Non-plussed Google

The (justifiable) hits just keep on coming.  Two weeks ago I completely wiped my Google+ profile, as part of my Google purge, and then Google announces this yesterday: Project Strobe: Protecting your data, improving our third-party APIs, and sunsetting consumer Google+.  What perfect timing!  Yeah, so they’re finally killing off what’s been dead for years, can’t believe it took them this long.  Mike Elgan, an excellent tech journalist, wrote two pieces today, Social networking is dead and Google is the new Yahoo which accurately and succinctly sum up what’s going on these days with social media, and just how clueless Google is about its data feeds… er, customers.  Granted, Mike had spent countless hours in the past working in G+ and I remember back in the day he had touted it as the most awesomest social platform ever, so I’m sure this has put him in a dour state-of-mind.  Love this quote:

In truth, social networking itself is dead or dying.

Now it’s clear why: When everyone gathers in a single place, that place becomes an irresistible opportunity for the company that owns the network to squeeze every drop of value from users by manipulating them with algorithms, stealing and monetizing their private data — and also an irresistible target for disinformation propagandists, trolls, bots, haters, spammers and jerks of every variety.

Social is dead.

The sooner people realize this, the better off we’ll all be.  If we should keep anything (at least as it stands today, for the most part), Instagram is pretty nice.  Because it’s really just pix and vids, and I never read comments.  But I’m sure Facebook will trash it in the not too distant future. Ugh

Kinda funny though… what’s old might be new again (blogs/email/rss feeds…).

Shadow time

So not a very good past weekend for internet privacy:

Eric Schmidt of Alphabet/Google fame says that he thinks in 10-15 years there will be two ‘internets’, the U.S. leading one and China the other.  And there’s NO WAY China’s version will be as free from censorship as most of the rest of the world’s is.

China shuts down more than 4,000 websites and online accounts in a three-month campaign against “harmful” online information.  Sounds like most of it was smutty sites, but also religious ones and those ‘spreading rumors’.

And Google also makes the news, yet again, over privacy concerns.

Wow, this on top of the Dragonfly debacle.  So now with the latest release of Chrome will start making you log in with your Google account when you use the browser.  Though they say your browser data stays local, there’s no guarantee it’s even true, or maybe true now but for how long.  I agree with these two security guys assessment, this is a retarded change for Google to make and there are no good arguments for it.

The past few days I’ve been thinking a lot more about my continuing use of Google, which is not quite as radical as what I wrote about in my last post about what it would take to leave Google totally.  I know I’m no one of ‘interest’ to them, and my data is really just a drop in their digital data ocean… but how much do I want Google to know about me, really?  How much of my daily life do I want them to track?  And it’s not just them, as a private company; I have NO doubts that they will (or do) bend over backwards when the NSA/CIA/FBI/etc knocks on their door requesting specific user information but that’s a whole ‘nother matter (trying to keep Big Brother out of anything on the internet is a fool’s errand).  And just so this is written out here, I’m not trying to hide anything nefarious… I just believe that no one entity should have all data about everything one does.  Here’s an example: Do I care that pictures of my house or my car (ala Maps street view, Zillow, etc) or my family (ala FB, my own website, etc) are available on the internet? No.  Would I care if there were pictures on the internet of me in the shower, or telephotos of my family taken at night through the windows our living room? Absolutely.  See, there really IS a thing about needing privacy and secrecy.  Not ALL things should be recorded.  I am of the feeling that Google (now that they are aren’t trying to not be evil hyuck) deep down believes in the tagline from that failure of a movie, The Circle: “Knowing is good. Knowing everything is better.”  Oh, sorry, that’s supposed to be Facebook.

Years ago, as Google was burgeoning and starting their empire-building (like taking over Youtube, trotting out Google+, Google Voice, Google Drive, yada yada), I did not want to put all my eggs in one basket.  I decided back then to use multiple Google accounts for the various Google services just for the sake of privacy, to make sure (at least as well as I could!) that the G would not have a complete profile of me (I can’t even imagine how much Google knows about any individual who uses a single Google account login for everything!).  But I do have a certain main personal account that I’ve used for several services over the years (Gmail, Photos, Voice, Keep, Android phone, etc, not to mention using that specific gmail for other internet services like my Amazon account and FB and others) and this is the one I’m mainly thinking all this about right now, as my Google profile… what they would consider as me.  And that has me considering what it would take to switch from that account to a new Google Shadow Profile… a new blank-slate account that would begin to hold my data, but would not be associated to my personal self.  If it’s a shadow account, it could even be possibly used for multiple G services too, those that didn’t contain personally identifiable information.

