5 ms·

Use alternatives? For example, https://duckduckgo.com https://duckduckgo.com for search.

by jsingleton 10y ago

_nalply 10y ago
Has DuckDuckGo email and an app suite?
- akerro 10y ago
  tutanota, protonmail, fastmail, scrypmail. If Google is part of your life, it's too late for you.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Just switched to FastMail this past weekend, and I recommend it. For an app suite, I recommend Sandstorm.io.
  - yojex 10y ago
    Could you explain your use case with Sandstorm? I find their homepage to be ambiguous/not really sure what they're offering.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      Yeah, so I do all my documents and spreadsheets and stuff on Sandstorm Oasis, which is their managed offering. I can do a bunch of other stuff on it, and it's easiest to figure out the extent of it by just trying the demo yourself (https://demo.sandstorm.io https://demo.sandstorm.io) and checking out the apps and stuff. But in my case, I mostly use it like I used Google Docs and Trello before, that I can easily control my data on, and migrate to a self-hosting solution easily later. Sometimes it's hard to explain Sandstorm because they have a wide variety of good use cases for it, and there's really not a lot of comparable software packages to it. (It's like ownCloud but it's not like ownCloud, it's like Docker but it's not at all like Docker, etc.)
      - ifhs 10y ago
        Curious: why use the managed hosting if you are a privacy enthusiast? Or are you just a sandstorm enthusiast? Why? Became nits not Google? Just curious since your every comment is about it...and it looks like you are wearing Google glass...
        ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Heh, the Glass picture is really old. I used to be quite the Google fan, a few years back. Then I paid a bit more attention to the cost, and have been moving away since. The managed hosting for Sandstorm is a good step in the direction, because it's very easy to me to move between Sandstorm servers, but I'm not super confident on running my own right now, and it's still in early development as a platform. But Sandstorm on their servers runs the same as Sandstorm on mine, and unlike leaving Google, where I have to figure out how to transplant my data from their proprietary apps to other apps, I can move my apps and data perfectly between Sandstorm servers. I do place a high degree of trust in Kenton Varda (founder of Sandstorm.io) specifically to keep Sandstorm doing what they should. If I ever feel that trust is misplaced (and I keep a close eye), I'll move.
  - jsingleton 10y ago
    I've heard good things about both https://www.fastmail.com https://www.fastmail.com and https://protonmail.com https://protonmail.com so would be good to hear your experiences after a bit more use.
    - newscracker 10y ago
      Recently I started a "paper evaluation" of paid, privacy protecting (to a good extent) email services. I found Fastmail to be quite expensive if one needs multiple accounts. Providers like Protonmail and Tutanota don't support IMAP or any other way to download mails (the web interface and apps are the only choices). That makes it very difficult (or impossible?) to move to another service and take one's older mails along. Protonmail does not support custom domains, whereas Tutanota does. The cheapest solutions I like currently are posteo.de and mailbox.org. I have not started using either of them, but plan to move soon. Posteo does not support custom domains (it is heavily privacy focused and refrains from collecting or storing customer data as much as possible). So your only choice is to use one of many posteo.x domains for the email address. On the other hand, mailbox.org supports custom domains. Both support IMAP, web mail, migrating email from other providers, etc. Both these services and their websites are worth a look, IMO.
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      Yeah, ProtonMail was the other one I considered, but the price for storage wasn't nearly as compelling, and both had reasonably strong privacy stories. And now that I'm in FastMail, I'm really amazed at the flexibility and control it gives you, especially with connecting your own domain and stuff. Back in the day, Gmail's driving appeal was it's pro features, and I'd argue that FastMail makes Gmail look basic. Also, I've opened two support tickets this week to ask questions and got responses within an hour or two.
      - lostforest 10y ago
        ProtonMail lost any cred when they paid to have some perps stop DDOsing them. Have their engineers or their Web host never heard of blackhole routing? Smart router engineers know about the concept of blackhole routing offensive traffic. It takes a couple of minutes and it works wonders.
- stephenr 10y ago
  Why does your search engine need to provide email? The two are pretty unrelated.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  Do you want them to? So they can eventually turn into Google? Diversify and avoid cloud apps and closed source applications as much as possible.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  No, and that's a feature. Google's path to the dark side hit a major milestone with Gmail, and the fact that you now had a reason to personally and identifiably log in to your search engine provider. No, no, no, nope, fucking bloody hell no! I'm thinking it's hard time to give https://Sandstorm.io https://Sandstorm.io a really good looking at.
problems 10y ago
Unfortunately their results are pretty abysmal. https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ or ixquick is a better option in terms of results.
- inanutshellus 10y ago
  I've used them for years now and their search is rarely insufficient. When it is, I make my search more specific or I hop over to another engine for that specific search. Really, I just like using products of companies that try to do "the right thing". Anything from the Mozilla Foundation and DuckDuckGo are two examples. I'd say I do a Google search once or twice a month.
  - chillingeffect 10y ago
    Same here. Been "ducking" for years now. I used to go to google when I couldn't find stuff on ddg, but lately I've noticed if it's not on ddg, it's not on google, either! I'd say about 1% of 1% of the time I find something on google that I couldn't find on google.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  DDG has been my preferred search for years. I'd tried it pre-Snowden, off-and-on. Since Snowden or before it's been fully acceptible: 1. Results close to as good if not better than Google. 2. No tracking. 3. Bang searches. With the "too clever by half" search dialogs many sites are implementing (Wikipedia, Internet Archive, Google Ngram Viewer) it's often superior to the native on-site search as I don't have to set focus 2-4 times to actually type in the bloody search dialog. 4. No tracking. 5. Did I mention no tracking? 6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage. 7. Search customisations -- light page (good for console and commandline search), night mode, and others. 8. Unmangled URLs. I can copy/paste URLs straight from DDG. No-can-do with Google.
  - grzm 10y ago
    > 6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage. Or even Google. I've seen comments online about DDG providing only an illusion of privacy. I haven't dug into this deeply. From what I've read this comes down to DDG (including bang searches like !g and !sp) stripping identifying information, which provides protection from tracking by entities like advertisers and social networks, but not law enforcement or agencies like the NSA that may have legal options or extralegal access. Is my understanding generally correct? Any corrections/additions/clarifications appreciated.
clydethefrog 10y ago
And if their search engine does not deliver what you're looking for, use the bang !sp to use Startpage, a search engine that fetches results from the Google search engine but does not give any personal user information to Google's servers. Startpage's servers are in the Netherlands.
- jsingleton 10y ago
  Simply !s works too.

