Yup, same. Switched to ff and bing. Was surprisingly frictionless. Next week I'll be off gmail too. Up yours google. The week after, I'm getting rid of my android phone.
I'm a high school IT teacher and have some influence over hundreds of students each year. I've already started to sprinkle in some discussion about privacy and will be sure to inform my students about the issues. Of course I won't brow beat my students, but i will encourage them to make informed decisions.
In aggregate, over time this kind of behaviour by google will hurt them. No such thing as too big to fail in tech.
Wouldn't we expect Bing to log/analyze/correlate user behavior as hard as they possibly can? Or are you betting that Firefox at least won't cooperate with Bing in such an endeavor because it's not a Microsoft product?
Can we make this the top comment or something, so that google folks can see this!. I am sure HN is a good enough influencer for folks at Google to rethink!
I had an iPhone 6s+ for a year and couldn't stand the UI and poor ergonomic choices. I was also unable to do basic things easily like SSH without paying outlandish amounts of money for things similar to JuiceSSH. It's locked down in userspace much more than Android and it's noticeable. Things like unzipping/unraring files, using a file explorer, always had problems with downloaded files, etc were totally impossible.
I want to go to an iPhone because Google is starting to really piss me off, but the year with the iPhone keeps turning me away. I wish there were other options.
I've wanted to go back to a S40/candybar type device for a while. So far this has been vetoed by my wife who fears that I'll be even more disconnected since I'll then only have access to all messaging on the PC.
Anyone knows if Telegram/Signal etc exists for KaiOS or similar?
I use FastMail with my own domain. I used to use Google Apps before it.
But before switching email services, do yourself a favor and ditch webmail interfaces first. Pick up a desktop/native email client and switch to IMAP / SMTP.
On MacOS a solid option for us power users is MailMate (https://freron.com/) ... markdown composer, GMail shortcuts, useful bundles, fast, uncluttered, it's basically what I wanted Thunderbird to be. Development on Thunderbird is apparently ongoing too and they just released version 60. Apparently Web Extensions are in the works too.
Transitioning to a native client is painful at first, but it's worth it.
GMail's web interface is a piece of shit lately anyway.
Would like to add to your excellent suggestions. When you switch away from Google, set your gmail to forward and delete your email (to your new email address). That way you won't leave any emails on gmail but you can keep it up until you've completely migrated.
It's awesome for emails containing snippets of code, code with syntax highlighting being my use case.
And for formatting in general, the resulting email (composed in MailMate) will be very friendly to clients that prefer to display emails as plain text, since the text version is going to be very clean.
There's also a browser extension working with GMail's web interface too, but it doesn't work as well as MailMate: https://markdown-here.com/
I'd love to tell people the only way to replace gmail is to get either your own mail server or at least your own domain, but this is an unreasonable goal.
However.... re-decentralization resonates quite well these days when it comes to the web. I wonder what it would take to be re-applies to email.
This is kind of FUD. I’ve been running my own mail server for over a year now, and my E-mails don’t magically disappear into some blacklist. Do you have to be careful when configuring your server? Yes. Can you get on a blacklist erroneously? Yes. Does not going with a hosted solution mean you cannot participate in E-mail? No way.
I don’t know where this myth comes from that running your own mail infra means your mail will be marked as spam. You’re not the first (or second or third) person to mention it though.
It takes a long time to build up IP reputation if you run your own infrastructure. Even today after a year+ on the same IP, DKIM/SPF/DMARC, senderscore of 100 and transactional email only, Yahoo still randomly blacklists us for weeks at a time. Good luck getting in touch with a human to figure out why when you aren't Gmail or another big player in the industry.
Aside from Yahoo though, we generally haven't experienced any blacklisting or deliverability issues. It does require time to setup properly and maintain however, you can't just set it up and forget about it.
That's exactly part of the problem. If email went back to decentralization properly, the whole idea of ip reputation could go away, which is genuinely wrong and against email in the first place.
As someone who's had his entirely legitimate, wholly none-spamming email accounts blacklisted (numerous times) because he used the same shared server as someone less than saintly, I can attest that this is actually a genuine and existant concern.
Sure, it's 'easy' to get around, by throwing more money and complexity at the problem, but it isn't some made up tale.
I would not use a shared server for E-mail hosting, for this exact reason. Even if you are the only person on the IP, you need to watch out your first couple of months because the IP you have could have been misused in the past. If you find your new host’s IP on a blacklist, request a new IP from your provider.
Maybe this is too much tinfoil, but it feels like Google has a bit of a perverse incentive here to make their spam blacklist unnecessarily trigger-happy. After all, anyone they block will just think running their own mail server is too hard these days and might switch back to using Gmail...
