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</h3>
<ul class="blog-listing">
<li><a href="posts/introducing_asklyphe/index.html">Introducing askLyphe! (2024-09-05)</a></li>
<li><a href="posts/company_update_july_2024/index.html">Company Update July 2024 (2024-07-29)</a></li>
<li><a href="posts/btrees_and_refactoring/index.html">B-Trees and Refactoring: Week 4 of VoreStation Development (2023-09-10)</a></li>
<li><a href="posts/infinite_dbas/index.html">The Simple but Awful Result of Making a Miscalculation: Week 3 of VoreStation Development (2023-08-27)</a></li>

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<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>vore microcomputers development blog - Introducing askLyphe!</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/microsoft.css"/>
<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico">
</head>
<body>
<div class="container">
<div class="container-item">
<a href="/"><img src="/assets/logo_typeset.svg" alt="vore microcomputers logo"/></a>
<h1>Introducing askLyphe!</h1>
<span>(pronounced "ask leaf")</span>
<h5>2024-09-05</h5>
<h4>written by Niko Chow-Stuart (Founder)</h4>
<img src="/blog/posts/introducing_asklyphe/asklyphe.png" alt="drawing of the askLyphe mascot next to the vore microcomputers mascot."/>
<p>
so! here's the project we've been working on for quite some time!
</p>
<p>
as many people are probably well aware of at this point, basically every modern search engine sucks.
they're always full of either ads or spam, give you a billion of the most basic seo-pandering results, and
generally don't care as much as they should about their users, as they know that you really don't have much
choice when it comes to how you search the web.
</p>
<p>
the little hope i had left for just sitting around and living with this mostly vanished with a certain
other search engine's higher-ups' decision to collaborate with another unnamed company well known for
being run by homophobes, not to mention their platform being filled with practically useless ai stuff.
</p>
<p>
at the very least, i figured that the world would be better off with an alternative.
</p>
<p>
it was sometime in spring this year when we started working on a new search engine. the most common method
of making a search engine platform today is by aggregating results from multiple different search engines
(known as a "meta search engine"), with probably one of the most well known of these being searx.
</p>
<p>
however, with what we were making, i wanted something that would last longer and allow us to expand, even if
it would potentially take years for it to pay off. which is why our first step with askLyphe, was to build
a heavily-optimized web crawler and start building our own index of the internet.
</p>
<p>
since it's been long enough for the patents to expire, we referenced a <a href="http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf">certain stanford paper written by
the creators of that one car company</a>. after some weeks of scraping, using some slightly smaller catalyst
websites (such as neocities), we managed to reach just over 1 million sites in our database.
</p>
<p>
now while it still may be a huge amount, 1 million is nowhere near the actual true size of the internet. hell,
that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google">car company</a> mentioned earlier started their search
engine with around 2 million sites indexed with much lower-end hardware.
</p>
<p>
however, this is only the beginning. we've had our crawlers turned off for a bit while we work on things
behind the scenes to make sure that everything works perfectly and our databases aren't filled with garbage.
and as such, with this announcement we plan to bring our crawlers up once again to truly index as much of
the internet as we can.
</p>
<p>
that being said, even in its early state, we've managed to get askLyphe to the point at which both i and
my wife can easily daily drive it without losing out on our previous ability to search.
</p>
<p>
that's mainly as, since we plan for this to be very long-term, we've build askLyphe as both a standard and a
meta search engine. currently, we're integrating results from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bing">xbox's search engine</a>,
however we may expand or change this in the future.
</p>
<p>
now there's plenty of other things we have already implemented or planned for askLyphe, such as our "complications" system,
a ton of fun themes (of course a very important feature to have early-on), and of course our own website database
which we're very much focused on building our search engine around; however, because we're still very early
in this project, unfortunately in its current state <strong>askLyphe is in an invite-only alpha.</strong>
</p>
<p>
in the near future, we plan to allow anyone who <a href="https://liberapay.com/voremicrocomputers/donate">donates for a short period to our libera-pay page</a>
access to the alpha; however our main plan for release is to charge around $5USD a month for access.
</p>
<p>
through this subscription model, we hope that we will be able to keep askLyphe ad-free and user-first for its
entire lifetime. and to ensure that it stays that way, <strong>we have a policy to refuse any investors or VC funding.</strong>
</p>
<p>
while it's already the (albeit somewhat un-serious) subtitle, we truly do want askLyphe to be the best search engine.
and while i wish we could say that it's a finished and perfect product already, i'm very excited to walk
the path of developing this into something amazing, no matter how long that might be!
</p>
<p>
we will probably setup a better system for this in the future, but for now, feel free to send over an email
to <a href="mailto:devnull@voremicrocomputers.com">devnull@voremicrocomputers.com</a> and we'll email you
updates on askLyphe as they come out!
</p>
<p>
also, feel free to check out <a href="https://asklyphe.com">asklyphe.com</a> to see what we have! at the very
least, you'll be able to see how many sites we've indexed :D
</p>
<p>
for now, i hope that everyone else is as excited as i am for the future of askLyphe!
</p>
<p>
happy voring!
</p>
<script src="https://liberapay.com/voremicrocomputers/widgets/button.js"></script>
<noscript><a href="https://liberapay.com/voremicrocomputers/donate"><img alt="Donate using Liberapay" src="https://liberapay.com/assets/widgets/donate.svg"></a></noscript>
<hr/>
<p id="footer">
<br>contact us at <a href="mailto:nikocs@voremicrocomputers.com">nikocs@voremicrocomputers.com</a> <a
href="/pgp.asc">pgp key</a>
<br>
for abuse, copyright, or other legal issues, contact <a href="mailto:devnull@voremicrocomputers.com">devnull@voremicrocomputers.com</a><br>
<!-- or, call at <a href="tel:1-888-519-0437">+1 (888) 519-0437 (toll-free)</a> or <a href="tel:1-507-767-9433">+1 (507) RMS-YIFF (local)</a> -->
(our phone system is currently down, sorry!)
<br><br>
Vore Microcomputers is an unregistered trademark of Real Microsoft, LLC. all references to "the company"
are in reference to Real Microsoft, LLC and the name Vore Microcomputers is only a reference to the
hardware/software focused development project held under Real Microsoft, LLC. Real Microsoft, LLC is
in no way associated with the Microsoft Corporation or its products/projects.
<br><br>
<a href="https://climate.stripe.com/4MO1d9">Our Carbon Footprint</a>
</p>
</div>
<div class="container-item">
<div class="credit">
<img src="/xenia.png"
alt="image of xenia, an anthropomorphic fox who was a contender for the linux mascot"/>
<span>image made by <a href="https://twitter.com/cathodegaytube/">@cathodegaytube</a>!</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

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<img src="/assets/logo_typeset.svg" alt="vore microcomputers logo"/>
</div>
<div class="container">
<div class="container-item-featured container-item product">
<a href="vorestation/index.html">
<img src="/assets/products/vorestation.svg" alt="logo for the vap operating system"/>
<h2>VoreStation / vap</h2>
</a>
<div class="container-item-featured">
<div class="container-item product">
<a href="https://asklyphe.com">
<img src="/assets/products/asklyphe.svg" alt="logo for the askLyphe search engine"/>
<h2>askLyphe</h2>
</a>
</div>
<div class="container-item product">
<a href="vorestation/index.html">
<img src="/assets/products/vorestation.svg" alt="logo for the vap operating system"/>
<h2>VoreStation / vap</h2>
</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="container-item product">
<a href="blog/index.html">

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