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Google Fights Back

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Re: Google Fights Back

#101

Post by loudtieblahblah »

pdimitar wrote: post #80
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…

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 visib…

>Many Android users also lament the lack of a visible filesystem but that's a huge plus in my eyes

That's awful in my eyes. What's more is my inability to browse that file system without a third party application when i want to simply move files to my computer.

The only reason I'm even contemplating the move to iOS, is b/c I have a android based, digital audio player that has 2 SDcard slots that I keep disconnected from Wifi (and it does n't have a 4G connection at all).

If my music was still on my phone, I simply would not move to iOS over this singular issue. You're talking 250-400GB of files, not including my downloads, my pictures, my Keepass databases, my SSH keys, my certs file for my VPN, and files that I don't want the OS to index and put in some general library.

It stills seem ridiculously daunting to let go of. Because I use it extensively. Daily - even without my music on there.

>ou 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)

Except only the apps I trust are allowed storage access.

Re: Google Fights Back

#102

Post by lallysingh »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #84
Apocryphon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the Librem 5?

The problem with Libre5/Purism is apps. A lot of the secure applications I use have a linux app of some sort (DEB, AppImage, Docker) but I fail to see how any of that is going to work on a phone. I certainly don't see how a docker container would be good for battery life on a phone either ProtonMail - for example - on Linux, requires a bridge application in order to talk to a IMAP capable email client. Etesync requir…

FWIW docker apps are just regular processes with some additional data structures on the kernel side. If the process(es) in the container aren't scheduled on a CPU (e.g., blocked or sleeping), the app isn't taking any more resources than any other process(es).

Frankly, a container-based app model sounds kinda nice!

Re: Google Fights Back

#103

Post by harryf »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #58
gambler wrote: post #21

>It all begins with our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, and today, our mission feels as relevant as ever. I said this 15 years ago and I will repeat it again. Google is like a man selling boats after a dam brake. They are profiting by managing the problem, not by fixing it. It is to their benefit if the problem actually gets worse. In other words, looking at…

What exactly are you suggesting here? What's the fundamental problem that Google is managing instead of fixing, once and for all?

Discovery. From a technical point of view search doesn’t have to be centralized. Economics and the nature of markets may say different though

Re: Google Fights Back

#104

Post by loudtieblahblah »

saghm wrote: post #92
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…

> No SDCards, no headphone jack > I loathe the notch. To be fair, each of these either already is or is becoming the norm on Android phones as well (at least, ones at a similar price point iPhones). Several of the top end phones have notches and no headphone jack, and I haven't had an Android phone with an SD card slot for about five years now. [edits: formatting/typos]

Every phone I've had, my parents have had and my wife has had (since i support them all) has SDcards. Including phones bought this year. They all have various Samsung models right now.

My DAP has 2 slots. (android based)

And it's a god send when your phone decides to boot loop and you can no longer actually get into your phone.

Oh they say - use their cloud services for the low low price of whatever. F- that.

Re: Google Fights Back

#105

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

holy_city wrote: post #26
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…

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…

> which they could only have gathered by parsing my emails from the bank.

You say it as if it's a revelation or discovery, when Google is very upfront about surfacing relevant information and reminders based on your inbox.

On more than one occasion, this feature has helped me take actions on pending work items like payments, renewals and so on.

You don't want Google to show you ads, fair enough. You don't want Google to surface for you (and only you) useful information that helps you organize your life.

It almost sounds like you just want Google to give you hundreds of dollars of compute, storage and service out of the goodness of their hearts.

I think both you and Google would be better off without each other.

Re: Google Fights Back

#106

Post by loudtieblahblah »

lallysingh wrote: post #102
loudtieblahblah wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Libre5/Purism is apps. A lot of the secure applications I use have a linux app of some sort (DEB, AppImage, Docker) but I fail to see how any of that is going to work on a phone. I certainly don't see how a docker container would be good for battery life on a phone either ProtonMail - for example - on Linux, requires a bridge application in order to talk to a IMAP capable email client. Etesync requir…

FWIW docker apps are just regular processes with some additional data structures on the kernel side. If the process(es) in the container aren't scheduled on a CPU (e.g., blocked or sleeping), the app isn't taking any more resources than any other process(es). Frankly, a container-based app model sounds kinda nice!

even if it's good on battery, managing it on a phone sounds awful though.

Re: Google Fights Back

#107

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

holy_city wrote: post #78
themacguffinman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> deeply unethical the way it was presented to me as a user

How was it presented to you in a way that you found deeply unethical? As I understand it shows up as a soft notification on your phone.

Re: Google Fights Back

#108

Post by TulliusCicero »

harryf wrote: post #103
TulliusCicero wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly are you suggesting here? What's the fundamental problem that Google is managing instead of fixing, once and for all?

Discovery. From a technical point of view search doesn’t have to be centralized. Economics and the nature of markets may say different though

Maybe I'm just dumb, but I'm not following. How could they solve discovery once and for all, instead of managing it?

I don't see how decentralization would permanently solve discovery. I can see how it could be useful in other ways, but you'd still be managing an ongoing problem.

Re: Google Fights Back

#109

Post by Nextgrid »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #62
falcolas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is also holding the plunger that helped create the dam breakage. Not to mention the pry-bars being applied to any attempts to fix the dam. EDIT: For those who want to downvote, consider that the vast majority of Google's revenue comes from the use of your personal information to target you with ads, and that most of the advances in ad targeting using personal data have been made by Google.

I think you are espousing an "ADS ARE INHERENTLY BAD" mentality that just doesn't resonate with people. I want to know about the best services that are useful for me. I do not want to be advertised women's swimsuits on Instagram (I'm a male with no interest in purchasing said item). When I see ads that are useless its infuriating. However, when I see an ad for Allbirds or a cool new leather jacket, I feel very much i…

There’s a difference between ads targeted to information you provide explicitly (age & gender when you signed up, etc) and information that is obtained by stalking you across the entire internet.

I’m all in for the former, but the latter should be made illegal.

Re: Google Fights Back

#110

Post by infinisil »

kmlx wrote: post #4
bunnycorn wrote: post #2

Google should fight back at last years promisses. Where is the feature of calling people automatically on google assistant? Last year they promised they would call my hair saloon for me, and it's all BS. Like everything they say every year, it never works in real life. But I see lots of "journalists" praising it, while criticizing Siri as useless. Where is their self driving car too? Never complete, they always promi…

> Where is the feature of calling people automatically on google assistant? already available in 44 states, they’re bringing it to the web. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2019/05/07/goo... > Where is their self driving car too? Never complete, they always promise "it's the next year". there’s zero rush when there’s a chance of killing people. also this: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theverge.com/p…

> already available in 44 states

I'm a bit disappointed by all big companies focusing on the states. Fact is, over 95% of people don't live in the US. Every time I see some fancy new technology, chances are I'll never get to use it in my country.

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