I think "get your own mail server" doesn't necessarily imply that you're doing all of the setup yourself. Using a provider like fastmail (or Google apps, fwiw) is a good way to be sure that you set it up right.
Granted you can't set up your own Google Mail domain for free today like you once could, but some of us are grandfathered in... I am, and I'm still looking at this as a better alternative to Gmail because even though it is Gmail, I can take my address with me if I do ultimately change my mind about Gmail.
(That's the first step, at least. You can never take @gmail.com with you, but if you want to start moving away, you could forward to your own domain and start thinking about where you would host it.)
Erm, no. Yes, DMARC, SPF, DKIM is needed, with static IP and a properly configured and authenticated mail system, but once that's OK, it's fine.
I've been running my mail server for 10 years now, I got on blacklists 2 times: once due to a worm that got in through PHP, the other was a client's laptop that got a virus and used outlook express to send mail.
>I've been running my mail server for 10 years now, I got on blacklists 2 times
So how's that an argument that "it's fine"? Sounds like 2 times more than a regular person would want to deal with such issues within a decade, much less a small company. And it can take long to clear those things out if you're small fish...
Testing proton mail. If mail delivery is solid then that will do, otherwise outlook.com will be good enough. I'm ungoogling my life and strangely enough, MS is the less bad option right now.
MS is not the most trustworthy company either, see Windows 10.
If you're going to the hassle of actually switching, at lest don't do it from one big corp to the next.
Personally I use https://www.webfaction.com and am very happy with it. Also heard good things about FastMail, but Australia has some crazy laws coming so not sure about that. ProtonMail seems solid as well.
I visited HN for years before registering and making my first comment.
Those who leave comments are a small fraction of the total HN traffic.
If you saw the a recent thread which asked people why they stalk HN, you'd understand that many visitors aren't start up guys, programmers or even technical in nature.
In other words, I bet HN's actual traffic log will show mobile devices and Windows as the predominant OS.
No direct data. But that's the impression I have gotten over the years. I've seen a ton of posts at the frontpage that talk about moving away from Apple for whatever reason, which are always heated debates. I've never seen any post of people jumping from Windows to mac or linux (I believe that's not a situation a lot of people on HN are in).
it might be my filter bubble, but if I google "hacker news mac vs windows" the only results I get are posts where people are moving away from Mac to something else[1].
I also believe most of these topics are just talk. But the point I was making is that whenever someone talks about "I'm leaving Mac for whatever reason" it blows up and everyone and their mom weighs in to give their opinion. It's not uncommon to have these on the frontpage. Why? Because most people use Mac so they have something to say.
However when someone says "I am moving away from windows because of X" it never hits the frontpage since most people don't care since they are not on windows.
This is obviously not great quantitative research. But if I go into any co working space or coffee shop where people work on their laptops. I find a lot of people on macs, and all the technical ones are on HN. Whenever I meet technical people with a windows laptop they are never on HN.
I thought this was quite well established that HN is very apple'y, so I'm having a hard to come up with proper data to back this up.
> But I speculate, a good collection of today's "chrome leavers" here already use another browser - and are just adding fuel to the fire.
Haha you got me! I did leave Chrome (for privacy reason) for Firefox. Not during this big debate, but during a previous one (when Firefox came out with the big Quantum update and it started to perform on the same level as Chrome). Though I haven't stated I would leave today.
It's not a big change like migrating to another country. Most plugins have add ons for all big browser platforms. I do think that you'll see a decent amount of people in this discussion on HN change browser. But for Google this is just a blip in the graph.
The less empty detail is regulatory. "Big tech" is getting increasingly scrutinized over both monopoly abuse and privacy issues. Certainly this is another piece of evidence to regulators that Google is abusing their position.
I assume this is based on a lot of (web/mobile) devs being on HN and them using macOS predominantly based on conferences etc.?
I'd agree with that assessment, macOS probably first, Linux second, but then you have to remember how many Windows users there are. The HN regulars are probably mostly on Mac/Linux, but I'd imagine just the drive by Windows traffic would put it at the top spot.
I tried looking up stuff about windows spying on users, and most of what I'm seeing is useless (debunked articles, generally clickbait stuff). Is there anywhere I could look to read more about this if true?
It took me several days to root out all of the programs and services in my enterprise windows 10 install which were spying on me or attempting to install software without my consent, had to prevent cortana from running, block windows servers with hosts file, delete scheduled tasks, adjust group policy, disable updates, and firewall my own computer.
All this so that I could have an OS that isn't actively spying on me, and play games on it. Thank goodness valve is making progress on linux...
The browser is looked upon as the portal to the Internet.
When accessing web-sites over a public network, I sort of expect (not necessarily like or agree) to be tracked and others to know what I'm doing. I'm always in the mindset of "what ever I do within this window, others will see" (regardless of browser).
