On further thought - since I was just trying it out as a standalone tab, and not a default search page, it just felt awkward. However, if I wanted to bookmark it or make it the page that appears when I open a new tab - that would be ideal. Sorry if I unnecessarily inquired too soon.
So what made you create that site? Any plans to monetize it or was it just for fun? Can you mine data from what people are searching or is it fully anonymous?
I made it for two main reasons. Firstly, I didn't want to burn through my limited Kagi trial searches. Secondly, I wanted to use bangs and snaps with search engines that don't support them.
I built it first and foremost as a tool for myself, and I don't have any explicit plans to monetise it. Donations are always appreciated though.
Privacy-wise, I can't see what you search, as all the site does is run some client-side JavaScript that constructs a simple URL based on your parameters, then directs you there. No back-end server or tracking or whatnot.
Cool - thanks for the response. I do have a question though - when you say "I didn't want to burn through my limited Kagi trial searches..." How does using your engine overlay not use up the Kagi searches? I found that I still had to login to Kagi in order for it to work - thus using up my limited (100 searches per month) level. Please explain!
I log into Kagi but usually don't have it as my default engine. I can search with DuckDuckGo or Google and then only jump over to Kagi with a bang when I really need to, which helps preserve my limited searches. While Kagi doesn't count bang searches, which could let me use it as a default, I'm an idiot and will forget/mistype, which causes an accidental usage.
I also found Kagi's snaps very useful, but being able to use them with other engines means I don't have to burn a Kagi search just to use them.
Awww. All those grumpy people who now cannot spend money they were going to steal from others. Am I the only one who feels these (or any) tolls go against the right to freely travel?
You would need to change that to "the right to freely travel by any method of my choosing" for your point to stand. If you don't believe in the right to commute by tank, it's pretty easy to see that some communities may not extend a right to freely travel by car.
As an NYC resident I was literally just looking forward to fewer cars. That's an end unto itself. If the program successfully discouraged enough drivers to earn no income, then that's an optimal result.
Like 99% of Canada for example is totally open for anyone to freely travel. But you’d probably eventually die of dysentery. I think where this daydream breaks is the implicit desire to freely travel on land that’s been developed and maintained.
there is no right to freely travel. you can’t walk in the middle of the street and you can’t drive your car on the sidewalk. there are rules governing where you can go and how you can get there everywhere. and anyway if you take a car into manhattan during rush hour you won’t be freely traveling, you’ll be stuck in traffic not going anywhere
He sort of has the right to use what he's paid for — his car.
He'll feel good about missing the things to be paid for with those $15B though. That only affects his ability to do things. If he wants ability, he has to think about how to pay for the things, and "don't pay" isn't an option if he wants the ability.
If you were to poll a thousand Americans a question such as "if you buy a car, do you have a right to use it on public roads?", how many per cent do you think would say yes? I'd guess >50%.
While I personally think the correct answer is no (IMO NY voters get to decide on that via city government), the opinion of the majority isn't something one should disregard.
Generally roads funded with public money in the US don’t become toll roads. Congestion isn’t only a problem in NYC. Imagine if every once public road became a public toll road. Something feels off about that even though I’m bullish on using market economics to solve civil problems like transit and parking.
You do not have a right to paved roads. I don't believe there would be any constitutional barricade to NYC closing every one of it's public roads and selling the land to private owners.
"Lack of good search engines" could also once again be said about the current state of SEO hijacking. There was a good 10 year period (I guess around 2000-2010 give or take) where you could truly find useful stuff via search.
Today is garbage. Best to use site search on individual known websites.
Very cool - but I discovered something ominous about it. After just a few minutes of the repetitive, infinite music - I began to feel uneasy. I would suspect that being forced to hear this for an extended amount of time could lead to very bad results. Up to and including insanity and worse.
Another angle is - "tech reporters" don't want to touch this because some mysterious blacklisting would result and their digital life would slowly come crumbling down. They're afraid to ruffle feathers.
No real justification for conspiracy theories. We have already seen a company fail when betting on PWA to fill in gaps in native app support for their platform - it was called Windows Phone.
Why do you need to mirror your phone?
Why do you want to access your messages? For what purpose?
What do you need to backup besides (maybe) photos? Which is easy (drag and drop) anyway.
Sounds more like you have some kind of device dependency beyond normality.
I think when you say "why do you need to ____?" you think you're saying "what are you trying to do, and maybe there's another way to accomplish that", but what everyone hears is "you're right".
And for the record, "because it's their device, not Google's" should be as good a reason as any.
Actually I'm just wondering specifically why the need to do any of those things. Isn't the phone just fine as a standalone thing? I mean other than maybe exporting photos, videos, or sound to a more powerful and easier to use platform (such as a desktop)...
This is like asking, "why do you need a touch screen or internet on a phone in the first place? Neither are needed to make phone calls. Isn't a phone just fine as a standalone thing?"
It's not 2005 anymore, a phone has all the computing power that most people need. In fact, most laptops are just phone boards these days. It's completely reasonable to ask that your hardware not be artificially limited by the software it's running so they can sell you a separate device that does the rest of what you need.
In a perfect world, my phone is a supercomputer capable of doing everything I'll ever want in a fraction of a second. And the thing standing between my current phone and a perfect phone shouldn't be my insistence on having a separate giant desktop taking up more space than is necessary.
I do the NYT crossword on my iPhone. Not uncommonly, someone will start kibitzing over my shoulder. If there's a TV nearby, I throw the app up there, either with AirPlay or an HDMI cable. Because it's an iPhone, the app can detect that it's mirrored to a big screen and give an alternate layout for that screen; the NYT crossword app does an average job of this, giving a layout optimized for large 16:9 landscape displays. Makes two people (or ten) working on a crossword together much more pleasant.
I'm not sure if this is a weird use case or not, but given the number of iPhone apps that I have both used and written that have special handling for TV mirroring to improve user experience... it can't be /that/ rare.
I sometimes have to give presentations at a community center or church or some random venue and I just need to plug in to their TV/projector. Got my slides all ready to go. Is that asking so much?
