I'm not yet financially comfortable, but once I am, this is definitely how I see my life going. I love my work, but I don't love the job, I've gotten burned out too many times.
For people who want some more freedom with their time, part time is ideal. I want to have more time to experiment and learn. Currently there is just no time for it.
It really puzzles me how people would just pop a pill instead of make some lifestyle changes. Maybe it's just my personality type, but it disturbs me how most people just want something quick and easy instead of doing the actual work and becoming overall better via a real learning journey by struggling through changing bad habits.
But whatever, they do whatever works for them! I don't like pharma.
Because when people say "just make some lifestyle changes," "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Being fat really, really sucks, so most fat people have tried to make lifestyle changes, but they've gotten a lot of bad advice over the past half-century. They've cut back on fat, especially healthy animal fats, because that's what the government/medical/nutritional complex said to do, replacing them with "healthy grains," and only gotten fatter. They've tried to trim calories or portion sizes, which is difficult and ineffective for a lot of reasons. They've tried so-called weight-loss products promoted by corporations with millions to spend pushing them. They've thrown themselves into exercise plans, and while exercise is great for a lot of reasons, it doesn't have much effect on weight loss.
Even when they go outside the mainstream and try something that can actually work, like cutting carbs or fasting, it's difficult because losing weight isn't just the reverse of gaining weight. Fat cells aren't just buckets that fat falls into and can fall out of. Once energy is stored in the form of fat, it has to be burned to be removed, which requires a different set of hormones and enzymes than storing it did. Maintaining that metabolic mix generally requires an enormous amount of willpower, not just some lifestyle tweaks. People who have plenty of willpower to succeed in other areas of life like career or relationships can be defeated by it.
I don't like big pharma either, and I'm losing weight (slowly) with fasting rather than trying these drugs. But it's hard to blame people for using them, if it's a temporary fix and they're going to maintain their new weight through diet. I'm skeptical that it'll go that way for many, but I suppose there's hope.
I think I was a bit vague and blunt with my comment, and I agree with what you say here 100%
For me lifestyle changes weren't easy and as simple as "lifestyle changes". Lifestyle changes involved huge amounts of willpower, and still do to some extent. Nothing that's really valuable is possible with an easy way out. From personal experience, consistently doing something hard and building that habit is so much more sustainable long term than temporarily popping a pill and expecting the problem to stay away when they stop. I've known people who used Ozempic for some time, then stopped when they reached their goal weight, then just end up putting on that weight again. I don't blame Ozempic for it, it did its job well.
I was overweight, unhealthy and no amount of exercise and eating so-called "healthy low fat" dietician-recommended foods helped me get healthier and leaner. I had to let go of the beliefs I held about how nutrition should be. I don't blame anyone, I just find it personally puzzling that people don't seem to want to challenge the status quo because the status quo isn't working.
Fasting, low carbs and cutting out sugar completely has done so much good for me, not just on a weight loss level. It took years of self-education, figuring out what works for me and my body to get where I am now. Physical health probably isn't one of their top personal values. This goes deeper than just a simple "lifestyle change".
So yes, if this works for some people and helps them live better, good for them, and I really hope they thrive on this.
heck, I'm sitting in a team with a code base so full of slop that was written by humans, the AI can't even fix it and I'm burned out from trying to make it better. and I get told to be quiet about code standards because the team is still learning.
omg. this is what it's currently like at work. and i was told not to bring up coding standards in retrospectives. yes, i am salty AF about this. i'm dying inside.
This is cool! I am getting back into Python programming after having to work with Angular (with a code base that's a spaghetti mess of poorly used TypeScript), and doing little toy projects like this helps tremendously with bringing back the joy I once experienced with programming.
At the moment I'm building a C++ version of Tic Tac Toe, would be cool to implement it in Python.
I'm building a PyQt6 desktop app to create XML sitemaps for website maintainers such as myself. I got annoyed with the free online tools that are available, and also want to play with building desktop apps with Qt, and improve my Python programming skills. This seemed like a fun hobby project that has some value for me at work too, so I am not just building it to forget about it later.
