341–350 of 665 posts
A working instance to test before hosting your own: https://searx.info
Let me know how you liked it.
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> It's a well known, documented fact that Apple hardware is hostile towards the environment. Source? Apple is 100% green in some areas and they have good EPA ratings. https://www.apple.com/environment/
I like that your source is from Apple. Is that a joke? Took me 5 seconds on first Google page to confirm what is common sense: "Apple's horrid repair policies are forcing shops to destroy stacks of MacBook Pros" https://www.inputmag.com/culture/apples-repair-policies-are-...
My biggest usage is Chrome profiles. I use several for various personal and work accounts which means passwords, history, extensions, open sessions, and everything else are all nicely contained under separate Chrome windows. Nothing else comes close to this kind of convenience and UX, and it's more secure since accounts are not co-mingled.
That sounds the same as Firefox profiles, plus Firefox has containers for more sectioning of data within a profile. Is there something Chrome has here that Firefox doesn’t?
Overall Chrome's version is just smoother and easier to use compared to Firefox. Mozilla should add better UI/menus and SSO for Firefox Accounts to get closer.
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>People have been raising flags about this for literally decades now and the other shoe has yet to drop in any kind of meaningful way. The threat model I work off is "fascist government seizes power in the United States and sequesters all data for all citizens from the top 15 large corporations". Then they get to work weeding out undesirables. This would happen, I'd estimate, in the space of about a month although if…
Sure, but if that happens... I think we're fucked either way? I think any providers would be just as susceptible (maybe more so; Google ostensibly has the means to protect data, legally and technologically), and your data would already be on Google's servers unless you only emailed or chatted with other non-Google users.
Why?
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I have never used Gmail and never needed to. iCloud mail has been good enough for 9 years. • Does not ask for phone number. • Allows actual aliases (instead of a self-defeating YourRealAddress+Alias@Gmail.com) • Does not sneakily sign you into Search and every other Google service when you just want to check your email. In addition to all the privacy advantages.
I'm confused. Doesn't iCloud mail require an apple id, which in turn requires a lot of your pii? https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204316
(Someone is hell bent on downvoting any comments in favor of Apple)
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An entire day! I wish it were that easy. My password manager says I have 331 accounts using my gmail address. I figure it'll take me a year to move everything if I spend a couple hours a week. I categorized them into tiers based on importance and still ended up with 63 in the top "important or regularly use" tier and 59 in the next "will probably use again" tier. The lower tiers, I'll probably not even bother with.
Same here, but I simply forwarded ALL incomming e-mail from my old Gmail to my new email address. That way, i did not have to change all website accounts at once. So I slowly updated a lot of less important accounts/websites to my new email address over the period of 1+ year.
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Same here: Migrated all my gmail accounts to Fastmail. Took me two days. Migrated Google Docs to Dropbox. And replaced Google Sheets and Doc with a Microsoft subscription (MS Word and MS Excel). Then there‘s the search engine. I tried hard to replace Google Search with DDG, but I have to admit that Google gives me better search results. Still I would love to leave this also behind. Finally there is youtube for me. Ai…
Out of curiosity, what's the benefit of replacing Google Docs with Dropbox? I seem to remember HN's readership is occasionally hostile to Dropbox. Myself, I use it but the same drive that would have me ditch Google would also make me ditch Dropbox... (I haven't reached that point, though)
They're both for-profit US companies saving your data overseas, so yes, for your last point it doesn't matter much. However, there are two advantages:
1) You're giving your data to a company aiming to sell you storage space vs a company which tries to make money of selling your (meta-)data, where selling storage space is only a minor accounting item. This also gives clear priorities: Dropbox loosing or being caught selling your data is a big reputation hit to them [0], while for Google it would neither change their reputation nor their total revenue by much.
2) You're not putting your eggs in one basket. If you're all in on Google, loosing your account does kill your calendar, contacts, mail, storage (possibly with the backups you need right now) ... . Also, that one company has basically full access to your life. If you're using diversified services you're far less likely to suddenly loose access to multiple services [1] and those services only own a part of your data vs your whole life [2].