For what I do on my local desktop? No. Not at all.
Another reason is that the official Firefox builds for at least GNU/Linux doesn't employ standard exploit mitigations (stack canaries, position independent code, read-only GOT).
Honest question: How can you trust FF when they less than a year ago silently modified installers for a small % of users, to include tracking - which then sent all browsing data to a 3rd party?
Not irony. The stuff is not on Google, it's on the Internet and directly accessible via links. It's in fact what any company wants, the holy grail: for people to mix its brand with the category of business. It will pass and be replaced by some other fad.
For me the performance was not quite up to the mark and had to switch back to Chrome. I guess someone (big corp ideally) should just take the v8 and the html rendering engine from Chrome and build a wrapper and keep it open sourced.
Seems like the consensus is that things have improved drastically since the "quantum" update, although there have been a handful of issues on specific hardware (which may or may not have been fixed in the meantime).
I'd suggest to just try it, it's completely free and pretty straightforward to install after all.
I really recommend switching to a password manager - it's also easier to access the passwords from other devices. For example I can use the same passwords on Firefox desktop and on Safari - iPhone (including auto-fill on iOS 12). I have good experience with 1Password (subscription paid).
You should use a password manager, there's been a few cases already where malware shows how trivial it is to steal and decrypt into plain-text passwords stored by the browser.
Unless you have adversaries personally attacking you, your main threat is automated malware. In that case, I think that it's vastly more likely that said malware would target super-popular and totally-insecure software like the Chrome password manager, rather than something not very popular and quite secure like KeePassXC.
I personally recommend Bitwarden as a good compromise between security and usability. It's totally open source, so you can run the API and webservice on your own hardware if you want.
I made the same switch (on Ubuntu) yesterday. For me, the performance is the same, if not better in FF. What does feel less slick in FF is the UI (Settings etc.).
Last time I tried, what I found was missing is some guidelines on how to architecture an application. For the web, we have React, Angular and plenty of frameworks to choose from, which help having some base app skeleton to build on top of.
In Qt (QML), I couldn't quite find something like this and I had the feeling I needed to create my own framework from scratch, which is hard when, at the same time, you need to learn a new technology. There were some random ideas in various blogs and articles but nothing major or at least no officially supported one.
I recommend Zork on that list. Recently played it for the first time and it's a great experience. Your mind fills in so much more than virtual images or sounds could create.
There's a more recent thread [1] where the consensus seems to be that no, it's not possible to stop hurricanes this way, or with nukes. According to the thread, the energy in a hurricane is simply too great.
>>That's more data than most will use in a single day.
Not to take away anything from your point.
But I see plenty of cab drivers watch movies, youtube and use other services like Google maps.
But there are other inspiring stories. A few months back I saw a video of street flute seller who learned to play the flute through the internet. Here is one story of a Coolie who prepared for civil services exams using internet: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/08051...
You will see plenty of stories where people are using internet to do something of value.
Why did you choose a capped VDSL connection, then? Unlike the US, we have real uncapped plans. As for price... go visit India and see if you can work out why people might not be able to pay as much for services, and why it might be possible to provide those services cheaper. Hint - people don’t get paid as much.
In Europe, the wired broadbands are cheap and fast. In India, there is no hope for cheap and fast wired broadband due to poor planning. Hence the craze for 4G. Also, the rates are marginal. For a long time, the rates induced loss for companies.
That's incorrect. Jio has already come out with high speed wired broadband called JioGigaFiber: https://jiofiber.co.in/. Poles have been erected in my locality and pretty much the entire city. It's way cheaper than the current broadband I'm using (Hathway) and I'll be shifting to it once it launches. Currently it's being rolled out in phases across the country: https://www.mysmartprice.com/gear/2018/09/06/jio-gigafiber-c...
"JIO GIGA FIBER will be the largest greenfield fixed-line broadband rollout anywhere in the world, with rollout happening in 1,100 cities of India simultaneously"
Jio already has more than 70k+ km of optical fibre layed out to connect all Major city, and more is being layed out per day. They plan to provide 100GB free per month + additional at little cost ( about 5$ per 1000GB ) with provide service such as streaming TV , security systems, landline phone at no extra cost. Installation charges up to your home for optical fibre at about 70 USD.
In Mexico with a Telcel pre-paid plan the max I can get is 5GB/month for 500 pesos (around $25 USD).
In India last year it was difficult as a foreigner to get Jio, so went with a couple of other providers (Airtel and Vodophone) -- not expensive at all, but coverage was dicey up in Rishikesh where I was staying.
France was the best wrt to price/data ratio, something like 20 Euros per month with Orange got me 40GB, that was really nice to have away from any big cities (Capbreton).
