Kubernetes is not really meant primarily for scaling. Even kubernetes clusters require autoscaling groups on nodes to support it, for example, or horizontal pod autoscalers, but they are minor features.

The benefits are pooling computing resources and creating effectively a private cloud. Easy replication of applications in case of hardware failure. Single language to deploy applications, network controls, etc.

Yes if single node, kinda if 2-3 nodes, no for anything above that IMHO.

Sorry about that :) But you get the credit for spotting the problem! Thanks for that!

I don't think so, does it sound weird? Not a native speaker, so maybe it does :)

Thanks, I will go and double check, I am sure there are more typos!

I honestly didn't think at all about the use of checkmarks/crosses and the fact that it can be misinterpreted, I will add a disclaimer.

A bigger issue IMO is how you describe email encryption in transit as a matter of fact, but according to Google transparency report[1] there are still domains that do not support in transit encryption, and, what’s worse, when you send an email you can’t tell if it will be encrypted or not.

you are right. The reason why I took that for granted is because I assumed the scenario in which people use the "mainstream" providers. I was looking at data and I think Outlook and Gmail alone make up more than 50% of the market share. I made an assumption which I considered fair, as 99%+ of the users do not need to worry about this at all. However, this is interesting data and I might add a note about it as well, so thanks!

Thanks a lot! Hopefully at least someone finds it helpful!

That's a very interesting gotcha. They don't seem to support address ranges either. Unless once you add the whitelist the requests still work from any address (their documentation is ambiguous). This is even more confusing.

Thanks for the feedback, and same to @[email protected] and @[email protected]. I fixed the configuration of the site and now the site should be readable even in light mode.

In most cases! Sorry, I simply don't believe it. Once you operate for 5, 10, 20 years not having capitalized anything is expensive as hell, even without the skill issue (which is not a great argument, as it is the case for almost anything).

It's almost always the case with rent vs invest.

Do you have some numbers?

I cite a couple of articles in the post, and here is a nice list of companies and orgs that run outside the Cloud (it's a bit old!) or decided to move away. Many big companies with their own DC, which is not surprising, but also smaller (Wikipedia!).

37signals also showed a huge amount of savings (it's one of the two links in the post) moving away from the cloud. Do you have any similar data that shows the opposite (like we saved X after going cloud)? I am genuinely curious

Edit: here is another one https://tech.ahrefs.com/how-ahrefs-saved-us-400m-in-3-years-by-not-going-to-the-cloud-8939dd930af8 Looking solely at the compute resources, there was an order of magnitude of difference between cloud costs and hosting costs (x11). Basically a value comparable (in reality double) to the whole revenue of the company.

Redundancy should be automatic. Raid5 for instance.

Yeah it should, but something needs to implement that. I mean, when distributed systems work redundancy is automatic, but they can also fail. We are talking about redundancy implemented via software, and software has bugs, always. I am not saying that it can't be achieved, of course it can, but it has a cost.

You can have an oracle (or postgres, or mongo) DB with multi region redundancy, encryption and backups with a click.

I know, and if you don't understand all that complexity you can still fuckup your postgres DB in a disastrous way. That's the whole point of this thread. Also operators can do the same for you nowadays, but again, you need to know your systems.

Much, much simpler for a sysadmin (or an architect) than setting the simplest mysql on a VM.

Of course it is. You are paying someone else for that job. Not going to argue with that. In fact, that's what makes it boring (which I talked about in the post).

Unless you’re in the business of configuring databases, your developers should focus on writing insurance risk code, or telco optimization, or whatever brings money.

This is a modern dogma that I simply disagree with. Building an infrastructure tailored around your needs (i.e., with all you need and nothing else) and cost effective does bring money, it does by saving costs and avoiding to spend an enormous amount of resources into renting all of that, forever, scaling with your business.

You can build a redundant system in a day like Legos, much better security and higher availability (hell, higher SLAs even) than anything a team of 5 can build in a week self-manging everything.

This is the marketing pitch. The reality is that companies still have huge teams, still have tons of incidents, still take long to deliver projects, still have security breaches, but they are spending 3, 5, 10 times as much and nothing of those money is capitalized.

I guess we fundamentally disagree, I envy you for what positive experiences you must have had!

I will cut it short because I think we understood each other. I get your point of view, and I think it boils down to relative vs absolute harm. I think that consolidating the already established monopoly is worse, but ultimately it doesn't matter, you seem to reach the conclusion of third parties (which is similar to what I also reached, meaning Kagi wouldn't exist). The problem with that imho is that it doesn't move the needle. It does not present an alternative way to provide internet services for companies. I am not sold yet on free labor and donations as the basis for the internet. I think there are a few cases that work (lichess being my favourite), but ultimately I don't think it scales or applies to everything. Besides, that also works until the big dogs allow it to work, and if they do, they are probably still earning on it (the moment Google wants to shut down searx, it locks the scraping and goodbye).

