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Why I’m Worried About Google

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Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#151

Post by d2ncal »

pcpcpc wrote: post #112
CaptainZapp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is fine and DuckDuckGo is good enough by now. Firefox has the added bonus that it doesn't implement a two tier cookie system. Of which one tier cannot be deleted. This, in combination with the new and improved "sign-in-convenience" convinced me that Google is exactly as dirty as any other tech company and should be avoided like the plague, wherever possible.

Using Firefox and DDG daily for personal use. I'm looking to switch off of inbox/gmail, google calendar, etc. but haven't settled on an alternative yet. I've made heavy use of the snoozed notifications in inbox. Any recommendations?

I recently switched to FastMail.com from google. They have email, calendar and contacts syncing and works really well.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#152

Post by observr9 »

taeric wrote: post #113
observr9 wrote: post #104

Firefox doesn't highlight find-in-page search results on the scroll bar. Chrome does. Am I the only person who relies on that feature daily for their work?

What is the daily use case? Sounds useful, but daily?

Browsing a large code repository. The scrollbar highlights allow me to "eyeball" the page and go to the general locations quickly rather than hitting Next a thousand times (which feels primitive as hell anyway), especially when a block of code has the same keyword used many times and I need to move on to the next block.

I tried Firefox for a while but I rely on that feature around once or twice a day and I preferred using Chrome for those browsing sessions. So I dumped Firefox and switched back.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#153

Post by minitech »

ealhad wrote: post #81
navidfarhadi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a fan of Firefox and I use it when I am docked at home or near a power outlet but the battery life hit is enormous on Mac OS compared to Chrome and Safari. The performance is fine, I just wish I had better battery life when using Firefox on the go.

Yeah, last time I tried Firefox on Mac OS it was terrible. On my laptop, running GNU/Linux (with lower specs), it's way faster.

Exactly! I was confused for a long time about the slowness people kept talking about with Firefox, and then work switched to MacBooks. Firefox is faster and more capable on my cheap Linux device than any browser on the Mac, but on the Mac, Firefox is slowest. So strange.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#154

Post by ThirdFoundation »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #135

Do you think we’ll ever move away from search engines entirely? What’s stopping us from using alternative means of searching and what would these look like?

I don't have an answer, but I have trouble picturing a better option that's both egalitarian and actually gives the best search results.

The closest thing I can think of almost feels regressive -- sites like HackerNews and Reddit. What I mean is asking a question there or searching for threads where other users have asked a similar question. Often the links provided in those threads are less likely to be provided by advertisers and actually just promoted by users. That's often where I find the best answers for things.

But to access those threads I still use Google or DDG because the Reddit search function is terrible.

Other options, like AOL Keywords (if you remember those) basically just directly link to paid providers.

I guess it's possible that there is a fair and balanced web crawler, but to give true freedom and not guide the user to specific the best option still seems to be a search engine.

Maybe the answer isn't alternative forms of searching but rather alternative ways to show the results? Right now they look like a ranking list. Maybe they could be displayed in a map or another form?

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#155

Post by gathaspa »

dwighttk wrote: post #121
the_clarence wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of browsers that would be someone who only go on HN, reddit, facebook, gmail and linkedin. In other words HRFGL.

how do you get lambda out of hrfgl?

lambda user = average user. I don't know if the author of that message is french, but in french we use that expression quite a lot. It's meant to be used as a sort of "plug in any user" sort of variable, as in "for the user lambda" or "for the user x" sort of thing.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#156

Post by Stratoscope »

ckastner wrote: post #46

As a non-native speaker, I would have expected the title to be "Why Google Worries Me". "Worried About" sounds like it's Google who's being negatively affected by this, but that doesn't seem to be the main point of the story. Is this a common pattern?

Your wording is certainly better than the ambiguous article title. I would write it your way too.

"I'm worried about X" usually means that I'm concerned for X's welfare, but not always. It takes some context to disambiguate the phrase.

A couple of examples:

"I'm worried about that stray kitten."

"I'm worried about the lion perched in that tree."

They are both felines, but clearly in one case I'm concerned about the cat's safety, in the other case what the cat might do to me.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#157

Post by observr9 »

ktosobcy wrote: post #114
observr9 wrote: post #104

Firefox doesn't highlight find-in-page search results on the scroll bar. Chrome does. Am I the only person who relies on that feature daily for their work?

For me, highlighting all occurrences and ctrl/cmd+g (next) is enough. Jetbrains idea does the highlight in scrollbar but I don't find it useful.

If a method is used several times at the top of the page, and you want to find out if it's used elsewhere, without the highlights, you don't know that. You have to hit Next until you make sure it's nowhere else. With the highlights, you immediately see that the block you're looking at is it, and you can move on to a different file.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#158

Post by tannhaeuser »

post_break wrote: post #93

I'm trying so hard to move my email away from Gmail. I have a paid proton account by the syncing for desktop and the mobile app is terrible. Are there any other options out there? I switched to Firefox and I love it so far.

mailbox.org is a respected, privacy-focussed German mail provider who's been around since almost the beginning. According to their site, they're providing services to Wikimedia and many other NGOs. Though their business pricing is a bit steep compared to a run-of-the-mill mail space you get for your domain from the DNS registrar.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#159

Post by Boulth »

corobo wrote: post #99
post_break wrote: post #93

I'm trying so hard to move my email away from Gmail. I have a paid proton account by the syncing for desktop and the mobile app is terrible. Are there any other options out there? I switched to Firefox and I love it so far.

It gets thrown around a lot and in my opinion for good reason - I've switched to Fastmail[1] myself. I've got the $5/mo account because I wanted to bring my own domains. Had it for a while just forwarding everything to my gmail but have now cut the forwarding and switched fully. If you're in the Apple ecosystem the app I attribute to finally moving was Spark[2], which I discovered after Google announced it was killin…

Doesn't Fastmail still have their data centers in US? (that'd mean NSA could get the data, as Fastmail doesn't support PGP).

Related: https://www.privacytools.io/#email

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#160

Post by woobar »

rhexs wrote: post #138
Spartan-S63 wrote: post #49

With all of these emerging privacy concerns, it reinforces my choice to move away from the Android and Google ecosystem insofar as I can. It reinforces my choice to embrace the Apple ecosystem. While their products aren't perfect, they do take your privacy seriously and you do pay for it. But to me, that seems like a fair trade. Additionally, they have second to none customer support, so it's going to take a company…

I've been switching to Apple as well from Google/Microsoft, and the only challenging part so far is grabbing a professional icloud username. I'm very, very late to the icloud e-mail party, so literally every e-mail that doesn't have a chain of five numbers on the end is taken. I wish they'd add a few more domain options. Oh well, services are wonderful otherwise. Hoping they refresh the Macbook Air this October so I…

Why don't you use your own email with iCloud account? Using your own email address to login into Gmail or iCloud will let you dump these services easier if you decide to.
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