Yeah I follow all 3 people I know that use it. Hooray.

Why bother taking the survey then, or is it somehow mandatory?

I tried to use it, but honestly without an algorithm, it’s simply an empty page. And I don’t want to follow hashtags, since there’s usually too much semi-relevant garbage linked to those. So either I have a curated feed of only the people I follow, which gets boring, or I got nothing at all.

Frustrates me as well, but the reason is quite simple that people search for “$device cable”, and sellers need to list all of them so the search engine of choice lands the user there.

They should still list the specs though.

You bet I would.

Not tipping is not giving my money away for nothing.

Tipping culture creates unwarranted expectations and removes obligations from employers.

I’ve stopped tipping decades ago and won’t look back.

Private mode has all trackers disabled, so they might be able to trace the IP to my router, but not to a specific device (assuming you have random hardware ID activated). With kagi it’s traced to a specific account regardless.

And while I’m running a VPN by default, kagi will still be able to identify me, so that’s an absolute no-go.

I’m using kagi on and off, but haven’t reached the point where I’m confident that paid search is the answer. Especially since that ties results to accounts even in privat mode, so they can claim no log policies as much as they want, I don’t trust it.

DDG doesn’t deliver the same quality as google, bing is garbage for anything but porn, and Yandex works surprisingly well, but whether I want my data in Russia is another story. In private mode I use it occasionally.

Nope, you can’t disable it at all, this is the only workaround that currently gets rid of their crap.

In your browser settings under search configure a new custom search with the following string:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%25s&udm=14

That attaches the string udm=14 to every search in the browser toolbar, which omits all AI features.

The downside is that if you’re searching for translation or currency conversion it won’t show you those as google features on top of the search results either, but only as separate links.

I use amazon to buy ebooks, and order stuff to my parents or friends back home if they are coming over, when there’s something I can’t get locally.

Taobao is the same garbage as Aliexpress, Temu would be Pinduoduo (which is so riddled with poor knockoffs that locals avoid it and crack jokes about the stupid foreigners thinking it’s hot shit).

The only somewhat trusted platform is JD.com (jindong) or official brand shops on Taobao. Tmall belongs to Taobao, that’s just their own shop (as opposed to third party sellers), but there’s no guarantee you actually buy authentic products either.

Wow, where I’m at you can book them 3-5 days in advance, no stress.

Remote in what sense? I’m in China.

I don’t want to deal with their abysmal costumer service, and I’m not giving my address and phone number to some Chinese data center if I can help it.

There are ebooks listed for exactly 1 cent.

Excellent, thanks!

If you read the reviews on the play store, it seems like people get banned left and right for posting factual truth. So much for “freedom of speech”. Not like anyone expected that in the first place from a fascist echo chamber, but hey.

Does it have a dark mode? I used the website mostly which is alright, but tried the app when they announced it a couple days ago, and that was my first issue.

They don’t blacklist IP addresses generally, though some are certainly blocked. But normally they run deep packet inspections and block traffic that is identified as VPN traffic based on certain header data. That’s what makes the firewall “great” in the first place; many other countries simply block a range of IP addresses, and all it takes is for the VPN provider to switch the IP in their data warehouse. That’s trivial and takes seconds, and many providers rotate their IPs on a regular basis to prevent blocks in the first place.

Because of the deep packet inspection, OpenVPN and wireguard as protocols are entirely useless in China whatsoever, for example. Stealth mode AFAIK is using a modified wireguard protocol that obfuscates certain headers and thereby avoids detection (for now).

Without.