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De-Googleify Internet

degooglisons-internet.org

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Re: De-Googleify Internet

#251

Post by Twisell »

timdierks wrote: post #247
Twisell wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope this is directly linked to ad revenues because StackOverflow don't care about them they can offer freedom. And if they ever get into financial difficulty you can count on me to subscribe to a paying "gold membership" and I still won't care if broken students get the same content for free and without login. You never wondered why there is very few fake account on stackoverflow as compared to ad based social netwo…

Why would you think StackOverflow doesn't care about ad revenue? They both run ads and want to make money by helping recruiters reach logged in users.

Yep but quantity is not an ally to reach this goal, they look for people that have a good track record and are recognized by their peers. They don't care if the student that look for answers on SO is not registered.

Registering non participating members is only a trick to inflate your user base when communicating. What really matter is active users, and they will register don't worry.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#252

Post by eh78ssxv2f »

sedachv wrote: post #183
cortesoft wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the public doesn't care for a good reason; no one has articulated a realistic, tangible cost to quality of life caused by letting Google track you. Lots of people talk about it being 'creepy' and dreaming up possible scenarios where it WOUDLD be costly, but for most people, the costs simply aren't actually felt. I am trying to think about it for me personally, and I can't come up with a single time that Googl…

> Seriously, though; how is my life negatively impacted (in actuality, not hypothetically), in a way that I can notice the difference, by letting Google track me? People have lost their freedom because their Google search history was used against them in court: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2006/02/subpoenas-and-your-pri... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/01/csi-google-winnin... http://www.oddee.com/item_9893…

This seems like a misleading example. It's like saying that users should not borrow books from library because if they borrow "How to murder 101", and then they murder somebody, they would be caught.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#253

Post by eh78ssxv2f »

JBiserkov wrote: post #193
dao- wrote: post #44

> The increasingly centralized online services provided by sprawling giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, or Microsoft (GAFAM) pose a threat to our digital lives. Curious that they don't talk about browsers. Your browser sees everything and knows everything it wants to know about your online life, it's arguably the most sensitive piece of the puzzle. All major browsers except Firefox are owned by "GAFAM."

An important point. I've switched to Firefox (with uMatrix) for this very reason. I can't yet bring myself to stop using Google. But I make a deliberate effort to not use their search when I don't have to: - when I know exactly when I'm going, I rely on bookmarks and the browsers history or just type the URL in full. - when my destination is a deep URL I use the method above to navigate to the website's homepage, and…

Can you explain more. Did you find an example of Google Chrome logging your private information without your consent?

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#254

Post by majewsky »

pierre_d528 wrote: post #164
KirinDave wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not want ideology. I want tangible results that will improve the freedom, privacy and safety of the western world. Quite frankly, Google does more for this right now than any 3 open source competitors to gmail do, combined. Open source is irrelevant in most fields of user-facing software because they have insisted on being irrelevant . And any time a group forms a structure to do better, they're ceaselessly atta…

The cloud is going back to mainframes (e.g. Chromebook). Kay and 2.8MB system (Squeak). TCP/IP in 160 SLOC (Ian Piumarta). You mix Open source and Free software. Go have a real degree first (real science like physics), then maybe go back to computing. Cannot catch up with the 70s!

My physics diploma says that you're not contributing any useful arguments to the discussion at hand.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#255

Post by majewsky »

Freak_NL wrote: post #136
anthony_romeo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, most of the time I don't need to go to Google. But with '!g' the search defaults to encrypted mode (which you can do anyway at encrypted.google.com). Honestly, I mostly use ddg because the bang syntax is extremely helpful. Like if I want to search hacker news posts, I just add !hn or !hackernews to the search. They also have bang searches for documentation of many languages, like !java

You can also make DuckDuckGo the default search engine in Firefox' location bar. That way anything that is not a URL is treated as a search query. I particularly like !wen for Wikipedia and !wikt for Wiktionary.

Firefox actually has that feature built-in. It comes preloaded with the English Wikipedia, so you can type "wikipedia " to search Wikipedia for "". Other searches can be added from the addon store, or by right-clicking on a search box and defining a keyword.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#256

Post by majewsky »

daveloyall wrote: post #13

Their alternative services appear to mostly be existing FOSS projects, re-branded... Normally that would trouble me, but in this context... maybe a great idea! The uninitiated might have less trouble adopting "the frama suite" vs a dozen separate apps... Granted, the GNU ecosystem should already provide that, but of course there are lots of good FOSS apps that don't and won't fly the GNU banner...

