Posted on: August 29, 2024, 9:26 am

As I work on Fynd, I’m seeing a trend among social sites like X (Twitter), Reddit, and Wikipedia blocking their user-generated pages from being indexed.

I agree with preventing or licensing content that would be used for AI purposes, but I disagree with putting up a blanket wall, a paywall in some cases, or an API, to access and index user-generated content. This is unethical, in my opinion, and goes against the open nature of the internet.

Fynd will not participate in this practice to index content.

Posted on: August 28, 2024, 3:30 am

Fynd has reached its first short-term milestone of 10 million pages indexed—a great accomplishment since starting the project several months ago.

Yesterday, I also overcame a major hurdle in performance scaling. The most glaring problem search engines face is scale, being able to index hundreds of millions of web pages or more to a database while maintaining speed. I am now confident that Fynd can scale to meet performance needs.

Going forward, I foresee handling spam sites as the most glaring issue. I cannot stress how easy it is to spot web pages, sites, and link farms built to try and game the system from a search engine perspective. I don’t know why people waste their time and money; it’s futile.

The next milestone is 20 million pages, where we hope to release a public beta so people can get accustomed to Fynd.

Posted on: August 26, 2024, 5:17 am

I was thinking about social circles recently and how I often see them succumb to negativity.

I’m led to believe, based on my life experiences, that human nature was just not meant to exist in any type of large and persistent social circle.

One major example of this is public schools, and the major stigma surrounding public schools is bullying.

Ultimately, I think social circles are meant to be small and intimate. Large social circles can certainly exist but are only healthy with limited interaction.

The old saying “keep your circles small” is without doubt based on life lessons.

Posted on: August 22, 2024, 6:13 am

In the final circle it was down to three contestants, two with three lives and one with fourteen.

After some deal talking the trio started to battle, one was eliminated leaving two. After some more talk they started to battle with the contestant with 3 lives beating the one with 14 after his vest failed during battle. The rule being if a vest fails during battle you’re dead.

It was a decent ending to the week long hunger games. With some refinement it could be a great annual event. I’m looking forward to next year.

Update: After posting this, I learned that Ice Poseidon reviewed the vest logs and announced a new winner.

Posted on: August 20, 2024, 6:28 pm

I’m starting to see the same trends occur as they did just before the 2009 crash. Restaurants and large retail chains are closing locations or going into bankruptcy.

The current economy is unsustainable. Housing prices, food, the insurance industry, healthcare, education, energy, and debt— all major sectors— are at levels that cannot be sustained and will eventually burst. It’s hard to give a time frame because there are so many layers involved. It could be 2 years or 6 from now, but the everything bubble will burst.

There are winners and losers in every crash, but I fear this one will be painful, worse than anything in the past because this bubble is just so big.

Economic turmoil has become increasingly frequent, something my parents and their parents never experienced. We need to get back to that.

The fix happens at the top, with the government. Unfortunately, the state of our current government is a circus 🤡, and given the current political climate, I don’t see them fixing it. I doubt they could if they wanted to at this point.

Maybe this bubble will finally usher in the reform and change so greatly needed.