I don't know much about electrical grids, but I'm wondering if something like this concept could help South Africa with its endlessly struggling electrical grid problems. My city constantly has power outages and the majority of people cannot afford installing solar into their homes.
It is not necessary for the majority to install solar.
Pakistan had similar problems with rolling blackouts, and mass import of photovoltaic equipment and batteries from China has reduced the load on the grid so that outages no longer occur frequently. In fact the demand has shrunk so much that it jeopardizes financing of coal power companies.
> In fact the demand has shrunk so much that it jeopardizes financing of coal power companies.
That is something that I think would be the impetus needed to motivate reduction in coal power plants. If they become unprofitable to operate, then will the market finally decide to stop using them? Sadly, I could see the current US administration deciding to offer subsidies to keep coal.
Yes, it is happening already (both the pivot away from unprofitable non-renewable energy, and US government intervention to tax imports of photovoltaics).
Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCE) from PV is below the fossil fuel range since 2020, and since 2024 it is also below if you include battery storage, which you need to turn solar into near constant energy supply.
This has been happening in the US for the past 10 years. The big switch has been away from coal and some slower natural gas generators towards more nimble natural gas generators. Coal and other natural gas generators take a while to start up and shut down (think on the order of a day), which don't work well for coordinating with renewables and are much more expensive to operate. So companies have been switching to faster natural gas generators that start up in minutes to hours to support when demand is higher.
Eskom is already trying to take people to court over "non-compliant" solar panel installations [1]. I wouldn't hold my breath. Like most things in ANC South Africa this is a political issue where Eskom wants to get their cut for providing a non-existent service - and then funnel that money back to their friends and family for their non-existent services.
Yup... It's about feeding the greedy fat cats at the top.
A simple solution like "just install solar" isn't going to solve the problems necessarily, because it originates from greed, mismanagement, corruption at the core. Solar is more of a downstream solution in my mind (correct me if I'm wrong).
Demand for coal will be reduced, which might most likely lead to massive job losses in not only the coal mining sector, but also logistics, exacerbating the troubling unemployment issues the country also faces. I don't really want to go down THAT rabbit hole :D
In this case though, high reliability electricity delivery is very doable. Many countries achieve 3 9s or higher. Sure there are the issues like the recent Spain/Portugal blackout but even that has some political roots.
Most of those problems are politically motivated. You know how fast towns tend to grow. Someone new the grid was going to need upgrades. Someone else decided it would be better spent on something else. That’s politics.
And if a town grows surprisingly fast, that may also be politics. Even geopolitics (eg, refugees).
> Not everything can be solved by money, sometimes its a mythical man month/9 women can't produce a baby in 1 month issue.
I mean, its not like they just discovered electricity. Sure sometimes things take time, but that is still a money issue because it means there was insufficient budget for maintainance and future capacity planning
The technology certainly exists, though some of it is pretty new and not all of it is mature or commoditized (particularly in the context of high levels of penetration of variable renewables on the grid).
That being said, politics aren't the only reason why it might not be deployed. Capitalization issues, for one, are also common. Additionally, you have to make a judgement call about what you consider included in "politics" -- for example, does corruption count?
It’s a corruption issue where certain people use it as a personal bank. Lots of deferred maintenance, no build out, but lots of greed -not just a little.
South Africa's problem is the ANC stopped Eskom building what it needed with foreseen growth when they came into power in the 90s. They wanted to introduce competition into the generation market.
They didn't introduce competition, as you might expect from a hyper-incompetent government, and just let the issue languish, and South Africa now just doesn't have enough power plants to serve its population when it takes one offline for scheduled maintenance.
But at least a lot more people got to buy Audis with the freed-up money sloshing around.
South Africa's problems with the electrical system and structure are well documented but also complicated. Here's a good recent video covering it, there are many others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUnR8PBtVW8
In cases where transmission lines are hitting capacity particularly on hot days, this is a place where batteries can help. Peak shaving is can’t help you with grids that are oversubscribed for more than a few hours a day but they can help load shift for part of the day. The batteries can still have value for emissions reductions if and when you finally get right of ways for more power distribution.
