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Following Google's [ad-blocking restrictions](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430), I switched from Chr

by pgt 7y ago

Following Google's [ad-blocking restrictions](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430), I switched from Chrome to Firefox and from Google Search to DuckDuckGo. It's been great so far, browsing in incognito mode by default. Gmail and Docs has been the hardest addiction to kick so far, but I've heard good things about Fastmail. More friends are following suit. It may seem like we developers are in the minority, but the minority rule applies to us: tastemakers make the apps that run in your browser and you install Firefox on your parents' machines at thanksgiving. Windows 10's forced-updates and telemetry are the main things preventing me from buying a Surface for my next machine. But I don't know how I'm going to get off my iPhone - the CPU is just too fast. Remember, you are the market. You can vote with your eyeballs and your employment. Giving up salary is easier said than done, but no other profession has more opportunities to choose a moral employer.

bufferoverflow 7y ago
You can turn off Windows telemetry. Forced updates is a good thing. We want fast updates when a vulnerability is found. We see so many unpatched servers online getting pwnd and enslaved into botnets, and this is the only solution.
- morrbo 7y ago
  I'd prefer to manage my server myself. But thanks for your input about randomly rebooting my server and losing work being "the only solution". Also you can't fully disable telemetry. Even in server 2016 with sconfig you can set it to not be fully off. On windows 10 home edition I don't believe you really have the option without resorting to stuff like shutup10. Honestly your line of thinking is dangerous and misinformed.
  - mips_avatar 7y ago
    You can use a raspberry pi or a configurable router to grab telemetry packets and kill them. Also you honestly want to take the quality updates (security and minor bug fixes) every day someone figures out a new intel exploit and you really want to get the patches to fix those. The feature updates take forever but Microsoft announced they will only push a feature update once your OS is approaching EOS.
    - morrbo 7y ago
      "You can use a raspberry pi or a configurable router to grab telemetry packets and kill them" is not the same as "you can turn off windows telemetry" like the guy i was replying to. I agree about the security updates. However, the point i was trying to make is that accepting windows' bullshit "you WILL have an update, you WILL give us telemetry, you WILL reboot your computer" is bullshit. Having those defaults, albeit i don't agree with them, but with an easy way to disable them so that even moderate power users can completely block out anything they don't want to in any edition of windows is much more preferable to the "it's fine" attitude i was replying to originally. It's not fine. It sucks. Forced updates are not the same as auto updates, and they're sure as hell not a good thing IMO.
      - jjeaff 7y ago
        The forced updates are much easier to control on Windows Pro than Home. And frankly, if you are doing mission critical stuff that can't be interuoted, you shouldn't be using Home anyway.
- jazzyk 7y ago
  >You can turn off Windows telemetry. See, turning off telemetry (if it is even possible to turn it off fully) was implemented to be complex on purpose, so that most people can't do it and won't do it. But Microsoft can still trumpet to the world that "you can turn it off if you want".
  - russh 7y ago
    "You can turn it off if you want. We will probably turn it back on in a future update, but you can turn it off again if you want."
parliament32 7y ago
>But I don't know how I'm going to get off my iPhone - the CPU is just too fast. You what? Basically every flagship Android phone has a better CPU (clock speed / cores).
- mattmar96 7y ago
  Not true. They may have more cores/higher clocks, but they aren't more performant. Check out the geekbench scores. Huge performance gap. https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks
- dragontamer 7y ago
  What benches are you looking at? https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14864886 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14864886 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14865026 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14865026 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14865059 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14865059 The iPhone chips straight up are faster in practice in virtually every benchmark I've ever seen. The OnePlus 7 Pro uses the Snapdragon 855+, which is the fastest Android chip I am aware of. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
  - soganess 7y ago
    Single threaded geekbench is hardly a valid benchmark for mobile. Also the 855+ has better 3D results at times. None of this is here to imply the A1x chips aren’t crushing their android counterparts at single threaded performance. They are likely wayyyy faster, but extra cores, sustained performance, 3D performance, and LTE performance all factor into the over performance of a device.
hnspirit 7y ago
Protonmail is a superior user experience to Gmail, I switched a few years ago and I love it! Check it out, their mobile app experience is also INCREDIBLE, and I say that as a dev.
cheshireoctopus 7y ago
> no other profession has more opportunities to choose a moral employer. Interesting. Curious how many people actually evaluate the morality of their prospective employers.
- nickserv 7y ago
  I do, to the extent that I won't work for a company that I believe is actively harming. I've also chosen a salary cut for working for companies that I believe are actively helping. Most of my IT friends think alike (which may be part of why we're friends ;-). For example a friend quit his job after realizing some things his work was enabling. Purely anecdotal of course. But not nonexistent.
- soganess 7y ago
  I do. I could go on about how I decide what is and is not moral, but that’s all my personal brand of compromised hogwash. The really important part is that every interview has me honestly asking the interviewer about employee trust and revenue streams.
- pgt 7y ago
  I have turned down immoral projects because I could afford to: - a conference room proxy that intercepted and replaced HTTP ads - an app for a quack that promoted a cancer cure - a high-paying gig in gambling software, - building a white-label browser that would give people in East Africa free airtime to punt horse-betting and hide its competitors' ads.
situational87 7y ago
I thought moving my life off of Google was just too monumental of a task after being tied to them since the gmail beta invites, but yeah after like six months of no Google it's not really that big of a deal at all. Occassionaly DDG returns very bad results and you have to go back to the old search engine, but for the most part it's just really easy to avoid them. Make sure you're using some sort of extension to block all of the Google analytics/trackers as well, they are on almost every site.
phs 7y ago
A year+ ago I switched to FF, DDG and Fastmail after briefly evaluating Protonmail. It was surprisingly easy. Fastmail works nicely on Lineage as well. My hardest remaining FAAMG property to kick is Youtube, followed by maps.
- guitarbill 7y ago
  Almost exactly the same experience. FastMail is definitely worth paying for, the custom domain ability is great and would make switching in future less painful. Firefox has never been better. Don't delay, the sooner you make the switch, the better. I wish I'd done it earlier.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  OpenStreetmap is improving, and the maps themselves are good. Its search leaves an extreme amount to be desired. Recently, looking at the path of Typhoon Hagibis, I'd entered "tokyo japan". I was returned a restaurant in downtown Moscow, Russia. Even direct latitude/longitude searches often fail completely (I've reported this as a bug), apparently if there's no reasonably local specific place record. Where Google Maps will deal with a vague street + city or business-name + city reference, OSM is completely lost. Even comma-delimited "<city>, <state>, <country>" specifications often fail. You can report these, and the reports do get attention. But there's a lot of work required of the team.

