does this mean it would take 30 seconds for 2000 tokens?

He's just cynical and greedy. Guy has a bunker with an airstrip and is eagerly waiting for the collapse he knows will come if the likes of him get their way

They claim to serve the world, but secretly want the world to serve them. Scummy 101

I concluded he was scummy after his podcast with Lex Friedman. Lex also sucked up hard and seems to be doing well riding the AI hype wave

Pretty repulsive altogether