They tried that - especially companies like BMW - and they got no permits, because the state run power company wants money for providing nothing.
The problem is also that thieves steal the copper cables, even for micro-grids. You can not tech your way out of social/cultural problems.
Socialist cultural rot is real and the only way out is to eradicate cultures that encourage that mindset. All the ingredients are there- but the people are still set on telling themselves that robin hood story that destroys everything.
Political movements that have sought to “eradicate cultures” have generally gone pretty poorly in history.
I read the clarifications downstream; and I gather that the intent here is not as malicious as it sounds. That said, I don’t see how the mindset of “I’m going to maximize my extraction from the system.” is substantively different from “I’m going to minimize my input into the system.” The net effect is similar. For example, the current U.S. president paid no taxes for years through various dodges, a fact about which he boasted and which he defended. But without a doubt he is extracting disproportionate benefits.
Undoubtedly corruption is rampant in the systems you refer to; but all of these things exist in democratic free-market economies as well.
Islamism has eradicated basically every other culture in the middle east. Western market capitalism has supplanted a ton of cultures in east asia. If its toxic and dysfunctional it has to go, or your country deteriorates into another Zimbabwe or Russia.
PS: There are a ton of versions of working culture out there, that are not western. Pick one and run with it. But picking a repeatedly failing one is a sentence for decay and destruction.
Could you please explain the "socialist cultural rot" and the "eradicate cultures"? You might mean something totally sensible but this wording is quite triggering to me.
Everywhere socialist movements like the ANC take hold- there sets in a "im going to extract as much as i can from the state as he extracts from me - while giving him nothing" mindset. Its prevalent in the older generations in the eastern european block countries, china - its almost universal where the socialist experiment was run. The idealized society does not mesh and work with human nature at all, in fact it brings out the worst.
The old people of china, still steal paper towels on public toilets, because "take it all, while its there, before its gone" is the mindset encouraged. They brought you the tourists-"buffet rush"-genre of videos on youtube.
Ok, this makes sense. I would only add the low-trust society evolving in the west, including the US, which is definitely not caused by socialism. Maybe it's just the way we (all) fall?
Currently, in western countries, socialist policies to import the 3rd world and open borders are directly responsible for the lowering social trust.
> “immigrant rights are workers rights” is not mere rhetoric, and that the defense of migrants and refugees – the vast majority of whom are poor workers – is pivotal to the struggle of the entire global working class regardless of national origin. [1]
The West is slipping because the rich privatize the profits and socialize the costs. It's the worst of both models.
The USA thrived when free markets and value creation were encouraged yet heavily regulated. That way the benefits and costs didn't become too concentrated
== Currently, in western countries, socialist policies to import the 3rd world and open borders are directly responsible for the lowering social trust.==
I don’t know of any western country with an “open borders” policy, can you provide one? Is there a part of the US’s 250 year history where we weren’t bringing in immigrants from poorer countries to provide cheap labor?
> Is there a part of the US’s 250 year history where we weren’t bringing in immigrants from poorer countries to provide cheap labor?
Pretty sure they're referring to a de facto open border policy, where you basically permit all sorts of illegal immigration and don't really enforce the laws. Accepting immigrants at Ellis island was not illegal immigration, for instance, but crossings at the southern border often have been.
== Pretty sure they're referring to a de facto open border policy,==
I’m summary, not open borders. There have been about 20k border patrol agents in the US each year since 2008. Seems like a lot of agents for an open border policy.
For very specific examples you can look towards the EU's decades long stance on immigration which resulted in the refugee crisis since (and before) 2015, as well as countless integration and immigration issues (cf Sweden, France, Italy, etc.).
The socialist and left wing coalition have consistently voted against measures to improve border security and tighten the restrictions for people wanting to enter [1]. As people have become increasingly frustrated with these policies they've increasingly voted in right wing and conservative parties (in comparison to the ruling parties) [2].
We can also look towards the UK where socialist politics have been a mainstay since the 90s, to the point where now the Prime Minister (Kier Starmer, Labour) is a self-proclaimed socialist [3]. This is of course directly tied to the waves of mass migration under Tony Blair (Labour) which also resulted in the Socialist Party splitting from Labour because he wasn't "radical enough" [4].
