Comment by AlexErrant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexErrant | Hacker News Reader

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What do real people use Comet for? I'm looking at their examples here and find none of them realistic or compelling https://www.perplexity.ai/comet

> How are different news outlets covering this differently?

I want less news, not more.

> Organize my tabs by category and close the ones that are distractions

I use a tree-style tab manager. You will close my tabs over my dead body.

> Build a basic website for me using the best website generator tool

Are you fucking serious?

> Draft a reply that shares my upcoming schedule

Emails _could_ be useful, but I'm not sure how I feel about Comet reading my emails. From their privacy policy:

When you use Comet, we collect and store certain information locally on your system, including: Interaction data, including browsing history information, such as URLs of pages that you visit, text, images, and other resources from those pages...

> Create a study plan given this syllabus for the next week to help me on my test

This does not need to be in a browser.

> Buy a high quality, comfortable yet cheap office chair

...is anyone really doing this???

I use a Linux laptop so although I was interested in this I could not use it.

That being said, I’ve moved to using perplexity over Google for personal use. I still use google maps, drive, etc. but if I need research on anything my first stop is perplexity.

I’m not about to trust an Llm with purchasing of goods just yet. However, I do see the allure of building study plans, flash cards, Etc. from your school syllabus.

I tend to use google 1st, then ChatGPT 2nd for things that are ungoogleable. (E.g. my most recent query: "why does RFC 2822 allow emails without a `to`?" was too much for my googlefu.) My style is to use the simplest tool for the job. I avoid AI as my default because Google is faster. I'm curious what Comet can do that your typical frontier model cannot. I personally would not install Comet for doing something that chatgpt.com can already do.

I _suppose_ that Comet would save me from copy/pasting, but the fact that they would read my emails is quite deterring.

I suppose what I'm asking is: what is Comet's unique value prop?

I asked chatGPT the above question and found nothing compelling https://chatgpt.com/share/68e3c365-94a8-800e-91ca-9b5a9337b2...

Worse, GPT hallucinated: "To alleviate concerns, Comet is designed so that much data is stored locally by default. For example, by default email/calendar content etc. is not uploaded unless you explicitly request an action that requires it."

From its citation: "Comet may process some local data using Perplexity’s servers to fulfill your queries. This means Comet reads context on the requested page (such as text and email) in order to accomplish the task requested."

Perhaps I'm too cynical, but chatGPT is farrrr more generous than what Comet's FAQ states.

So, I resisted getting off of Google but did find perplexity very compelling especially for q&a, comparisons, research, etc. I don’t work for them, just a satisfied user. They allow you to switch between foundation models if you want to.

They are not free like Google. It’s a paid subscription. So they don’t share your data (yet) for advertising, etc.

>> Buy a high quality, comfortable yet cheap office chair

> ...is anyone really doing this???

To get this right is much harder than it should be given the optimization of selling not-good chairs. Our office returned literally dozens before landing on a couple $80-$120 chairs that beat $600-$800 range leaders. I doubt perplexity is really succeeding here.

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