I haven't seen the GNU ecosystem provide anything at all in the web service space. GNU is, for the most part, the same set of applications that it was, say, 10 years ago. (Or at least I perceive it as such.)

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#257

Post by l-p »

mitchty wrote: post #60
l-p wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gmail is objectively an amazing email app on both desktop browser and mobile. Hum. I would not say "objectively". I can't stand gmail, it does not come close to what I can do with Thunderbird and K-9, and I'm not doing anything complex. A webapp still can't compete with a native client. > Lots of great apps like Google Docs, Calendar, and Translate exist to make your life easier for free. Google services are not fr…

Indeed objectively is easily an opinion. And I'd like to see that talk if you could, I'm still in the migration process of migrating off gmail. Its slow though as I have to change a ton of logins to use my own domain that gets stuff sent to fast mail. So nice having regular email on a domain I control.

Slides are short, in French, and I only briefly mention gmail as it's the easiest thing to replace.

Also, not much you can say in a 10 minutes talk.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#258

Post by tripzilch »

marssaxman wrote: post #203
KirinDave wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the simple truth is: people do it. They don't mind doing it. Especially when the alternative is terrible user experience. The vast majority of tools named when these conversations come up are demonstrably worse from a UX perspective. Free software does not get a pass on UX because it is free. There are many reasons why that is, but we have to recognize it is true.

Do we know that they don't mind doing it? I suspect most people don't like it, but do it anyway, because they see no practical alternative. People sure complain about Facebook a lot.

Among all the non-tech oriented people I know, the only ones that say they don't mind, do so because they feel powerless about it but "need" Facebook.

You actually need some tech knowledge to be able to rationalize this endless being pushed and shoved around like cattle as some kind of worthwhile trade-off.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#259

Post by tripzilch »

StevePerkins wrote: post #66
myowncrapulence wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read the post? This is about avoiding tracking. And yes, signing up for accounts can be grueling. Try making a google account without submitting a blood sample.

Wat? It's been years since I created my "real" Google account, so I just created "fakeasdlkvjasklfvjasdkljfgasdf@gmail.com" out of curiosity. It literally took 20 seconds, with a fake name and birthday. There are form fields for your phone number and alternate email address, but you can leave them blank.

Just tried this (again) and it does require me to enter a phone number.

See here: http://i.imgur.com/LFZjcvG.png

I used to think it was dependent on the IP from which you register, like whether it was a home connection or something shared with many people (like in a train or café), when obviously you'd want to use the latter (and definitely not the IP from which you've been mainly accessing your main Google account for years).

But this time I did try it from my home connection, which is in the Netherlands (though I selected "Germany" for my home country because Fravia+ has taught me well).

I wonder what makes the difference. Maybe if I had a US-based IP? Could be something with EU privacy laws. It should just clearly tell me, though.

Now, I won't whine about it when Google doesn't want to give me something for free. I will, however, whine about it when Google pretends I should hand over the thing it wants at no cost but for my own benefit. I will also whine about it when it purposefully obfuscates the cost/benefits and leaves me guessing like this. If it's a trade it wants, either be upfront about it, or be shady business.

Re: De-Googleify Internet

#260

Post by maxt »

It's quite possible to break the Internet by blanket-blocking core Google IPs[1]. I tried blocking these in my firewall and my surfing sessions became really slow. I would much prefer things like uBlock which do it at the browser level and it doesn't cause a lag.

    74.14.192.0/18
    216.58.192.0/19
    216.239.32.0/19
    64.233.160.0/19
    66.249.80.0/20
    72.14.192.0/18
    209.85.128.0/17
    66.102.0.0/20
    74.125.0.0/16
    64.18.0.0/20
    207.126.144.0/20
    173.194.0.0/16
This is usually because if you're resolving domains to 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1 in hosts then there is an inbuilt timeout as localhost is typically not running any services.

Best to make localhost run a service. A personal thing I use is lighthttpd[2] which ensures such a lag is vanished

[1]: https://gist.github.com/int64ago/1d72c80e8082b78777c9

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighttpd

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