I don’t see an Open Borders policy in any of those links. Most of them are about how the countries are tightening their rules for allowing migrants. You cannot tighten rules unless they already exist, they wouldn’t exist if the policy was Open Borders.
Invoking “socialists” over-and-over doesn’t prove anything about Open Borders and kind of undercuts your point. There’s also no mention of right-wing leaders like Ronald Reagan or George Bush. They both pushed policies that increase immigration and asylum seekers.
==We can also look towards the UK where socialist politics have been a mainstay since the 90s,==
The UK was lead by the Conservative party continuously from 2010-2024. You somehow skipped all of that and went straight from Tony Blair to Keir Starmer.
I am sure a capitalist system will NOT work great for a tribe of hunter gatherers!
The problem is not the socialist type of ideas, it is whom you are applying them to and at what point. The society must have certain complexity, capabilities and resources to be successful "socialist".
Going from feudalism to socialism was shown repeatedly not to work (ex: Russia, China). The countries that are currently more socialist and successful were not primarily feudal when they applied the socialist ideas. Also, there are huge differences in what is called "socialism"...
Even in the USA, capitalist came with "socialist ideas", like Henry Ford that said that one more free day will boost his overall sales, but the moment was right. I think he could not have done the same 100 years before.
I just want to add on to your reply to justify why it's correct to call the ANC a socialist party that is causing the cultural and economic collapse of South Africa.
You could look towards their policies inspired by socialist thought a.k.a. "social justice" (BEE and expropriation). These policies are actively harmful to development while also turning off any potential investors, and are deeply rooted in socialist ideology.
You can look towards their roots being funded and directly aided by the Soviets, China, Cuba, and several others. Especially their military (terrorist) and propaganda training which was heavily influenced by Soviet foreign policy.
You can look towards their re-alignment of the country's economic and foreign policy to engage with the 2nd world, while turning off 1st world investors. This has given us strong economic ties with Russia, China, and Iran. While most of these relationships are useless, the Chinese relationship has been especially damaging to the development, maintenance, and sovereignty of our national physical infrastructure.
But the most damning evidence is the insane socialist parties that have spawned out of the fracturing of the ANC such as the MK and EFF parties (both militant socialist parties, formed by ex ANC leaders). While their socialist rhetoric had to be contained while apart of the ANC (so as to not further turn off investors), the ANC's weakening grip has allowed these nutjobs to become serious contenders in the political race. If you were wondering what the "kill the boer" chants were about they were at political rallies held by the EFF (Julius Malema) - part of the EFF's kit is a red beret (I wonder where they got that from?).
Voetsek to any champagne socialist that wants to ruin yet another country because it makes them feel good to support people and ideologies they do not understand.
Care to explain how an ethno-nationalist government implemented socialism?
> I take it you don't consider the country to have veen ruined under apartheid
Wether or not I consider the country to have been ruined under apartheid is irrelevant to the fact that the ANC is dragging it back to the stone age.
The ANC was handed a functioning economy, solid infrastructure, and hope for a better future - there are now rolling blackouts across the country, soaring unemployment, and a birth rate higher than the GDP growth rate. And that hope for a better future? All but gone - There are more race based laws _today_ than there were under apartheid.
I'm glad apartheid ended 30 years ago, I'm not glad with the direction we're going now. These are not the same thing - you trying to portray it as such says more about your views than it does mine.
Your responses are filled with non-specific references to online memes that suggest that you don't actually understand the problem in any deep sense (i.e you just have a gripe). I'm not going to defend ANCs policy decisions, but you can just point to specific decisions they made and the resulting outcome. You can't just handwave and repeat socialism/capitalism/Trotskyites like some mantra and expect everyone to take you seriously.
Not sure exactly which part of my response repeated socialism/capitalism/Trotskyites? And I gave 4 specific outcomes which are easily tied to ANC policy decisions given they've ruled the country for the last 30 years (blackouts, unemployment, birthrate > GDP growth, number of race based laws).
I'll grant you "dragging us back to the stone age" is an obvious meme.
