Noodlehead is pretty good though, right?
Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
361–370 of 399 posts
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, my memory is good enough to remember that in the pre-Google world I had no way to find out reviews of restaurants in a city I was visiting, let alone 'memorize' them.
Travel guides have been a thing for a very long time
But that's just another memory surrogate...
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
iPhones and Apple have demonstrated that privacy is a top concern for their users. Google and their Pixel devices, not so much.
Google has much more to gain with mining your data as they have the channels to turn it into profit. Apple has a better chance making profit from their devices than their users data.
But is that a chicken or the egg? Apple never developed the channels because of their focus on privacy when they could have easily done so.
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can similarly say: If I could pay for the services of Google with money instead of with my data (which will be used in ways I cannot imagine or control), then I'd gladly do that. Why? Well, the problem with Google is they have an incentive to do bad things to us, simply because we are not the real customer.
> Why? Well, the problem with Google is they have an incentive to do bad things to us, simply because we are not the real customer. I am one of Google's real customers, I bought an expensive phone from them, but, to quote Josh Marshall: > One thing I’ve observed with Google over the years is that it is institutionally so used to its ‘customers’ actually being its products that when it gets into businesses where it ac…
You're equating different things
You paid real money for the hardware..
You have paid 0 for the use of Google's servers and their software. E.g. you enjoy their Maps app, you enjoy seeing real time traffic. You enjoy using Keep and let them host all your memos on it. You enjoy Photos and like that all your pics are in the 'cloud'. You enjoy......
You paid real money for the hardware yes, and it works with ur without your data. But another cost is your usage of their software...
Everyone does some type of calculus on this cost. I bought their hardware as well, and i don't sell my data to them.. at all.. However, I'm looked at by most of my friends and family as the eccentric privacy guy that runs tech stuff for them.
I run services mainly for myself, but many of my friends/family use them.. NextCloud for backups to a FreeNas and for sharing, ejabberd for chat, Piwigo for sharing photos &blog, davical for contacts and calendar, phabricator to share some of my programs, the all important email, and I've occasionally been conned into running a quake server.
I pay in time and convenience. I use and contribute to apps on Fdroid. I contribute when i can to the OSM project for mapping. I still have to use waze for traffic. And instead of having apps that siphon off my data, i simply go to their websites and check stuff (yelp and occasionally facebook), and yes, it's as painful as it sounds..
I know everyone can't do a lot of these, but a few services have popped up that do some of these for you for cheap, proton mail being the biggest (imo).. Running a mail server is the most challenging, in part because more and more people rely on the big providers for email, and in turn, those big providers are flagging lots if self hosted smaller email providers as spam. Outlook is really hard, i can even send email to an outlook account from a Comcast account and it gets flagged as spam..
So yes, unfortunately you aren't the customer, although you might feel differently and they've definitely marketed things in a misleading way. The truth of the matter is i highly doubt anyone reading this site wouldn't be able to do any of the above, and making it sound otherwise is folly. We all choose who and what to pay and what we pay with.
It's not even as much about privacy, as it is freedom. I was an avid google talk and google reader user, they walled off talk to hangouts and eliminated reader. Once you realize that it's better to have some self reliance rather than convenience, your world will change.
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there are a lot of news stories out there about how taxi drivers end up with a great memories from having to remember all the routes The question is, does that do them any good? It might help them in the rare case there's a problem with navigation data, but 99% of the time it's a wasted effort, and personally, I purposefully prefer taxis/transport services that use navigation. My own opinion is that we should treat…
>The question is, does that do them any good? It might help them in the rare case there's a problem with navigation data, but 99% of the time it's a wasted effort Yes, very much so. The road layout in London is absolutely insane , because the city was established in AD 43. Finding efficient routes requires a great deal of local knowledge and contextual understanding. Black cab drivers are extremely good at minimaxing…
When I lived in London I once read a text from my wife to a black cab driver with instructions of where I was supposed to meet her for dinner.
Even though I didn't have the correct name of the street (and didn't have the name of the restaurant at all!), the driver got the right street and the right restaurant. (The street had probably 10+ restaurants on it.) I was astonished, and have never forgotten it.
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're using it as a way of increasing their ad revenue by getting free data from their users. How is that not spam? If I send you unsolicited emails asking you to give me photos of products you use which I'll then sell ads for and keep all the revenue, would that not be spam? I did not sign up for any product promotion notifications, so if I receive any it's spam.
They pay the user for it with increased Google Drive space, a free subscription to the NYT, etc.
Only if you sign up for Local Guides.
I did out of curiosity after I answered a few questions, and sincerely regretted it. The notifications and junk e-mail were never-ending until I blocked them all. And my time is not worth that little.
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#367How is this functionality different than an app asking you to review it after using it? The app “knows” your using it and prompts you to contribute to crowd sourced app reviews in the App Store. Apple likely knows what apps you have run unless you disable all diagnostics and lots of apps phone home. In this case, geo fencing is prompting you to review a location instead of an app. I think people rely on a lot more cr…
I've made it a policy that if an app pops up unsolicited modals to badger me about rating it, it automatically gets a 0-start review. That pattern needs to die in a fire.
It was already replaced by other pattern - it first asks for meaningless rating in app and only if user selects 5 stars he is redirected to AppStore .
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#368I'm going to be completely honest here: If these things were behind a configuration option and defaulted to off, I'd have gone into my phone and turned that option on. I want to leave reviews for restaurants as I'm walking out of them - it serves the common good and doing it immediately is better for memory. I want to remember to download offline maps when I'm about to go somewhere where I won't have coverage. My mem…
I can similarly say: If I could pay for the services of Google with money instead of with my data (which will be used in ways I cannot imagine or control), then I'd gladly do that. Why? Well, the problem with Google is they have an incentive to do bad things to us, simply because we are not the real customer.
There's an option to pay for GSuite, which gets you access to most Google products, but I'm not sure about it's privacy policies.
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#369How is this functionality different than an app asking you to review it after using it? The app “knows” your using it and prompts you to contribute to crowd sourced app reviews in the App Store. Apple likely knows what apps you have run unless you disable all diagnostics and lots of apps phone home. In this case, geo fencing is prompting you to review a location instead of an app. I think people rely on a lot more cr…
I've made it a policy that if an app pops up unsolicited modals to badger me about rating it, it automatically gets a 0-start review. That pattern needs to die in a fire.
I just drop one star each time they ask, and update the comment to make that clear.
Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
#370Serious question for the HN community - why do you leave your GPS on/activated by default? I have mine disabled unless I specifically need it for something, which is rare. Usually the only time I ever need GPS is for driving instructions. Otherwise, it's off. GPS is also the biggest battery hog on the device. Why would you leave this on? Do you all use it far more frequently or was it something you never thought to s…
On Android (recent versions anyway) GPS only turns on when an application requests it. I get a notification when GPS is activated, and it's quite rare. Basically only when I open my bus app, or open Google Maps. So there's no real battery usage there.
Most of the time it picks up my location from WiFi, which is a lot lower power.