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Why I’m Worried About Google

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Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#271

Post by bilange »

CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

> It's been surprisingly difficult finding a good replacement for keep. If anyone has suggestions I'm open.

I've been on the hunt for a good Keep replacement myself, but not exactly a replacement for the "Simple" Keep interface. In my perfect world I wanted something markdown based for taking notes, and syncable between mobile and web. Most (but not all) of my personal checkmarks has been checked with Joplin[1] which was not yet mentioned in this thread; at a glance:

- Synced via cloud accounts (Either it's Dropbox, OneNote, or even your own Nextcloud via WebDAV, if you wish to be public cloud free!)

- Notes are Markdown based

- Notes import done also via .md files, folder of .mds (including nesting), or even Evernote's ENEX format.

- Dedicated applications for PC/OSx/Linux and even Android & iOS native apps. No web interface available since it's used to sync to an external source. But with that much access with said applications, it's a tradeoff I can take.

(I just found out about this app this morning, so please excuse my enthusiasm :)

[1] https://joplin.cozic.net/

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#272

Post by s3r3nity »

solarkraft wrote: post #144
bla2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo is mostly a skin on Bing search results. By using it, you're saying you trust Microsoft more than Google. If that's your intent, cool, but you're not really getting away from the big tech companies by doing this.

> By using it, you're saying you trust Microsoft more than Google I do. They make inferior software imo, but seem a lot less suspicious.

Depends upon the software - you can pry Excel from my cold dead hands.

G Suite has definitely come a long way, but the Office suite of apps are absolutely the gold standard.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#273

Post by thinelvis »

ekzy wrote: post #65

I've switched to Safari and DuckDuckGo last week. I can still search on google with the DuckDuckGo shortcut !g when the duck doesn't quack. I tried Firefox but it became too slow. Safari is actually pretty good, for me the main problem is that it reduced my productivity for web development (I need to get used to the safari devtools) and the lack of some browser extensions (redux devtools etc). For now, I keep switchi…

I've been using a Blackberry Z10. I relay my Gmail to a remote Unix pay-for account, and only receive from there; I only send mail from a VM on my VPN'd home computer.

This phone does phone calls, SMS, and I use the built-in browser on private mode. There's NOTHING Google on this phone, and I sign into nothing.

I do feel like I'm not part of the game any more, but I'm not part of the game any more!

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#274

Post by softawre »

citrablue wrote: post #235
richjdsmith wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent Sunday afternoon researching alternatives for Keep after hitting my breaking point with DontBeEvilCorp a couple weeks ago. The best I found by a mile is Notion.so. In fact, it is such a great app, it has promted me to consider migrating years of OneNote notebooks, along with trying it out as a replacement for Todoist. Google photos I replaced with Amazon Prime Photos (from pan to fire, I know, but I'm still o…

I'll second the recommendation for Notion.so. It's a neat piece of software developed by people who are unreasonably into making the killer note taking app. I use it to replace Evernote, primarily, but also for building requirements docs, todo lists, or notes.

Woah, this is the killer note app. It's Onenote+Trello with /-commands and keyboard shortcuts.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#275

Post by lallysingh »

GreeniFi wrote: post #211
lallysingh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does browsing/purchasing history tell you about those?

I understand that this has been at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica political manipulation scandal. The basic methodology is take a large sample of people whose big 5 traits you know, and look at their browsing history. Through this you create a model: people visiting x websites are statistically more likely to be y personality. Then when they look at your patterns of web use, they are able to assign you a person…

Ok, I disagree here. The data analysis done so far describes what you look at, but not why. AFAIK CA identified which party you were likely to vote for, and what concerns (gun control, Clinton Foundation, Islam, etc) concerned you. Mostly just classify the topic of links people post.

There's a big jump to determining your levels of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, Extroversion. Do people post articles that imply a negative agreeableness? I don't know -- political articles are typically intended to persuade, so you can safely argue that the poster believes in the article they post. But I don't know what kind of assumptions you can make about someone's facebook posts -- much less their browsing / purchasing behavior -- to determine aspects of their personality.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#276

Post by outworlder »

CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

I have been trying (not entirely successfully) to move away from Google for a while now.

Gmail replaced by Fastmail. I used to think Fastmail's interface to be clunky - but no longer. It was never an issue, because you can very easily use any mail client, each with their own 'app password'.

Drawbacks: GMail's filtering it top notch, for both spam and their pre-defined categories (updates, social, etc). I never realized how many rules it saved me until I made the switch.

Browser changed to Firefox for the most part. Still not as battery efficient as I would like, and not as performant as Chrome in some sites (ironically, many of these belong to Google).

Google Cloud is nice, but I only use that at work.

Google maps is... difficult to replace. If I am in an Apple device, I can use that, but it's an inferior replacement.

The Google search engine is still second to none. I have made the switch to DuckDuckGo, but I find myself using !g VERY often.

Some things are just nice to have. The damn Google Cloud Print service works more reliably than trying to print from OSX over wifi. I have no idea why.

My 'breaking point' was not privacy or security. It's just that Google pulls the plug on projects surprisingly often. So I figured a gradual transition would be better. It's a very slow transition indeed...

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#277

Post by dtn »

coldacid wrote: post #242
earenndil wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with firefox extensions? I haven't noticed anything untoward in my time using it.

Firefox extensions _used_ to offer much more access and control of the browser, but they've since switched to a Chrome-like model that isn't near feature parity with Chrome. It was a huge step back.

I'm pretty sure that Firefox's model is a superset of Chrome's

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... seems to suggest feature parity, at the very least

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#278

Post by outworlder »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #125
the_clarence wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is fine? It’s the best browsing experience thanks to Tree Style Tabs unless you are a lambda user and you only have 3 tabs open at all time. And even lambda users pile up tabs when they browse

Gecko still feels weird, I don’t think it’ll ever catch up to WebKit or Blink. Worth noting that Opera is still an option, and built on Blink...

Keep in mind that Opera was bought by a consortium of Chinese companies.

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#279

Post by [deleted] »

olivermarks wrote: post #181

Chrome turns on the fans on my old macbook air which is an audio reminder to only use it occasionally for specific tasks. My paranoid side makes me wonder if all the fan activity is because it's so busy phoning home all the time 'sharing data'?

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Worried About Google

#280

Post by 4d66ba06 »

nobody271 wrote: post #253
CosmicBagel wrote: post #192

For some reason this was also a breaking point for me. I've switched to Firefox and Duck Duck Go. It's a small thing, but boy do you start to feel like a second rate citizen fast. The state of extensions on Firefox is a mess. I can get the usual privacy extensions easily enough, but things like using media keys to control videos playing in the back ground. Or how in the phone app of Firefox you need to pull up the si…

What do you do about your phone though? Too bad Canonical dropped Ubuntu Touch. There are other debian-based contenders but I think Tizen is currently the only practical choice. Unfortunately Tizen's code has a terrible reputation. So... as I type this to you Google is probably watching me. Yay.

Purism is working on a phone that plans to support Ubuntu Touch: https://puri.sm/posts/ubports-ubuntu-touch-on-librem5-collab...
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