For photos storage and sharing you may want to check pCloud. They offer lifetime plan at $350 for 2TB. I'm in no way related; just a happy customer.
De-Googling: My Progress
21–30 of 348 posts
Re: De-Googling: My Progress
#22I switched to Bing first for all queries that can result in non-PC content, and then discovered that technical search is better on Bing also. I first switched to Firefox because I wanted to read newspapers. I find it hard without Bypass Paywalls Firefox add-on, that is banned by Google Chrome. As a result, Firefox with Bing default search is my browser. Things like deletions of alternative viewpoints (e.g. Dr. Erikson Covid19 briefing yesterday) and unbearable ad load are making me switch from Youtube. Unfortunately there is no good alternative to Youtube yet.
Re: De-Googling: My Progress
#23I'm a little bummed out that I just switched back to Chromium after several months on Firefox, but Firefox has some very annoying bugs that were driving me crazy.
On the plus side, it's the only Google software I use on a regular basis.
Re: De-Googling: My Progress
#24> Iphone: But I think this really helped cut my reliance on Google and I feel a lot less reliant on any particular phone OS.
You just became reliant on the iOS system instead of the Google on. Hardly an improvement.
Re: De-Googling: My Progress
#25I actually think the results on DuckDuckGo are better than on google for many topics especially technical: - there’s less ads (you can turn them off completely, but I’ve only seen one ad on the front page at most which is ok for me) - not as SEOed (still not great though) - the box on the side is often more useful, e.g. Wikipedia instead of shopping ads - on mobile Safari I use the bangs [0] which have a sort of Omni…
Don't you guys use an ad blocker? I barely see any ads since I started using uBlock. Occasionally I browse without an ad blocker and the experience is horrible and intimidating. Actually ads and propaganda were the reasons I quit TV around 10 years ago and I have never regretted it. So much time and mental energy is freed up to do constructive and fulfilling things (e.g. reading books, sports, socializing, musing etc).
Re: De-Googling: My Progress
#26One thing to add to the list. Signal rather than Whatsapp. It's the best. Protonmail isn't bad too.
Signal does not play nice with other protocols and centralizes everything. Hardly an improvement. Better go for real alternatives that will likely survive way longer like Riot/Matrix.
Re: De-Googling: My Progress
#27> Iphone: But I think this really helped cut my reliance on Google and I feel a lot less reliant on any particular phone OS. You just became reliant on the iOS system instead of the Google on. Hardly an improvement.
It’s probably a slight improvement in terms of privacy and security. It’s true though that it’s sad there is so little choice on mobile.
Re: De-Googling: My Progress
#28I still don't understand why people are moving from G products and use Apple+self-hosted? The author is saying he is hosting the e-mail server but, for example, not an iCal server.
Google has no problem browsing through your data to serve you "better" advertisement, while Apple claims to respect your privacy (I would be tempted to believe them).
Note that Apple respecting your privacy only applies in countries where they can continue to do business after refusing government requests.
Re: De-Googling: My Progress
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
DDG results are okay until you need to look up something non computer science related, like results for your local country.
Actually that’s better too, I like how it’s possible to switch countries easily to get local results or choose global results. Some non technical searches are more difficult though.
DDG’s definition of “global” is essentially “American” though. Presenting results exclusively for Worcester, MA, when I search for “Worcester” from a UK IP address (near Worcester, Worcestershire) isn’t being global, it’s being dumb.
It comes up every time DDG is discussed on HN and I don’t understand why they don’t fix it. It’s the main thing that keeps me using Bing on my phone.
Re: De-Googling: My Progress
#30I actually think the results on DuckDuckGo are better than on google for many topics especially technical: - there’s less ads (you can turn them off completely, but I’ve only seen one ad on the front page at most which is ok for me) - not as SEOed (still not great though) - the box on the side is often more useful, e.g. Wikipedia instead of shopping ads - on mobile Safari I use the bangs [0] which have a sort of Omni…
Don't you guys use an ad blocker? I barely see any ads since I started using uBlock. Occasionally I browse without an ad blocker and the experience is horrible and intimidating. Actually ads and propaganda were the reasons I quit TV around 10 years ago and I have never regretted it. So much time and mental energy is freed up to do constructive and fulfilling things (e.g. reading books, sports, socializing, musing etc…
Threw away TV 15 years ago, zero regret.