Use alternatives? For example, https://duckduckgo.com https://duckduckgo.com for search.

_nalply 10y ago

Has DuckDuckGo email and an app suite?

akerro 10y ago
tutanota, protonmail, fastmail, scrypmail. If Google is part of your life, it's too late for you.
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Just switched to FastMail this past weekend, and I recommend it. For an app suite, I recommend Sandstorm.io.
- yojex 10y ago
  Could you explain your use case with Sandstorm? I find their homepage to be ambiguous/not really sure what they're offering.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    Yeah, so I do all my documents and spreadsheets and stuff on Sandstorm Oasis, which is their managed offering. I can do a bunch of other stuff on it, and it's easiest to figure out the extent of it by just trying the demo yourself (https://demo.sandstorm.io https://demo.sandstorm.io) and checking out the apps and stuff. But in my case, I mostly use it like I used Google Docs and Trello before, that I can easily control my data on, and migrate to a self-hosting solution easily later. Sometimes it's hard to explain Sandstorm because they have a wide variety of good use cases for it, and there's really not a lot of comparable software packages to it. (It's like ownCloud but it's not like ownCloud, it's like Docker but it's not at all like Docker, etc.)
    - ifhs 10y ago
      Curious: why use the managed hosting if you are a privacy enthusiast? Or are you just a sandstorm enthusiast? Why? Became nits not Google? Just curious since your every comment is about it...and it looks like you are wearing Google glass...
      - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Heh, the Glass picture is really old. I used to be quite the Google fan, a few years back. Then I paid a bit more attention to the cost, and have been moving away since. The managed hosting for Sandstorm is a good step in the direction, because it's very easy to me to move between Sandstorm servers, but I'm not super confident on running my own right now, and it's still in early development as a platform. But Sandstorm on their servers runs the same as Sandstorm on mine, and unlike leaving Google, where I have to figure out how to transplant my data from their proprietary apps to other apps, I can move my apps and data perfectly between Sandstorm servers. I do place a high degree of trust in Kenton Varda (founder of Sandstorm.io) specifically to keep Sandstorm doing what they should. If I ever feel that trust is misplaced (and I keep a close eye), I'll move.
- jsingleton 10y ago
  I've heard good things about both https://www.fastmail.com https://www.fastmail.com and https://protonmail.com https://protonmail.com so would be good to hear your experiences after a bit more use.
  - newscracker 10y ago
    Recently I started a "paper evaluation" of paid, privacy protecting (to a good extent) email services. I found Fastmail to be quite expensive if one needs multiple accounts. Providers like Protonmail and Tutanota don't support IMAP or any other way to download mails (the web interface and apps are the only choices). That makes it very difficult (or impossible?) to move to another service and take one's older mails along. Protonmail does not support custom domains, whereas Tutanota does. The cheapest solutions I like currently are posteo.de and mailbox.org. I have not started using either of them, but plan to move soon. Posteo does not support custom domains (it is heavily privacy focused and refrains from collecting or storing customer data as much as possible). So your only choice is to use one of many posteo.x domains for the email address. On the other hand, mailbox.org supports custom domains. Both support IMAP, web mail, migrating email from other providers, etc. Both these services and their websites are worth a look, IMO.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    Yeah, ProtonMail was the other one I considered, but the price for storage wasn't nearly as compelling, and both had reasonably strong privacy stories. And now that I'm in FastMail, I'm really amazed at the flexibility and control it gives you, especially with connecting your own domain and stuff. Back in the day, Gmail's driving appeal was it's pro features, and I'd argue that FastMail makes Gmail look basic. Also, I've opened two support tickets this week to ask questions and got responses within an hour or two.
