Google Fights Back • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Fights Back

#71

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, May 08, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #70

areoform wrote: post #7

Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it... I nominally pay for these services, but I s…

Google is already not Google. The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore. The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state. I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ug…

How about the Librem 5?

Re: Google Fights Back

#72

Post by pier25 » Wed, May 08, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

ProAm wrote: post #14

Privacy is going to be the most valuable commodity of the 21st century. Google is doing everything in its power to buy/take/borrow that commodity from people (just like FB. Amazon, MS, etc...) They can say things like "We are moving from a company that helps you find answers to a company that helps you get things done…We want our products to work harder for you in the context of your job, your home, and your life, an…

> Privacy is going to be the most valuable commodity of the 21st century.

Pretty bold statement. Can you expand on that?

Re: Google Fights Back

#73

Post by clairity » Wed, May 08, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

areoform wrote: post #7

Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it... I nominally pay for these services, but I s…

> "I nominally pay for these services..."

you give them all that valuable personal and private data and then also pay them? why are you so resigned to this? the tradeoff for knowing everything about you gives you what, a few less taps on your phone?

people ignored or minimized it then, but their direction was abundantly clear by 2004 or so: search -> adwords -> adsense -> gmail ---> all-your-data-everywhere (gmail seemed cool at the time until the realization of where all this was going). how is it that so many people are just now waking up to the dangers of google (and facebook, incidentally)?

Re: Google Fights Back

#74

Post by OrgNet » Wed, May 08, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #70

areoform wrote: post #7

Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it... I nominally pay for these services, but I s…

Google is already not Google. The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore. The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state. I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ug…

For me the worst part is that you don't own the pocket-computers (PC/phones) that you buy.... please let me install an OS that I can trust.

there is https://wiki.galliumos.org/Hardware_Compatibility for ChromeOS devices but on many phones, it is currently not possible to install a 3rd party OS, unless you figure out how to root them yourself... and even then, some of its hardware will probably not be compatible because they don't release drivers

I wish a Librem 4 was available (a lot cheaper then the Librem 5)

Re: Google Fights Back

#75

Post by pgeorgi » Wed, May 08, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #70

areoform wrote: post #7

Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it... I nominally pay for these services, but I s…

Google is already not Google. The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore. The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state. I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ug…

> And i don't believe for a second the data they're allowing you to "autodelete" genuinely gets deleted. It just gets removed from your view.

While "deleted" might take a while (eventual consistency FTW), any company with a presence in the EU has a lot to lose if such a scheme (beyond what they declare, eg. "31 days to recover your account") ever sees the light of day.

Re: Google Fights Back

#76

Post by pgeorgi » Wed, May 08, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #71

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is already not Google. The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore. The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state. I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ug…

How about the Librem 5?

It still reports your movements to your cell provider. Get rid of cell phones if you're worried about privacy.

Re: Google Fights Back

#77

Post by grenoire » Wed, May 08, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #72

ProAm wrote: post #14

Privacy is going to be the most valuable commodity of the 21st century. Google is doing everything in its power to buy/take/borrow that commodity from people (just like FB. Amazon, MS, etc...) They can say things like "We are moving from a company that helps you find answers to a company that helps you get things done…We want our products to work harder for you in the context of your job, your home, and your life, an…

> Privacy is going to be the most valuable commodity of the 21st century. Pretty bold statement. Can you expand on that?

OP is probably confusing service with commodity, as privacy is not a tangible to be sold or exchanged.

Re: Google Fights Back

#78

Post by holy_city » Wed, May 08, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

themacguffinman wrote: post #52

holy_city wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blatant disregard for privacy is what bothers me the most. Like when I started getting push notifications from Android for my credit card payment with my exact balance due, which they could only have gathered by parsing my emails from the bank. It's easy to resolve that by changing the contact info/settings with the bank, but just the fact that engineers at Google thought users would appreciate having their priva…

I'm a user. I appreciate it. It's puzzling that you think it's such a deeply unpopular feature. Third party bill reminders isn't a taboo or unexplored territory.

I don't think it's a deeply unpopular feature, I think it's deeply unethical the way it was presented to me as a user. And it's not the reminder that bothers me. It's that I don't trust Google not to share the data they extract from my private communications.

Financial information in particular can be used against you by a number of parties, and it's been used to discriminate against people in the past. When it comes to the collection of that data by scanning private communications, the ethical alarm bells should have been ringing, and the fact they collect that data should be disclosed and be opt-in (or opt-out).

If it's a matter of "if you don't pay for the product you are the product" that's not true - I did pay a lot of money for their product (I own a Pixel device), and if they offered an email product that I could pay for with the solace that it wouldn't be reading my emails, I would.

Re: Google Fights Back

#79

Post by SonicSoul » Wed, May 08, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #24

areoform wrote: post #7

Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it... I nominally pay for these services, but I s…

Your point is well taken, but 100 years will anyone care that you had the flu on May 7 2019? >Who the fuck owns MySpace now? It's all deleted. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/18/18271023/myspace-music-vi...

If you zoom far enough into the future nothing really matters. We still care about now and what happens in our lifetimes. I don’t want to miss out on a great job 10 years from now, or miss insurance coverage at anytime in my future because of Google even if i don’t care how much of this data will be around 100 years from now

Re: Google Fights Back

#80

Post by pdimitar » Wed, May 08, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #70

areoform wrote: post #7

Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it... I nominally pay for these services, but I s…

Google is already not Google. The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore. The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state. I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ug…

I fully switched from Android to iOS when iPhone X came out in November 2017.

I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I wanted on my iPhone -- it just took a bit of time to find the proper apps. Later Apple added the Shortcuts which is a very solid automation app.

Many Android users also lament the lack of a visible filesystem but that's a huge plus in my eyes. What are Android apps doing with that? You guessed it, scan your internal storage and SD card and upload them feck knows where (and this has been proven by many advanced Android users). iOS' sandboxing is not a bug. It's a feature which I appreciate a lot.

I'll not shy away from the fact: there are areas that I miss from Android. For example, I could have inspected WiFi strength signal with an Android phone and I cannot with a non-jailbroken iPhone.

Again though, as a guy who used Android phones for 4.5 years before switching to an iPhone, I found that the uncomfortable feeling of switching to an entirely new (and supposedly more "locked down") ecosystem is mostly an illusion created by our brain's unwillingness to endure big changes. You get over it very quickly. Don't trust your brain on these matters, it floods you with non-truisms to avoid cognitive shock.

P.S. I too loathe the notch. So after 15 months with the iPhone X I switched to iPhone 8 Plus. Easily the best phone on the planet to this day (plus a bigger screen and a slightly bigger battery). Now I dread the day the device will no longer be sold.