+
+ Introducing askLyphe!
+ (pronounced "ask leaf") +2024-09-05
+written by Niko Chow-Stuart (Founder)
+ +
+
+ + so! here's the project we've been working on for quite some time! +
++ 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. +
++ 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. +
++ at the very least, i figured that the world would be better off with an alternative. +
++ 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. +
++ 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. +
++ since it's been long enough for the patents to expire, we referenced a certain stanford paper written by + the creators of that one car company. 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. +
++ now while it still may be a huge amount, 1 million is nowhere near the actual true size of the internet. hell, + that car company mentioned earlier started their search + engine with around 2 million sites indexed with much lower-end hardware. +
++ 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. +
++ 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. +
++ 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 xbox's search engine, + however we may expand or change this in the future. +
++ 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 askLyphe is in an invite-only alpha. +
++ in the near future, we plan to allow anyone who donates for a short period to our libera-pay page + access to the alpha; however our main plan for release is to charge around $5USD a month for access. +
++ 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, we have a policy to refuse any investors or VC funding. +
++ 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! +
++ we will probably setup a better system for this in the future, but for now, feel free to send over an email + to devnull@voremicrocomputers.com and we'll email you + updates on askLyphe as they come out! +
++ also, feel free to check out asklyphe.com to see what we have! at the very + least, you'll be able to see how many sites we've indexed :D +
++ for now, i hope that everyone else is as excited as i am for the future of askLyphe! +
++ happy voring! +
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+ image made by @cathodegaytube!
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