    - lostforest 10y ago
      ProtonMail lost any cred when they paid to have some perps stop DDOsing them. Have their engineers or their Web host never heard of blackhole routing? Smart router engineers know about the concept of blackhole routing offensive traffic. It takes a couple of minutes and it works wonders.
stephenr 10y ago
Why does your search engine need to provide email? The two are pretty unrelated.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
Do you want them to? So they can eventually turn into Google? Diversify and avoid cloud apps and closed source applications as much as possible.
dredmorbius 10y ago
No, and that's a feature. Google's path to the dark side hit a major milestone with Gmail, and the fact that you now had a reason to personally and identifiably log in to your search engine provider. No, no, no, nope, fucking bloody hell no! I'm thinking it's hard time to give https://Sandstorm.io https://Sandstorm.io a really good looking at.

problems 10y ago

Unfortunately their results are pretty abysmal. https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ or ixquick is a better option in terms of results.

inanutshellus 10y ago
I've used them for years now and their search is rarely insufficient. When it is, I make my search more specific or I hop over to another engine for that specific search. Really, I just like using products of companies that try to do "the right thing". Anything from the Mozilla Foundation and DuckDuckGo are two examples. I'd say I do a Google search once or twice a month.
- chillingeffect 10y ago
  Same here. Been "ducking" for years now. I used to go to google when I couldn't find stuff on ddg, but lately I've noticed if it's not on ddg, it's not on google, either! I'd say about 1% of 1% of the time I find something on google that I couldn't find on google.
dredmorbius 10y ago
DDG has been my preferred search for years. I'd tried it pre-Snowden, off-and-on. Since Snowden or before it's been fully acceptible: 1. Results close to as good if not better than Google. 2. No tracking. 3. Bang searches. With the "too clever by half" search dialogs many sites are implementing (Wikipedia, Internet Archive, Google Ngram Viewer) it's often superior to the native on-site search as I don't have to set focus 2-4 times to actually type in the bloody search dialog. 4. No tracking. 5. Did I mention no tracking? 6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage. 7. Search customisations -- light page (good for console and commandline search), night mode, and others. 8. Unmangled URLs. I can copy/paste URLs straight from DDG. No-can-do with Google.
- grzm 10y ago
  > 6. Proxy bang searches, e.g., StartPage. Or even Google. I've seen comments online about DDG providing only an illusion of privacy. I haven't dug into this deeply. From what I've read this comes down to DDG (including bang searches like !g and !sp) stripping identifying information, which provides protection from tracking by entities like advertisers and social networks, but not law enforcement or agencies like the NSA that may have legal options or extralegal access. Is my understanding generally correct? Any corrections/additions/clarifications appreciated.

clydethefrog 10y ago

And if their search engine does not deliver what you're looking for, use the bang !sp to use Startpage, a search engine that fetches results from the Google search engine but does not give any personal user information to Google's servers. Startpage's servers are in the Netherlands.

jsingleton 10y ago
Simply !s works too.