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bjord

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Engineer with passions for privacy and entrepreneurship, as well as a soft spot for things with wheels. American based in Kazakhstan.

hn@<username>.xyz // https://max.bio

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enrico, at this point you're knowingly spreading misinformation. I corrected you in my last comment: the yandex search index is owned by the russian entity. there is no non-russian "yandex" anymore, period.

After a short transition period following completion, YNV will cease to use the Yandex brand, which will be retained by the Target group. We expect that our International Businesses will develop their own branding going forward. We intend to seek shareholder approval to change the legal name of YNV in due course.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1513845/000151384524...

this is absolutely not true. yandex IS the russia-related business that got sold in 2024, the dutch entity (now known as "nebius group") is basically just data centers now.

I'm not saying I agree with it, but I think this comment

Yandex does not add any special feature or functionality that is so great they should make it obligatory to include as a default option.

kind of captures kagi's argument: that its removal would degrade search results in a not-immediately-noticeable way, particularly for certain areas of the world, which might actually be worse than a loss of a distinct add-on feature or something.

...but yeah, from my perspective, it'd be great if you could turn it off.

they're conflating yandex with the international entity that sold it off to russian investors (now known as "nebius group"). the entire basis of the argument is wrong.

no it didn't. the international entity sold off the vast majority of yandex businesses and assets to russian investors, then rebranded to "nebius group". that is to say that the yandex index/api used by kagi is wholly russian-owned and has essentially doubled down on russia/its allies.

if you're curious, the dominant business retained by the international entity was their data center stuff (though yandex still operates its own cloud business in russia/elsewhere).

there was a community of people who used (famously sycophantic) gpt 4o as—for lack of a better word—a friend, who were devastated when it was shut down

I suppose at least in this case the loss is not an emotional one?

they're not saying it's fair to consumers, they're saying "it's not just apple, microsoft does it too", i.e. that judgement on apple should be made in the context of how its competitors behaved

Claude Fable 5 1 month ago

I'm aware that it was marketing. I was trying to make the point that if it were really so dangerous, they wouldn't have released it at all, (prompt injectable) "safeguards" or otherwise.