Don’t Mess with The Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#461

Post by rebootthesystem » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 6:56 PM UTC

groestl wrote: post #443

rebootthesystem wrote: post #71

This sort of thing truly needs to run into regulatory force. I don't believe in government being up our collective skirts for everything but regulation does have its place and this, I think, would be appropriate use of such power. And this does not apply to just Google. We've had run-ins with Google, Facebook and Amazon on different fronts and for different issues. And, in all cases, our clients had their accounts su…

Thank you for these reports! @"good government style reaming", I just wanted to add that interestingly, a government (at least a democratic government) operates exactly the opposite of Google/Facebook. By which I mean that there is democratic control over their policies, there is a hierarchy of courts and tribunals, there is a structured appeal process, and there are certain rights that no one, not even a court, can…

"good government style reaming" still sounds good and satisfying. If you've ever dealt with such agencies as the IRS you know exactly how scary they can be.

Google, Facebook and others need to experience this at a level 100,000 times greater than a typical contentious IRS audit. Maybe then they'll hire a few adults to teach the kids how to behave in the real world.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#462

Post by oridecon » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 6:56 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #409

Yandex mail is a decent and free alternative. You can even use your own domain with no charge: https://domain.yandex.com/domains_add/ They could, of course, do something similar to what Google did here, but using your own domain mitigates some of that.

In my experience, Google flags most Yandex (and Zoho) e-mails as spam.

They probably justify it with some "you must train our network to accept your address" bullshit.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#463

Post by paulryanrogers » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:00 PM UTC

setq wrote: post #410

notheguyouthink wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the data is still there, fwiw. I'm not sure how generic bitlocker is, but i imagine i have to have a tool specifically tailored to decrypt the bitlocker data. With Camlistore it's one level extracted. You'd need a tool to decrypt and scoop up all the chunks for a given file - but you could write that in Bash. The Camlistores blob store doesn't do anything fancy (that i recall! i could be wrong) , it's just a…

Bitlocker is quite specific but tailored to where everything already is. None of my children or my wife are OSX fans. I can't find a better cross platform solution if I'm honest - if there was one I'd be there. TrueCrypt was used before I used bitlocker and we know where that ended. Bitlocker works on OSX pretty well with this: http://www.m3datarecovery.com/mac-bitlocker/ Will mull over your ideas; there are definite…

VeraCrypt and CipherShed picked up where TrueCrypt left off.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#464

Post by nilved » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:02 PM UTC

peeters wrote: post #459

nilved wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't want a monopoly, you want them to. You opted in to it, and you only end up in such a horrible position when you make a series of horrible decisions. Missed texts and phone calls? How did you even get into the position where Google controls your telephony? Missed emails? Why are you using gmail.com? Third-party authentication? Did they not have the option to use e-mail or a username? You can't fix every pro…

> They don't want a monopoly, you want them to. Of course they do. Every strategic decision the company has made over the last two decades is to try to secure a monopoly on your data. You make it sound like it's easy to run your own full stack of all web-connected applications. It's not. The cost is INSANELY high. So your real choice is whether to use one company, or dozens of individual companies for every individua…

If your concern is data _loss_ as opposed to data _ownership_ you can still use Google all you want as long as you use it redundantly (backups, separate domain, &c.) What you're saying is more applicable to people who want Google not to see their data.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#465

Post by kowdermeister » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:11 PM UTC

rsp1984 wrote: post #285

1. Don’t mess around with Google or any company that you simply can’t live without. I know a better rule: Organize your life and data so you don't depend on a company. Many people forget that Google isn't some sort of official service provided by the government but a public for-profit company that's largely guided by shareholder value maximization. While there's no doubt that the latter has big advantages over the fo…

> I know a better rule: Organize your life and data so you don't depend on a company.

Quite unfeasible request. You'll meet companies at the end of one line or another. You have to trust some company. You still need server providers, you still need a domain name, you still need reliable hardware manufactured by a... company.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#466

Post by fredgrott » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:18 PM UTC

This is miss-titled, ity should read Do not mess with Google's Pixel TOS when buying that device.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#467

Post by pnutjam » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #394

setq wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is usually a difficult problem. Then I divided everything I have data-wise into two buckets: stuff I can't afford to lose, stuff I can. It's now simple. Also I mandate that 'everything is a file'. Turns out the former is only around 22Gb of mainly code, documents, videos and photos. The latter is 250Gb of music, films etc. The latter goes on a NAS with a mirror on the laptop. The important stuff lives on the lap…

Every six months is a very painful potential loss window. There are great sync tools that can work point-to-point over the Internet. The cost of having a NAS at home and a NAS at your parents, and then syncing between them is totally worth it.

crashplan has a client that handles this, it's free for this sort of usage, you only pay if you use their cloud service.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#468

Post by FilterSweep » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:31 PM UTC

smonff wrote: post #312

setq wrote: post #170

First post, might as well be a cautionary tale. My father, a pretty old programmer by anyone's standards, regularly warns me of this sort of thing. He was pretty much shafted by CompuServe many years ago on a miniscule scale compared to what is possible now. He lives his life in what I previously described as a paranoid bubble of data control. Until I inevitably burned myself with Google. I have no idea what happened…

The way Google made us used to transform an email box as a storage and backup place is terrifying. Sending 2Mo attachments become a norm[1] and lots of people consider having their life stored there. It just seem not sustainable. If you would do this with paper in the past, your place would just be full of junk. Our cloud life is an horrific stack of garbage. We just don't need most of the things we store, keeping ev…

> keeping everything as proof of evidences for a potential event that will surely never happen, as if we were all super important targets of an improbable crime scene.

Great point, and I see a chilling effect in your file storages being used to determine your "character" should you be involved in a lawsuit of some kind.

As an innocuous example, perhaps due to my being a millennial, I save thousands of memes on my phone that I find funny and share them with friends on a daily basis.

I would be shocked to hear if myself, or someone I'm friends with, was deemed a "horrible person" by the courts because some Shutterstock images with overlaid text have some dark humor attached.

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#469

Post by mrbill » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:39 PM UTC

stillAbnormal wrote: post #65

But there's one option they didn't mention: DON'T BUY THE GOOGLE PIXEL. I mean, that's the real message I'm getting from all this.

Or, "Don't buy the Pixel through Project Fi with no intention of activating Fi service, just so you can get the phone shipped to a reseller quicker".

Re: Don’t Mess with The Google

#470

Post by gravypod » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:40 PM UTC

setq wrote: post #170

First post, might as well be a cautionary tale. My father, a pretty old programmer by anyone's standards, regularly warns me of this sort of thing. He was pretty much shafted by CompuServe many years ago on a miniscule scale compared to what is possible now. He lives his life in what I previously described as a paranoid bubble of data control. Until I inevitably burned myself with Google. I have no idea what happened…

I want to do the same but I don't know of anything that has Google-Level replacement for Drive/Docs/Sheets/Calendar. I really want one thought.

If I can get Email, Document Storage (Docs, Spreadsheets, PowerPoints, Calendars) I'd move to a personal in-home solution ASAP. If it could integrate with Android via F-Droid apps I'd be even happier.