Concluding this, selfhosting surely is the superior solution. But if you must use external storage providers (i.e. as worst-case backup or due to lack of money/space for own servers), choosing Dropbox over Google has its advantages.
[0] Yes, I'm aware it has happened.
[1] Assuming 2FA and a reasonably secure mail service, of course.
[2] One could argue that Google is going to guard your data with world-class engineers while the other services are probably less well equipped and therefore you have an increased risk of (at least!) parts of your data being leaked. That's personal risk management, though, and the consensus seems to be diversification.
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No, we care when those companies are giant multinational monopolies. Think of it this way. I walk into a mom & pop clothing store, and one of the sales people on the floor takes note into a little pad the items of clothing I touched, so that they might optimise their purchasing. Contrast that to one person from one of the worlds largest companies, following me at home, work, the shops, the pub, the bedroom, tallying…
In either case I still bought my slacks from the clothing store, my pint from the tavern, and slept soundly in my bed. You object to the company having your information, I object to it being used to impact my life. I don't give a damn about them just having it. And thus my question, how does this affect my life?
>And thus my question, how does this affect my life?
For the store metaphor, consider Amazon instead of Google. Amazon tracked sale data from its vendors then used that data to generate its own product line, competing (or outright replacing) the original vendors. You might look at this as a neutral "how does this affect me?" matter, but this puts the multitudes of other vendors/manufacturers out of business, and your own employer might be among their numbers one day. Even if not, the fact that it's harming so many others, and that you happen to not be in that group, doesn't mean Amazon's data collection doesn't do harm, or that you couldn't be taking steps to prevent that harm.
In the case of google, the harm isn't as clear cut as in Amazon's case, and it isn't quite as direct or imminent. Whereas Amazon's data is very concentrated (purchasing and retail browsing habits), Google's data is broad and allows for tracking almost every aspect of a person's life: location throughout the day, personal conversations, browsing habits, purchasing, plans of all sorts.
Their having this data on its own isn't harmful, but as others have noted, it represents harm in the sense of what how it _could_ be used if applied maliciously. This includes government actions, data leaks/hacks, Google abusing the data, etc. The potential consequences of each of those can be explored with tremendous depth in their own right, but that's not important for this conversation. What's important is that it allows for harm, even if the chance for that harm seems low, whether on a global level (it impact everyone) or on a local level (it has impact on individual people).
There's also the consideration that some services you use may be impacting other's privacy as well. You might not be concerned about Google reading your emails, but your email partners might be more averse to this tracking. If they are to exchange an email with you, they have no choice but expose that conversation to Google.
Consider what's going on in Belarus. They shut down the internet, but what if instead the government started demanding data from Google or Facebook to identify and track down members of the opposition? I think we all understand that such events as Belarus aren't a daily occurrence, but with persistent data stores, the opportunity for harm only needs to occur once.
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Or they go after the people who have tried to hide themselves ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I think this is a very odd thing to structure a life around, but then again I've never understood any kind of doomsday prepping.
I've never understood people who stock up on baked beans and hide in bunkers either. You're right though. Maybe between the people who have facebook accounts they used to say bad stuff about dictator du jour and those who don't have facebook accounts at all they'll definitely go after the latter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And, maybe there won't ever be a fascist dictatorship in the United States. After all, right wing populism is get…
Compared to WHEN? And based on what sources?
Mail - FastMail (spam detection not great but still works)
Search - StartPage (still google but proxied since DDG results are inferior in my experience)
Browser - Firefox (syncs to all my devices)
Maps - keyworded bookmark on Firefox to go to DDG maps powered by Apple Maps. Otherwise on phone it’s Apple Maps
Storage - Dropbox
Docs - local files synchronized to Dropbox
Last remaining service: YouTube. I’d love for the content providers I consume from to start posting on other platforms but that’s just not the case. For that, I use a google account for just YouTube.