> Care to explain how an ethno-nationalist government implemented socialism?
By using the state treasury to provide disproportionate infrastructure and services to the ruling ethic minority, while leaving the bantustans - with no say in national politics or budget - to largely fend for themselves. This incidentally has similarities to the US/Puerto Rico dynamic.
All the things you complain about can be explained by regression to mean[1], which the not even the apartheid government would have been able to prevent had they decided to adopt an egalitarian governance model.
edit: I didn't even get into how the "ethno-nationalist government" seized the means of production for the express benefit of a specific ethno.
1. I fully expect that the per-capita X (for any X you're claiming is worse) has actually improved for South Africans - all South Africans - between 1990 and now.
> State capacity has collapsed across many government functions that are essential for a functioning economy. Critical network industries, including electricity, transport infrastructure and services, security, and water and sanitation have experienced major deteriorations over the last 15 years [1]
> While the racial composition of wealth at the top has changed, wealth concentration in South Africa has not and remains very high. [1]
> while the standard of living has increased for a minority of formerly disadvantaged South Africans and a small black middle class has emerged, there are still huge disparities in both material and subjective well-being [2]
> In 2010, the majority of citizens still hoped for basic necessities, income and employment, to enhance their quality of life. [2]
So no, there is no mean reversion caused by a broader sharing of (the same set of) resources - in fact the policies leading to worsening infrastructure and economic disproportionally negatively impact the poor, black population [3]
The examples I've given (blackouts, unemployment, etc.) are governance and capacity failures above and beyond any "regression to the mean" effect.
I've been on the free tier for a short time and really liking it. I just can't justify paying at least $5 a month (I live in South Africa) for this, so not switching to paid yet. It's just a bit too much with our exchange rate.
I’ve never even tried the free tier of Kagi because it’s limited and because the paid tiers are expensive (just like in your situation). I’m not looking for a free solution and I do pay for email (though not like tens of dollars a month, which is expensive).
Kagi’s official position is not to support regional pricing (visit https://kagifeedback.org/ and search for “regional pricing” to go through the “Implement regional pricing” thread). The service is probably out of reach even for many people in the first world. Even its family tier is expensive.
Hopefully, when it reaches a much higher number of users, it’s able to reduce prices. Or it can just remain a niche service and potentially be disrupted by a competitor.
I live in the US and the cost for unlimited search (which I would need because I do a lot of research) is too expensive for me as well. I was only able to get on by splitting it with a family plan.
Not GP, and I’m in a totally different country than the GP, but I’d be willing to pay USD 2 a month for a duo plan. I’d be willing to pay on an annual basis too, since small monthly payments usually incur higher processing fees (percentage wise) for the seller. Just for comparison, this amount would be equivalent to a Spotify Premium Duo subscription (with its regional pricing).
They have fixed costs per query. Unlike VC-backed companies burning cash for market share, they need sustainable unit economics to stay profitable. This makes regional pricing hard to pull off.
I know I'm speaking form a position of privilege and this will be unpopular; but I'm not fond of subsidizing other users by paying premium prices for my subscriptions.
That's largely under Kagi's control though. They don't seem to be working hard to reduce their expensive dependencies, instead choosing to focus on a number of other features/products. Maybe that's the better business strategy overall but it does limit their appeal to many potential customers.
TBH, if i where them i'd be trying to serve open source models from my own infra, much cheaper to pay per GPU's per hour and batch process all your users prompts, than leave that big 95% fat margins to OpenAI and Anthropic
But I guess they have customers who want those APIs anyways, idk, again, i thought they where a search service, not an ai company, so this sub for llms business deal is weird from that POV? like great that it works for them to get money/customers but that doesnt seem their main point of existing?
Also with regional pricing one must ensure the lock out all those people who want the service cheaper than in their country and try using VPNs or other means. Otherwise you loose even more money.
