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De-Googling: My Progress

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Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#231

Post by newscracker »

jwr wrote: post #229
yachtman wrote: post #181

Firefox is now objectively better than Chrome in every way. I would recommend switching moral reasons aside. Chrome's memory management is abysmal. I now get the same shudder when I see someone with chrome on their machine that I used to get when I saw someone running Internet Explorer (which may even be better than chrome now too).

Unfortunately, this is not true. I wish it were. Firefox's JavaScript engine is still slower and large JavaScript apps become sluggish more quickly. Also, I still haven't found a way to let users download files from JavaScript (e.g. through a button click that invokes a function) in Firefox, that wouldn't open another window and in the process close their websocket connection.

> Chrome's memory management is abysmal.

This was true (I no longer use Chrome and don’t know if it’s improved in the last two years). Chrome needed enormous amounts of memory compared to Firefox. Using RAM is not an issue as such, but it makes other applications running at the same time miserable (and the user too).

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#232

Post by wideasleep1 »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #86
joering2 wrote: post #21

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. https://www.pcloud.com/cloud-storage-pricing-plans.html

I'm a bit wary of services with recurrent costs that offer a lifetime pass. But I guess even if they fold in 5 years you're getting your money's worth anyway. Pcloud also makes you pay separately (and quite a lot) for having encryption turned on.

Have been considering encrypting locally (which pCloud already does, but at the cost) using File Guard extension on Chrome, and Cryptomator on Android. All encryption passwords to be stored in BitWarden.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#233

Post by treebornfrog »

yachtman wrote: post #181

Firefox is now objectively better than Chrome in every way. I would recommend switching moral reasons aside. Chrome's memory management is abysmal. I now get the same shudder when I see someone with chrome on their machine that I used to get when I saw someone running Internet Explorer (which may even be better than chrome now too).

I've been using Firefox (I think it's quantum) for just under 2.5 years.

Firefox just feels like a solid browser and how it should be.

Whenever I need to switch to chrome to browser test, I notice it just feels like a less well made browser.

Hard to articulate.

Edit: not to mention that the logo itself is uber cool!

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#234

Post by rakoo »

kgwxd wrote: post #220
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A long journey starts with a small step.

Forward, not sideways :)

Depends what your destination is.

- If you're going to "autonomy, independance and self-hosting", it's a step sideways for sure

- If you're going to "stop giving all my information to a central entity" it's definitely a step forward. Giving a part to Google, a part to Facebook and a part to Apple is better than giving everything to one of them, whichever they are.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#235

Post by steveklabnik »

treebornfrog wrote: post #233
yachtman wrote: post #181

Firefox is now objectively better than Chrome in every way. I would recommend switching moral reasons aside. Chrome's memory management is abysmal. I now get the same shudder when I see someone with chrome on their machine that I used to get when I saw someone running Internet Explorer (which may even be better than chrome now too).

I've been using Firefox (I think it's quantum) for just under 2.5 years. Firefox just feels like a solid browser and how it should be. Whenever I need to switch to chrome to browser test, I notice it just feels like a less well made browser. Hard to articulate. Edit: not to mention that the logo itself is uber cool!

Quantum was basically a marketing name for Firefox 57; you are probably using it by now :)

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#236

Post by treebornfrog »

steveklabnik wrote: post #235
treebornfrog wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Firefox (I think it's quantum) for just under 2.5 years. Firefox just feels like a solid browser and how it should be. Whenever I need to switch to chrome to browser test, I notice it just feels like a less well made browser. Hard to articulate. Edit: not to mention that the logo itself is uber cool!

Quantum was basically a marketing name for Firefox 57; you are probably using it by now :)

Hard to keep up with all the changes.

The only thing that's annoyed me with FF was the recent update where the url bar got bigger when clicked.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#237

Post by soraminazuki »

bad_user wrote: post #43
harha wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For me all results are worse, computer science or not. DDG completely ignores my country or when it doesn't, the results are misclassified. And you can forget about local searches, DDG being worse than useless for those. What strikes me as odd is that DDG is worse for computer science results too. DDG often ignores search terms that Google doesn't. And which terms it ignores is a complete guess, so you do this back a…

That’s odd, because from my experience, it’s Google that’s constantly ignoring my search terms. With Google, I often had to quote “every” “single” “keyword” when it came to searching for computer science stuff. With DDG, not as much.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#238

Post by newscracker »

b3n wrote: post #106
tombh wrote: post #40

I've been de-googled (and de-facebooked) for over a year now. I wrote about it here https://tombh.co.uk/deleting-facebook-and-google My main motivation is slightly different in that being a software engineer I am actually in a unique position to navigate this tricky path and therefore feel a responsibility to tread the de-googled path, so that it might make it easier for others to follow, should they so wish. At the…

> I opt for Signal now, hardly anyone uses it and the UX isn’t as nice, but it uses state of art in encryption. Out of curiosity, what don't you like about the UX? And doesn't it use the same "state of the art" encryption as WhatsApp?

> Out of curiosity, what don't you like about the UX?

Not GP, but I’ve railed against Signal’s stability and UX before.

Apart from messages not being delivered sometimes (or taking very long) and getting unnecessary “device changed” messages when nothing has changed (this happened as recent as last year), within a year or two of use, Signal makes sure that the user realizes that it’s meant for ephemeral use.

It does this by a few different ways. One is that if you change devices, you’d have to jump through hoops to rejoin groups you were a part of, and then see that you cannot see the list of members or the group’s name. Once you change devices, at least in iOS, you’d realize that you’ve permanently lost all your previous chats because Signal explicitly prohibits chat backup by iTunes and does not provide a way to backup chats and restore it either.

In terms of UX alone, Telegram > WhatsApp > Signal. FWIW, I use all these and Wire too. Signal gets the least amount of use because the people I chat with on it are also fed up with the poor UX and lack of features.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#239

Post by rakoo »

A lot of people praise DDG and I'm also one using it as a default search engine, but it's not exactly clear how much independent it is. I've started to consider using Cliqz (https://cliqz.com/) as an alternative or at least a parallel experiment; they claim to be totally independent and to care for user privacy at least as much as DDG does.

Does any other HNer have experience with their search result ? I'm still not using it enough to have a reliable conclusion of my own.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#240

Post by newscracker »

dublinben wrote: post #186
niemenmaa wrote: post #104

My De-Googling process: *Search(1) -> DuckDuckGo *Gmail(2) -> Fastmail *Android -> SailfishOS (https://sailfishos.org/) *Maps -> OpenStreetMaps *Youtube(3) -> Youtube-dl, "subscriptions" with rss-feeds *Drive -> Self-hosted Nextloud & Syncthing *Calendar -> At first Fastmail, but nowadays back to paper calendar *Chrome -> Brave & Firefox (1) When having problems finding I sometimes check Google Search with bangs. (2)…

Concerning Youtube, you may be interested in https://www.invidio.us/ which is an alternative front end. There are also extensions for Firefox which will automatically redirect any Youtube links you happen to come across to open on Invidious.

I use the free Freetube application, which uses invidious behind the scenes. Invidious does throw errors sometimes because it gets blocked (or rate limited) by YouTube.
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