[HN Gopher] Teclis - Non-commercial web search
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       Teclis - Non-commercial web search
        
       Author : samcrawford
       Score  : 60 points
       Date   : 2022-03-23 20:38 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (teclis.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (teclis.com)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | orthecreedence wrote:
       | This is a really cool concept. Reminds me of the old(er) days
       | when the web was a bit quieter and there wasn't an entire
       | apparatus designed to steal your attention and focus.
       | 
       | This seems like a really good way to do research as well: people
       | offering information without the expectation of getting paid for
       | it.
        
       | u2077 wrote:
       | Bookmarked! I found https://c3js.org/ which is exactly what I
       | want for my personal project. I also found
       | https://github.com/javascriptdata/danfojs which looks interesting
       | as well. All within 2 searches.
        
       | sixhobbits wrote:
       | Love the idea. The first few things I searched had very few
       | results, and when I got into more 'mainstream' topics, I was
       | surprised to still see Quora et al in the results (I get a "7"
       | flag on my uBlock icon when I visit I Quora page so I'm not quite
       | sure how that ties in the with '5' threshold mentioned on the
       | homepage).
        
         | freediver wrote:
         | The number can vary greatly based on browser, other extensions
         | and location accessed.
        
       | weinzierl wrote:
       | First page results are interesting, paging to the second page
       | gives me a:
       | 
       | "A query would help :-)"
       | 
       | One thing I noticed playing with Teclis is that it gives useful
       | results for _' A vs B'_ queries. I don't know a single other
       | search engine that still delivers remotely useful results for
       | this type of query.
        
       | metadat wrote:
       | The results seem crappy to me, teclis found what I wanted zero
       | percent of the time.
       | 
       | Hopefully they can keep iterating and improving this; a new
       | entrant to Search is always welcome!
       | 
       | Because we _desperately_ need something better and more useful
       | than Goggle. It 'll take a paradigm shift, for sure.
        
         | agencies wrote:
         | What were your failed searches?
        
       | SahAssar wrote:
       | Does this also exclude wikipedia? One of the first queries I
       | usually try on search is literally "test", and I usually expect a
       | wikipedia article for testing (either as an assessment or a
       | scientific test or a programatic test) on page 1 or 2, but here
       | there was none.
        
       | paxys wrote:
       | > The way detection works is we count the number of uBO blocked
       | requests on the page, and if too many (threshold is set to 5), we
       | kick it out, leaving only "clean" pages in the index.
       | 
       | I'm genuinely surprised there were _any_ pages left to crawl.
       | 
       | Unfortunately this also kicks out genuinely useful blogs and
       | other pages that are otherwise helpful but happen to be using a
       | platform or framework that makes a few block-worthy requests.
       | 
       | I can't figure out if all of Wikipedia is in the removed set or
       | just ranked too low to show up in results. On the browser, the
       | site seems clean.
        
       | zitterbewegung wrote:
       | Doesn't work when I try to search for 14.2 MacBook Pro reviews .
       | Gave me some links to 2018 MacBooks . Might be the ublock filter.
        
         | jron wrote:
         | Review sites are littered with advertising likely preventing
         | any results from being indexed. It also doesn't help that most
         | reviews are now in the form of video.
        
       | rpastuszak wrote:
       | Hm...
       | 
       | https://imgur.com/a/BToBnun
        
       | dbrereton wrote:
       | Lots of great new search engines popping up that search the rest
       | of the web that Google tends to ignore.
       | 
       | Other ones worth checking out include:
       | 
       | - https://search.marginalia.nu/ (A non-commercial search engine)
       | 
       | - https://wiby.me/ (Tends to have those really weird and cool
       | indie sites)
       | 
       | - https://searchmysite.net/ (An index of personal websites)
       | 
       | - https://indieweb-search.jamesg.blog/ (Search IndieWeb websites)
       | 
       | - https://millionshort.com/ (Ignore the first million results
       | from Google)
        
         | fernly wrote:
         | https://andisearch.com/
        
       | fxtentacle wrote:
       | Yay! Finally a good alternative search index :)
       | 
       | Plus I'm impressed that kagi.com teclis.com and the Orion browser
       | is all the same guy ^^
       | 
       | EDIT: And "Kagi was created in 2018 and is running on tight
       | budget, bootstrapped by the founder's funds from the previous
       | exit. "
        
       | hrgiger wrote:
       | * Fun Challenge Find a query that has only one result in Teclis!
       | Then read that page.
       | 
       | I think found one but failed to read that (which?) page.
       | 
       | http://teclis.com/search?q=sysadmin+horror+stories
        
         | freediver wrote:
         | Try http://teclis.com/search?q=%28sysadmin+horror+stories%29
         | for more results (semantic search)
        
           | hrgiger wrote:
           | Thanks its worked
        
       | freediver wrote:
       | Hey all - creator here. It looks like next page of results does
       | not work currently because wrong query param (should be "q"
       | instead of "topics"). Easy enough to manually change if you need
       | it.
       | 
       | As a few of you noticed, narrow searches do not work very well
       | because this is not a general web search engine and has a tiny
       | index compared to Google. Use Teclis to discover more about a
       | broader topic you are interested in and to discover writing from
       | 'clean' websites on the web.
       | 
       | Looking forward to feedback to improve!
        
         | jron wrote:
         | Thanks for making Kagi! I hope you and your team can figure out
         | a way to make a flat monthly fee feasible so I can continue
         | using the site!
        
       | ______-_-______ wrote:
       | Fun bug, searching for the letter e crashes the site
       | 
       | http://teclis.com/search?q=e
        
         | forgotpwd16 wrote:
         | Or any other single character query.
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-23 23:00 UTC)