Does not neccessarily have to be done that way. It could also work like you pay for Kagi in country X, and get it localized for that country, using that language and prioritizing sites in that country and so on
Not that this couldn't be changed to the detriment of the service, but just to note: it's currently a feature to localise your results to any region
As someone in the EU/Schengen, I need results for 3 languages or 4 regions (if "worldwide" counts as one region) on a weekly basis. If a Dutch payment method would mean getting only Dutch results, it would be about as valuable as a newspaper with all pages about trade and international affairs blacked out: you'd need to buy it for every region you're interested in which probably surpasses the original price
I agree with you. I understand it's incredibly challenging to implement regional pricing, especially if your company is based in a 1st world country, and dependencies are also priced for 1st world countries.
The official response is that they won’t because 95% of their costs are in the search itself. I’m unable to figure out how to link to the forum thread, but you can visit https://kagifeedback.org/ and search for “regional pricing” to go through the “Implement regional pricing” thread.
If that's true, they may be at a point where 20% cost reduction takes 80% more work (or at least more customers to get more volume discounts), whereas reselling someone else's product is a quick win
I also find it steep. I've got several reservations such as always needing to be logged in on all devices where you want to use it / it being gated in general (most software projects I support are available to everyone equally) and the search results not being better than anything else, but 5$/month would be okay to support this concept... but that hasn't got enough searches included. You also pay double for image searches because it'll already incur a credit for the web results before you click on images
Skipping past the top two sponsored results in DDG really isn't that big a deal and still diversifies the search market from Google's monopoly, so paying the equivalent of a streaming subscription service... idk. None of my friends seem interested in paying for what is currently free (on top of the hassle of being logged in everywhere all the time) so sharing a duo/family account isn't an option for me either. Maybe that's something that would put it in reach for you?
Edit: apparently they've shared what it costs them to provide the service:
They charge 54€$/year for 3600 searches, which is.... precisely 1.5 cents per search. That sounds a little bit too convenient that the claimed cost price is precisely what they charge
This is either not the cost price or relies on people not using their subscription, otherwise you could never recoup R&D costs. Maybe this is total expenses divided by number of searches being run? I.e., it includes wages for the devs working on new features, their administration, etc. (fixed costs) and isn't actually the expense that each additional search incurs to deliver
DDG displays up to 2 ads above search results (most of the time I get none: trying just now, I saw 1 ad when doing two product searches and one knowledge search). The most favorable figure for 1000 ad impressions is 6$ according to <https://spideraf.com/learning-hub/what-is-the-average-cost-p...>. That's 0.6 cents per ad if the advertising network costs nothing. Advertising on DDG goes via Microsoft, so they'll take a cut: <https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/adverti...>. Guessing that they take 10% (I expect it's more), you're looking at 0.2 cents average revenue for each search I did just now. (Not a reliable figure but as a ballpark estimate.) DDG must have much lower costs somehow (maybe they just take results from Bing verbatim and have few costs of their own)
Their privacy pass thing lets you run searches in a way that doesn’t let them associate the query with your account, so the privacy half of the “always logged in” problem is mostly solved.
I switched from DDG. It saves me more than $10/month, both in time and in actual dollar costs due to suboptimal search engine results. It’s as simple as that.
The jump in improvement from google to ddg is probably bigger than the jump from ddg to kagi though. Also, I switched before ddg and kagi had AI search. Kagi’s AI is a huge differentiator for me, and I haven’t used the DDG one that much.
What would solve the "always logged in" problem is if I can enter a 6-digit PIN to use the service on a random computer or VM
I also can't associate searches I do for work with a personal account, and installing special software (this privacy pass client) is also iffy, so that's not going to work for people like me
Otherwise I'll have to use a publicly accessible search engine all the time anyway, since there's no way I can get my boss to pay for a search engine when I can't even get him to pay for our primary communications mechanism (calls and chat) that is hosted by a third party relying on donations
> This is either not the cost price or relies on people not using their subscription, otherwise you could never recoup R&D costs.
It seems pretty save to assume that the average user will search less than 300 times when 300 is the limit.
It’s of course possible for users to search exactly 300 each month before they stop searching or use an other provider, but my guess is that most people who regularly hit that limit will either stop using Kagi or move to a more expensive plan.
And that €54/$54 is the price when you pay per year, if you pay per month you’re paying more per search (although at least part of that extra money will go towards handling the payments)
