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What I Use Instead of Google

kiramclean.com

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Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#191

Post by RealStickman_ »

teachrdan wrote: post #180
tjoff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a lot of places it is legal to record a call as long as one of the parties (that is yourself) is in on it. That is, you can't record a call between two other people but you can always record a call that yourself are participating in.

Careful with this one. In the US, while most states "one party notification states" and operate as you describe: > Eleven (11) states require the consent of everybody involved in a conversation or phone call before the conversation can be recorded. Those states are: California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.[0] Recording without all p…

I would think that the employees are aware their calls are being recorded if the company announced that to me beforehand. That should be permission enough for me to record the call as well.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#192

Post by uniqueid »

kmclean wrote: post #100
uniqueid wrote: post #46

The thing this article doesn't cover is that while you can (and imo should ) make all these changes, Google will still track much of what you do online. The internet is rotten with linked media, amp pages, blogs, and ads hosted on Google servers. If you want off Google, you should use something like Pi-hole to lessen that. Since it's DNS level only, I imagine even that won't make you invisible to Google. This was a g…

Yeah this is a fair point! I found the rhetoric in the de-goggling community to be a bit purist and defeatist at times and I'm more of a "better done than perfect" kind of person, but I also don't want to be unrealistic about Google's reach or suggest this is all it takes to escape it. I updated the post to reflect these thoughts. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

Cheers. I enjoyed reading your post. The amount of research you put into it showed.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#193

Post by vin047 »

executesorder66 wrote: post #45
comex wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're just looking for personal sync (as opposed to collaboration), Syncthing [1] is a common recommendation, though personally I've had better luck with Unison [2]. [1] https://syncthing.net [2] https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

Thanks, I already use syncthing for some stuff, and it's great. However I should clarify: One of the reasons I want to move my data to a cloud server is that I am running out of space for more hard drives on my PC. So syncthing will work for editing stuff on my local and syncing the changes with my cloud server. But I don't want to store all my data on cloud _and_ on my local PC. I want something where it is usually…

I've been looking for something similar too. I've no experience with either, but currently eyeing Seafile https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ or OwnCloud https://owncloud.com. OwnCloud seems perfect, but quite pricey for a cloud-provided instance. Seafile looks good, but there's no cloud provided option unfortunately (i'd rather not self-host).

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#194

Post by FabHK »

tmpUserA wrote: post #148
FabHK wrote: post #138

Good recommendations. To minimize Youtube tracking, I use the fantastic `youtube-dl` to get the movie (or only audio) locally, then keep it or discard it as the case may be.

As far as I understand, to track users, website use : IP, Cookie/LocalStorage, Fingerprinting. I wonder if youtube-dl really helps ? It doesn't change the IP, you can refuse/clear cookies in your browser, and for fingerprinting, isn't scraping via youtube-dl make you even more unique among other regular browser users ?

Good question.

A) IP - use a VPN. youtube-dl == browser

B) Cookies - youtube-dl doesn't retain cookies, I presume. youtube-dl >= browser

C) Fingerprinting - good question. I'd hope youtube-dl doesn't offer as many avenues. Can it identify you from one visit to the next? Beats me!

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#195

Post by matwood »

marlowe221 wrote: post #112
matwood wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As has been mentioned many times, the problem (if you want to call it that) with DDG is that it does not personally tailor results. Google is great at deciphering what I mean because it has data on me. DDG doesn't have this data, so how I search needed to be tweaked. I rarely have need for the g! anymore.

I'm genuinely curious about this and would like to use Google search less than I do now... Would you mind sharing a few tips (or pointing me in the direction of some tips) for better DDG searches? I love the concept and philosophy of DDG but the search results I get could definitely be better!

It’s hard to describe. For example, I keep in mind that DDG does not know I’m a programmer. So, I have to phrase queries with that in mind.

DDG also has a lot of ! shortcuts, not just google.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#196

Post by kmclean »

uniqueid wrote: post #192
kmclean wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is a fair point! I found the rhetoric in the de-goggling community to be a bit purist and defeatist at times and I'm more of a "better done than perfect" kind of person, but I also don't want to be unrealistic about Google's reach or suggest this is all it takes to escape it. I updated the post to reflect these thoughts. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

Cheers. I enjoyed reading your post. The amount of research you put into it showed.

Thanks so much!

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#197

Post by ywei3410 »

duffyjp wrote: post #126
ajdude wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ultimately what I ended up doing, with one caveat: I have mailinabox running on a VPS in a local datacenter. If my ISP wasn’t so aggressive with sending mail, I would’ve just self hosted on my own computer. However, mailinabox also comes with nextcloud, and it works out of the box with exchange activesync, allowing me to basically mimic gmail’s syncing of calendar/contacts/etc. I made the switch about a year…

The fact you were able to register your lastname as a dotcom is incredibly fortunate, especially if that was a recent registration. Mine has been a marketing agency since 1995. I ran my own business email for a while in a DigitalOcean VPS, but it was a huge pain. I did it all by hand though, I should give mailinabox a try.

I've just set up a mail server with the same stack as mailinabox (with a few minor differences, since I didn't care for the web-screens, self-hosted DNS and the fact that my residential ISP offers a static IP service).

If you do give it a try, I would personally simplify the set-up. If you're comfortable with some downtime you can get away with running just Postfix, Dovecot (with some secondary services) and delegating to the OS for user management. All of them come with systemd services so it isn't too bad to manage.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#198

Post by bmitc »

yuribro wrote: post #135
wtmt wrote: post #52

> Maps → Apple maps If Apple were a different company, it would've made maps available for use on web browsers and non-Apple devices. That could also help in a more rapid improvement of maps as opposed to the mostly-useless state it's been in (except for a few countries and regions in certain countries that Apple likes and works more on). > and still a little YouTube (anonymously in a Firefox container) If a Firefox…

> If Apple were a different company, it would've made maps available for use on web browsers and non-Apple devices. That could also help in a more rapid improvement of maps as opposed to the mostly-useless state it's been in (except for a few countries and regions in certain countries that Apple likes and works more on). If apple would have done that (for Maps and other services), how would it be different than Googl…

> Google offers these services for free to the end-user and generates revenue from ads.

We pay them with our data. It’s an exchange of services.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#199

Post by executesorder66 »

rakoo wrote: post #158
executesorder66 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I currently have backups on some external drives. But I plan on also doing backups with blackblaze or somewhere similar. My plan for the cloud server is just to have a central place to access all my (and my wife's) files from any device. But then my problem is, as I mentioned earlier, how do I bulk edit/organize those files using desktop software?

It feels like you're looking for something like git-annex ( https://git-annex.branchable.com/ ). I've never used it but read a bit about it, here's how you would use it: - Install git-annex on your cloud - Tell git-annex that you have a remote there - Do your stuff on your local drive, push to the cloud when it's done - If some of the files are not needed locally, tell git-annex to drop them from your local drive. gi…

Thanks, I'll look into it.

Re: What I Use Instead of Google

#200

Post by executesorder66 »

marci wrote: post #183
executesorder66 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I currently have backups on some external drives. But I plan on also doing backups with blackblaze or somewhere similar. My plan for the cloud server is just to have a central place to access all my (and my wife's) files from any device. But then my problem is, as I mentioned earlier, how do I bulk edit/organize those files using desktop software?

SSHFS? https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-...

This might just work, thanks.
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