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Imustaskforhelp 7 hours ago

Another comment here but here are all the search engines I looked at:

1. DDG 2. Kagi 3. Brave 4. Ecosia 5. Startpage 6. Marginalia 7. Mojeek 8. Yandex.ru

from 1-5 all referenced .net before .dev and DDG referenced .net before github , marinalia didn't give me either .net, .dev or gh link but rather docker.com or some other tech articles

Mojeek and Yandex.ru DID give me .dev links before .net at the time of writing.

I literally opened these two as a joke especially Mojeek not expecting too much But I just know names of lots of search engines so I tried.

Mojeek and Yandex.ru have surprised me although I think yandex.ru might have referenced the .dev because of https://nanoclaw.dev/ru/ as it points to this.

Mojeek seems interesting now from this observation

I also wanted to try swisscows but looks like they have become 100% premium as I do remember being able to search for free but now a popup comes.

I also tried baidu (chinese search engine) and it gave results in chinese and firefox translate sort of stuttered and didn't work when I tried to translate, I don't know chinese so pasted it in claude and it doesn't link to either .net or .dev but rather chinese links.

Now with all of this observation, I think that we do know one Provider (Mojeek) who won. A lot of these on these lists are actually not independent except Mojeek and brave and probably yandex.ru

SO I guess the main takeaway from this could be that Independent search engines can be interesting. They can still be hit or miss but the more independent search engines the merrier given that some might miss but some will also hit.

My comment definitely feels like a good reputation bonus for mojeek. Well anything for more independent search engines imo. I looked at their about me and it seems that they are a single person (Marc Smith). Fascinating stuff

I know marginalia_nu is on hn so maybe marginalia and mojeek can share some index together. Anyways this was a fun exciting experiment to do. I hope the community tries out other search engines if I may have missed any and share insights if a particular search engine gives interesting results.

roywiggins 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I think you put more effort into this comment than the entire OP, which was clearly written by Claude.

Imustaskforhelp 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Now that does say something about the world, doesn't it?

I think this had just made me curious so yeah haha

I mean one thing I am not understanding is why they would write an article with AI tho. They still prompted AI, might as well give us what they prompted or just write under <300 words or less. I mean its literally twitter (refuse to call it X)

Or like make a 2 minute video with screenshare just talking to the camera about it like they might've with claude perhaps.

They also have discord, They could have literally given a free contributor to help write the article from such video or concerns and credit them properly. I mean, heck I could've written the article for free for just a credit at this point where I got so invested haha.

I genuinely don't understand why you would prompt an article/text out of all things with AI. I hope I never get persuaded with this dark side lol.

roywiggins 7 hours ago | parent [-]

My guesses in no particular order:

1) this style genuinely is preferred by lots of people on X/Twitter so you might as well lean into it

2) People who spend a lot of time with LLMs think this sort of writing is normal or even standard just through overexposure, a sort of pseudo social proof

2b) People who spend a lot of time with other people who use LLMs think this is how humans write (actual social proof)

3) People are insecure about their writing ability and find the non-judgmental non-human LLM editor soothing

4) people are lazy

5) people aren't lazy per se but they know writing has been so devalued that they aren't going to spend time on it that they don't need to

6) their first experience of writing was trying to hit word count requirements in grade school and that stuck

7) Visibly using LLMs is becoming a shibboleth for a social group on Twitter and LinkedIn. It's a marker that you are dogfooding the crappy AI tools you're developing and selling. Under this theory, being visibly LLM output is actually intentional: "look ma, no hands- all NanoClaw!"

Imustaskforhelp 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> 3) People are insecure about their writing ability and find the non-judgmental non-human LLM editor soothing

My writing style gets criticized. a lot (I think its from people who have good hearts who just want to point out some flaws and I appreciate that). So I will admit that I understand this point because if someone questions your writing style, you do get insecure and sometimes I did have thoughts of leaving hackernews because of it, because I mean I always took pride in all of my comments, they are mine after all :)

I don't think you can ever fix that, All AI does is remove that critique from you to LLM but I'd say that the largest reason people might do it is because its hard to respond to such criticism (IMO).

If suppose someone says your writing is bad. To me, it takes a huge mental effort to not be angry at the decision and type something. It takes me time to reflect and try to respond to them peacefully.

I think I am only able to do that because I imagine this as a person who has business and I imagine how I would want an ideal business or a person who has business would want to reply and how it would look on the business. I have witnessed some businesses who are absolutely top notch but their responses/nature in forums sometimes is very off-putting. I'd rather try to do opposite.

And to me, its those particular comments that I write that I cherish the most. I had once written a comment which felt so good to me personally from a criticism that I seriously wondered how I wrote that. For a few days, I can't say for sure but I remember just looking up at that comment whenever I felt bad.

The one thing I agree is that it can be very time consuming tho to respond to such criticism.

I mean, I try to respond to these comments nicely but that doesn't mean I am not insecure about my writing. I do think that I may project that if I write a nice comment but yeah, I believe everyone can be insecure about writing to some degree. And chances are that most people are more likely to create a ruckus of the situation than handle it well.

So I think from all of this, if I had to summarize it, I'd like it if people could share their concerns but in a way which is agreeable. If you don't like someone's writing, try to point it out in a way of feedback/cooperation that the other person I can agree in.

If you do want to point out someone's writing, try to imagine yourself being in their situation and try to anticipate what message might be the most beneficial/(cooperative?) in that sense. Just imagine yourself in their shoes basically.

So I do agree with you on this point. Perhaps point 5) as well because this comment took me 40 mins to write and think.

It's also how time is invested, like people rather use their 40 mins to create a project which can reach x stars on github and that will have some definite measure. Whereas this comment got no measure in like, the value right now but I like to think that given enough long time, if I ever create anything. These comments could be meaningful in that regards to show what I think maybe.

Another part is that I can't stand obnoxious reddit/twitter. Those algorithms feel flawed to me and I'd rather not contribute to that machine and the funny thing is that the above line of thinking might be more beneficial in those platforms than here given that they are mainstream but yeah.

More than anything, I just write because I find these topics interesting to type about or that, I write for myself, I wish to read these comments I type in future to really see what I was thinking about stuff. Kinda like a journal and twitter/reddit platforms are less intended for such long comments than HN and tbh HN can have its limits too but I think the community overall is much more receptive of long comments.

(Imagine if I wrote you such a long post on a random subreddit or in twitter, those platforms are less likely to capture nuance imo)

Edit: were these the best 40 minutes I have spent, probably not, that was playing skribble with my friend yesterday but like I did get a comment permanently about a particular topic I can reference anywhere in a discussion and it was interesting to think about it. But if a person doesn't care about it or the community doesn't do backlash about AI writing and those were your points. So yeah I do agree with you more and more thinking about it honestly.

To some people, it could be an interesting tradeoff to spend less time thinking or writing but I mean, that doesn't feel right to me, especially if you are passionate about something I guess.