But ugh, is this even possible??  Is there a way to ‘turn off the siphon’ of data that flows into and out of an old and well-used Google account?  A way to create a kind of shadow persona, of sorts, out of thin air to take on the roll of my unself.  To a rather pessimistic and depressing point, though, at this point in the game is it even worth it to try to do this?  Once someone is ‘known’ in the Google pool, can that even be reversed?

Lots to think about.  Guess a good place to start is to first try making a list for where ALL the data points are being sourced and recorded.  Then to try to come up with alternatives that stop filling my real-name data bucket and start forming the new shadow self.

2018.09.27 Update: Timely article by Lifehacker, Ditch Gmail With These Alternatives.  Reading a few comments, I’m definitely not alone in wanting to move off of Google/Gmail but also feeling the angst of having those accounts around for so many years now.

There is no *best* browser

Pet peeve time.  It’s long past time for tech writers to give up their click bait attempts with articles about which internet browser is BEST.  These pop up at least once every week or two on the tech blogs.  They are usually a head-to-head comparison to the top four or so: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, and sometimes Opera or others.  Here’s a recent example:

[https://www.pcworld.com/article/3213031/computers/best-web-browsers.html]

Best web browsers of 2017: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera go head-to-head

We take a look at the performance and features of the big four internet browsers to see which one will serve you best in 2017.

Let me just ask, who uses only one browser?  I realize there are grandmas and kids and other less techie people in the world who might just use whatever came on their pc or laptop (IE, Edge, Safari…) but most people I work with, and every person who I’ve every helped over the years, use at least two or more browsers at the same time.  Yes, there are strengths and weaknesses to every browser (every class of software), but there is no BEST one.

For myself, I gravitate to Firefox because of the extensions and it has a somewhat smaller memory footprint than Chrome.  But even to this day, leaving it running for days on end and having multiple tabs open will result in FF sucking down a massive amount of memory.  And it gets slower, and slower… and s l o w e r.  I found the only way to stop that is by saving my sessions, killing the FF process, and firing it up again… starting the whole cycle again.  FF can also get all locked up by a single rogue tab.  I know the developers are working on these problems, but as of today (v56) it still has these and other problems.

Chrome is nice but does take up a lot resources, as each tab is a new system process, though this does help by not letting one tab crash all of Chrome.  I always feel I have to be more ‘miserly’ with my Chrome tabs than with FF.  New versions come out very frequently and I believe that they were the first to get a functional 64 bit version out than FF (sorry, too busy to google that).  I keep all my Chrome sessions across all my devices synced to the same account so that extensions stay in sync, and I can keep track of open tabs on all of the different devices.

Edge: ha, who uses Edge?  Still no good extensions, still does not work with all sites.  No other words necessary.

Safari: Not a Mac guy, but it works very well on the iPad and iPhone.  Tightly controlled by Apple, just like everything else.  I think once, a very long time ago, I tried it on a Windows PC.  Not sure if normal people still use it on PCs.  Chrome is a good alternative on iOS.

Opera seems pretty solid, but to be honest, I only use it to log into my Facebook account.  Why not connect to FB on FF or Chrome?  You must have missed it when it was discovered that FB can track you ALL OVER THE INTERNET from the browser you are using, EVEN AFTER YOU LOGGED OUT.  Sorry to get all caps locked on you there, I just can’t believe how bad that speaks to FB and privacy.  And it’s not just about using cookies and clicking on the Like buttons.  You think FB really ever lets you go?

Ah, but another great browser is Vivaldi!  Spunky and still relatively fresh to the scene, it also is pretty solid and reliable.  But again, like Opera, I really only use it to stay logged into my personal Gmail account.  Using Google products is funny and slightly annoying as they seem to still think, in this grand year of 2017, that people have and use only one Gmail/Google account. 🙂  So, needless to say, I don’t use my main Gmail account (open in Vivaldi) for much else in the Google environment, hence that’s why I don’t use Gmail from FF or Chrome because outside of Incognito mode they only let you have one account logged in at a time.  (So yeah, it gets a bit unwieldy when you need to use four or five Google accounts on your computer at one time.. but it’s manageable!)

Just for grins, there was also the standalone portable QtWeb browser back in the day.  I just checked their site and the last update was 2013!  Guess they just couldn’t compete with the PortableApps group, which are the versions of Chrome and Firefox that I use… highly recommended!

New email rules

Wish certain someones at work would learn it:

Some tips for writing brief emails:

  • Skip the subject line.
  • Keep it to a few sentences.
  • Skip the greeting.
  • Skip the sig.
  • Narrow the topic.
  • Edit.
  • Consider not sending.

the art of brief emails