I do like Kagi's features, I do like their own scrapers results (personal/small websites, which I find much more useful compared to corpo blogs about tech stuff). I do like the concept of lens where I decide where to search easily, same for upranking/downranking websites in a custom way. I wouldn't consider this event part of a bad track, I think this is still a reasonable business strategy, although I will hold them accountable in the future (as they grow, they should do more in-house).

This is more of a distraction than a distinction. Kagi’s results mostly come from others.

No, this is a big distinction. If you don't care about it or you don't appreciate the differences, there are plenty of resources online where these are explained. For once, an engine can parse the query and search based on its own logic. A metasearch will always just use your query and get results from the sources.

Its community is criticizing it for the results coming from others. A criticism that, I note, you don’t seem to touch. If you must respond to anything, I would love to hear your response to their corporate decision to fund a shady company run by a shady man.

First of all, the criticism is from a tiny fraction of the community, and it is about which others the results are coming from, looking at it from a very narrow angle. It is not about the fact that the results are coming from others, but only from the fact that they are coming also from Brave.

My opinion is fairly simple: I believe the damages of funding bad companies is less than the benefits of having a good one, with a good product which can have a substantially good impact on the infosphere, thrive. I believe that Google is a way worse company compared to what Brave will ever be, for example. However, I understand that if Kagi stopped taking results from anything which is not minor scrapers and its own scraper, Kagi wouldn't exist (or at least, it would be a completely unusable product). If Brave integration can mean less money to Google in the medium term, it is a net-positive change from where I stand. And I am saying this as a de-googled taliban who stopped using any of their services for years. Considering that they integrate Google, Yandex, Mojeek and Brave, I would say that Brave is actually the less-worse of the major ones.

… Known by who? It’s definitely not common knowledge.

Known by whoever read the very conversation on kagifeedback. The company even answered to this particular point:

Brave API is cheaper than Google API. If we can figure out a way to do use it transparently without negatively impacting search results, we can use this to lower our costs (currently we serve both, but this is not the plan long term).

Which is a pretty good demonstration that Kagi as a corporation is seeking profit first and foremost.

That's extremely surprising for a company which is not profitable and did not even get VC funding. Also, the company has a good track of caring about its users. When they brought costs down, not long ago, they modified the plans and expanded the amount of searches (bringing the middle tear to unlimited searches), passing down the savings to the users. This was effectively reverting a change they implemented half a year earlier -> https://blog.kagi.com/unlimited-searches-for-10.

With new search sources proving more cost-efficient, the improved efficiency of our infrastructure, and the broader market embracing Kagi, we can again offer an unlimited experience to a broader group of users. We’re excited that this change will let many more people enjoy a fun, ad-free, and user-centric web search.

Marketing move? I don't know, but what I know is that they did something many other companies would never do.

hen you only nitpick the label I gave my examples, not the “we’re all in it together” emotional appeals aping the language of a non-profit. For example, “We exist to make the internet a healthier, happier place for everyone” Which I found on the business’ page you mentioned, is written more like they are a cutesy nonprofit than anything.

So, I am quoting the fact that the company is extremely transparent about its business strategy, it doesn't hide the fact that needs to earn money, it is transparent about its costs (incl. per search). You are applying your own bias and interpretation on sentences which in no way lead to intend that they are a non-profit ("utilizing the language of" is not "pretending to be").

I mean, if you want to believe that they are trying to act like a non-profit, I can't change your mind. There are direct quote of the CEO talking about profitability, e.g.,

This is part of the reason we included these search results - now we have 4 search indexes to work with and are much more resilient to any one killing the relationship on a whim. This also allows us to optimize cost as we can use different indexes for different queries, which is another important consideration for us as Kagi is not profitable yet.

There are entire forum threads where they discuss subscription models and profitability. It's overwhelmingly clear that they are a for-profit company, which just decided to use a different business model with the idea of serving internet users (their customers), and therefore "humanize" the web. Now, you can filter out the corporate marketing BS, if you wish, but I see absolutely no ground to support that they are acting in bad faith trying to present themselves as a non-profit.

The main point is that profit is not bad by default. A co-op generating profit is absolutely great, for example. The point is how that profit is generated, and how it is distributed. If the model is based on a fair and transparent relationship with customers, which does not involve squeezing them so that the execs can buy their 3rd yacht, I don't have a problem with that. If it's not based on destroying users' privacy to serve businesses (advertisers), I don't have a problem with that. I will say more, in a capitalist world, this is the most we can hope for and if all companies would act like this, we would be way better than we are today.