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De-Googling: My Progress

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Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#301

Post by ianmobbs »

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).

Is pinch-to-zoom native on Firefox yet? Last I attempted to switch, you had to install an extension to enable it, and even then it was far "choppier" than Chrome's pinch-to-zoom experience. I've got pretty bad eyesight and zoom consistently so it was a dealbreaker for me.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#302

Post by lonelappde »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #221
lowdose wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never read Google discriminates between paying customers before. That's such a wild accusation that it requires serious evidence. Edit: I can reply anymore but just supply a link of data handling discrimination between paying customers because that's what you imply by "there is not difference between GSuite customers and normal gmail". It's bullshit https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

You're correct in that Google doesn't discriminate between paying and non-paying customers: It happily abuses the privacy of it's paying customers too. Many of Google's uses of data are not specific to whether or not someone is using G Suite or consumer Gmail as far as I am aware.

Bit of advice: If you don't know something, remain silent or say you don't know or ask a question. Don't confidently assert something you just made up.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#303

Post by lonelappde »

robjan wrote: post #148
b3n wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The problem with WhatsApp is that the other participants in a given chat are likely to back up the conversation to Google Drive of iCloud which defeats the purpose of E2E encryption. And, of course, the metadata.

Hmm? The e in e2e is you and your partner communicating. If your don't trust your conversation partner, don't talk to them.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#304

Post by deeblering4 »

brabel wrote: post #59
harha wrote: post #8

I 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…

As much as I would like to agree, as a user who has DDG as the default search engine, this is not my experience... DDG consistently gives me useless results when I search for less popular languages results (searching Dart, or the search-friendly dartlang, gives me crap every time, while Google finds stuff easily... sure, Dart is by Google, that may be a factor, but if I remember correctly, results for Groovy and very…

Cannot reproduce this -- Searched DDG for 'dartlang' and all links on the first page relate to dart programming language.

Also google having more results you are looking for sometimes doesn't mean you can't have DDG as your default search. Just enter 'dartlang !g' when you want to search google.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#305

Post by codethief »

nunorbatista wrote: post #182
codethief wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you use Telegram if you're concerned about privacy?

Telegram changed in the last couple of years. You can choose between secret chats (e2e encrypted) and normal which are just user-server storage-user encrypted. End-to-end voice calls is also a feature. If you ask me between the Google / Facebook messaging apps (Whatsapp, Messenger, etc) and Telegram, today I'd say Telegram has an advantage because it has a good UI, works across devices and the desktop client works li…

> You can choose between secret chats (e2e encrypted) and normal which are just user-server storage-user encrypted.

I am aware of that, though I think in the second case it's better to pretend messages are not encrypted at all on the server side since mere storage encryption can be circumvented all too easily.

Anyway, having the choice between encryption and no encryption is exactly the problem. How many Telegram users choose e2e-encrypted chats? AFAIK you have to enable this for every conversation separately, right?

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#306

Post by deeblering4 »

timwis wrote: post #69
brabel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I would like to agree, as a user who has DDG as the default search engine, this is not my experience... DDG consistently gives me useless results when I search for less popular languages results (searching Dart, or the search-friendly dartlang, gives me crap every time, while Google finds stuff easily... sure, Dart is by Google, that may be a factor, but if I remember correctly, results for Groovy and very…

I agree. I find myself using the !g bang any time I’m looking for software related queries.

I found this to be the case a few years ago. But nowadays it's uncommon that I need to switch to google, even if searching for technical things.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#307

Post by UncleSlacky »

gcthomas wrote: post #122
asdff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG is nowhere close to google scholar, much less pubmed. If you don't want to use google scholar, web of science is good too.

I find it easier to access GOogle Scholar via DDG with !scholar than I do with Google Search.

I use !gsch for that.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#308

Post by jabroni_salad »

djaychela wrote: post #142
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)…

Hi. I'm using fastmail (having left Gmail) - can you expand on why you stopped using the calendar?

I don't have anything against fastmail's calendar but I personally also regressed to a paper planner. I just find that I am more engaged with my planning this way, while the digital calendar sorta does its own thing and spits notifications at me for stuff I've forgotten about.

I still use digital for work since it's collaborative but my personal stuff is all inscribed on a dead tree, now.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#309

Post by karinakarina »

dorkinspace wrote: post #259
newscracker wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put the bang commands anywhere in the query — in the beginning, in the end and anywhere in the middle. Startpage (!s) is another option to get results from Google without directly connecting to Google.

Thanks for this tip! I have a feeling DDG supports many more bangs than I (and most people) know about. ... 13k+ bangs available. Yep! https://duckduckgo.com/bang

FYI: With Startpage's Anonymous View feature you can visit search results in privacy.

Re: De-Googling: My Progress

#310

Post by nunorbatista »

codethief wrote: post #305
nunorbatista wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram changed in the last couple of years. You can choose between secret chats (e2e encrypted) and normal which are just user-server storage-user encrypted. End-to-end voice calls is also a feature. If you ask me between the Google / Facebook messaging apps (Whatsapp, Messenger, etc) and Telegram, today I'd say Telegram has an advantage because it has a good UI, works across devices and the desktop client works li…

> You can choose between secret chats (e2e encrypted) and normal which are just user-server storage-user encrypted. I am aware of that, though I think in the second case it's better to pretend messages are not encrypted at all on the server side since mere storage encryption can be circumvented all too easily. Anyway, having the choice between encryption and no encryption is exactly the problem. How many Telegram use…

Yes, you would still have to create a new "Secret chat" to have the e2e. The reason for that is explored here: https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Telegram-End-to-End-Encrypted-by...

It's their approach and I'm personally ok with it. Due to my friends I use FB messenger a lot and they say it will take years to be e2e encrypted, so I believe it's a fair compromise from Telegram.

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