I Built a 500k-Domain Search Engine for Makers in a Weekend for $10

(alexmorleyfinch.github.io)

21 points | by dreamforever 1 hour ago

11 comments

  • eggbrain 7 minutes ago
    This is actually where I see software going in the short term -- cloud moving to local.

    A few years ago, if you wanted translation, you'd use Google Translate. If you wanted to search the web, you'd use Google search.

    But for a few gigabytes, you can now install nllb-200-distilled-600M, and get translations for almost any language locally. You can have your computer crawl the web, create abstracts and categorizations for websites, and build search exactly as you want it.

    The main limiter now is hard drive space (and to an extent, local compute) -- but right now it feels like the 70s again where the terminal into a remote server turned into building applications locally.

  • iFire 34 minutes ago
    Here's my impressions of your algorithm:

    1. read each site

    2. rent a 4090 with https://vast.ai to run vllm

    3. let llm model invent its own category and tag names freely

    4. save 1KB of metadata each

      a. a small local language model that reads each one and writes a name, two or three sentences, a category, and a handful of tags.
    
    5. `code is going up as open source` soon (TM)
  • dreamforever 1 hour ago
    Check out my latest project! You can fork it, tweak the policy manually or with AI, run the system and watch the data come in! It's engineered to keep a low data footprint, so 500k domains fits into 1GB on disk. If you have local models it's free! You just might not get the best throughput depending on your GPU. My production data is not exposed anywhere yet, and I may never expose it. The point is for you to fork and make your own policy, and thus your own personal search engine! The article covers basic analysis on my data, so it's worth a read if you're interested! A deeper analysis may arrive with V2 if I ever do it
  • marginalia_nu 14 minutes ago
    Interesting project. Website discovery is indeed in a pretty dire spot, definitely a space that needs innovation. An auto-labeled website directory isn't that silly of an idea.

    I have a 400 GB sqlite database with samples of rendered root document DOMs I use for ad detection in Marginalia Search I've been meaning to explore similar ideas using.

  • orliesaurus 10 minutes ago
    Like a personal Google? How do you bypass all the captcha, ip bans, cloudflare turnstile antibot stuff etc?
  • headz 30 minutes ago
    TS;DR: Too Sloppy; Didn't Read.
    • juleiie 21 minutes ago
      Yeah it’s ai generated obviously but as I said previously which some people didn’t like - don’t judge the tools, judge the content.

      I don’t care if robot hand written this or black or white. It’s useful.

      • uean 17 minutes ago
        I'm not going to spend an hour trying to distill the AI-slop to find out what potential golden nugget may lie in there.

        It's impossible to judge the content if it's buried under a landfill. "If you won't take the time to write it, I won't take the time to read it."

        • juleiie 9 minutes ago
          That’s your problem because that’s how things will look like from now on.

          So you got a little problem

      • abc3354 19 minutes ago
        In the expression "AI slop", "AI" is about the tools, "slop" is about the content
      • ImPostingOnHN 3 minutes ago
        "slop" is a perfectly valid judgement of content

        surely if we're expected to read this ourselves, the author can write it themselves?

        indeed, it's helpful to the author, too: writing helps you learn

  • arionhardison 10 minutes ago
    I codified the inmate and employee handbooks of 117 federal penitentiaries in a week; each with open protocols and RLVR verified agent EVALS.

    https://bop.doj.dev

    https://atlanta-fci.bop.doj.dev/programs

    https://atlanta-fci.bop.doj.dev/program/65545-inmate-account...

    This is no longer impressive; nobody cares what we "build", they care how it helps them; that means outcomes. I hope we as a community can move from "I built" to "I helped" e.g.: I helped over 100 inmates today and 19 have verified outcomes that align with their assigned programs.

  • dewey 23 minutes ago
    I think Kagi Small Web filter would give you very similar results.
  • iFire 36 minutes ago
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  • nonewideas 16 minutes ago
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  • hns86vq0nb 37 minutes ago
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