301–310 of 372 posts
There was a lot of uproar about this internally but nothing changed. They told us that this was the only "practical" option. The company has rotted.
Are you able to elaborate more? Google' internal culture (specifically the whole internal mailing list argument culture) fascinates me.
I'm not sure why people are surprised. Google has been downright evil for quite a while now. They do this in all their products, down to the point of intentionally crippling them. For instance, since Android 5, the standard contact app doesn't allow you to modify a contact which is not synced with an account. Why even do this? The list of tracking settings that can be turned permanently on, but only temporarily off i…
I completely agree on the Maps experience. These days I'm constantly annoyed by it. When I search for a place the map jumps around like crazy, causing me to lose track of my current focus area and my points of interest from previous search. Not to mention the hiccups on 3rd party browsers. There was a post on HN a while back which compares Google Maps with traditional paper maps. It had a lot of insights I wish I cou…
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A scan on Bluetooth (although N/A for this situation) can't possibly give away any position. A scan of wifi might, if the device happens to pick up a wi-fi source that Google has already collected (by some means). Still not very relevant though - it would mean that location permission would be needed in order to use wi-fi at all , because how would it otherwise find the hotspot or access point you want to connect to.…
You now have to have that location tracking permission to scan wifi SSIDs, and it came about because spammy data stealing apps were using SSID maps to get rough location. Not to say Google isn't evil because they certainly seem to be headed to hell while holding us in a hand basket, but this one is legit.
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Can you elaborate on the problem with YouTube? Other people have mentioned it too here. I use it pretty frequently and it seems to work the way it always did, more or less. Hell, they don't even bug me with original content recommendations the way they did briefly (and the way Netflix continues to).
Not OP, but I posted a comment regarding YouTube for mobile here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18075895
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People are paying $1000+ for Pixel phones. I think that should cover the cost of an alarm app.
Alarm apps don't need tracking. Asking Google Assistant to set an alarm needs tracking. I wish there was a SaaS application which provided assistant capabilities by a monthly subscription. You can see all the data stored, you own the data the service just creates models to enable use. And you could stop the subscription which wipes all the data including the models. Perhaps some startup founder is reading this?
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The new Gmail, Adwords, and Analytics run horribly slow in FF, so I have a separate Chromium portable installation simply for those pages. It's so annoying that Google only cares how their own products run in Chrome.
> The new Gmail, Adwords, and Analytics run horribly slow in FF, so I have a separate Chromium portable installation simply for those pages. It's so annoying that Google only cares how their own products run in Chrome. Reminds me of when Microsoft used to optimize it's products for Windows and other OSs were an afterthought...
What is your Google Maps alternative of choice for Android? I wish OsmAnd ( https://osmand.net/ ) would be more interactive on the map and complete regarding addresses. For example if I want to know which bus or subway to take to get from A to B in Hamburg I always have to resort to Maps.
I'm not sure why people are surprised. Google has been downright evil for quite a while now. They do this in all their products, down to the point of intentionally crippling them. For instance, since Android 5, the standard contact app doesn't allow you to modify a contact which is not synced with an account. Why even do this? The list of tracking settings that can be turned permanently on, but only temporarily off i…
The new Gmail, Adwords, and Analytics run horribly slow in FF, so I have a separate Chromium portable installation simply for those pages. It's so annoying that Google only cares how their own products run in Chrome.
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I believe it's now common to use "sell your data" as a synonym of "make profit off data" or "sell a service that gives anonymized data".
That may be an explanation, but IMO there's a huge difference between the two, and putting both concepts under the same wording is dangerous. Selling data means surrendering any and every control over it, and if from a user (trust) perspective there's no difference to offering a service based on data, companies will choose the more lucrative one.
I am a privacy conscious person, I've been using the Here We Go app on iOS for directions: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city-navigation/id... It has very cool feature - offline maps. By downloading your state/country's maps, you don't have to query a server for every little mapping request. Between this app and saved podcasts, I'm able to switch off my mobile large chunks of the day.
Even in airplane mode, your phone is tracking where you go with the accelerometer. I don't have time to look up the video right now, but this has been tested.