by pgt 7y ago

bufferoverflow 7y ago

You can turn off Windows telemetry. Forced updates is a good thing. We want fast updates when a vulnerability is found. We see so many unpatched servers online getting pwnd and enslaved into botnets, and this is the only solution.

morrbo 7y ago
I'd prefer to manage my server myself. But thanks for your input about randomly rebooting my server and losing work being "the only solution". Also you can't fully disable telemetry. Even in server 2016 with sconfig you can set it to not be fully off. On windows 10 home edition I don't believe you really have the option without resorting to stuff like shutup10. Honestly your line of thinking is dangerous and misinformed.
- mips_avatar 7y ago
  You can use a raspberry pi or a configurable router to grab telemetry packets and kill them. Also you honestly want to take the quality updates (security and minor bug fixes) every day someone figures out a new intel exploit and you really want to get the patches to fix those. The feature updates take forever but Microsoft announced they will only push a feature update once your OS is approaching EOS.
  - morrbo 7y ago
    "You can use a raspberry pi or a configurable router to grab telemetry packets and kill them" is not the same as "you can turn off windows telemetry" like the guy i was replying to. I agree about the security updates. However, the point i was trying to make is that accepting windows' bullshit "you WILL have an update, you WILL give us telemetry, you WILL reboot your computer" is bullshit. Having those defaults, albeit i don't agree with them, but with an easy way to disable them so that even moderate power users can completely block out anything they don't want to in any edition of windows is much more preferable to the "it's fine" attitude i was replying to originally. It's not fine. It sucks. Forced updates are not the same as auto updates, and they're sure as hell not a good thing IMO.
    - jjeaff 7y ago
      The forced updates are much easier to control on Windows Pro than Home. And frankly, if you are doing mission critical stuff that can't be interuoted, you shouldn't be using Home anyway.
jazzyk 7y ago
>You can turn off Windows telemetry. See, turning off telemetry (if it is even possible to turn it off fully) was implemented to be complex on purpose, so that most people can't do it and won't do it. But Microsoft can still trumpet to the world that "you can turn it off if you want".
- russh 7y ago
  "You can turn it off if you want. We will probably turn it back on in a future update, but you can turn it off again if you want."

parliament32 7y ago

>But I don't know how I'm going to get off my iPhone - the CPU is just too fast. You what? Basically every flagship Android phone has a better CPU (clock speed / cores).

mattmar96 7y ago
Not true. They may have more cores/higher clocks, but they aren't more performant. Check out the geekbench scores. Huge performance gap. https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mobile-benchmarks
dragontamer 7y ago
What benches are you looking at? https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14864886 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14864886 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14865026 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14865026 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14865059 https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/14865059 The iPhone chips straight up are faster in practice in virtually every benchmark I've ever seen. The OnePlus 7 Pro uses the Snapdragon 855+, which is the fastest Android chip I am aware of. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- soganess 7y ago
  Single threaded geekbench is hardly a valid benchmark for mobile. Also the 855+ has better 3D results at times. None of this is here to imply the A1x chips aren’t crushing their android counterparts at single threaded performance. They are likely wayyyy faster, but extra cores, sustained performance, 3D performance, and LTE performance all factor into the over performance of a device.

hnspirit 7y ago

Protonmail is a superior user experience to Gmail, I switched a few years ago and I love it! Check it out, their mobile app experience is also INCREDIBLE, and I say that as a dev.

cheshireoctopus 7y ago

> no other profession has more opportunities to choose a moral employer. Interesting. Curious how many people actually evaluate the morality of their prospective employers.

nickserv 7y ago
I do, to the extent that I won't work for a company that I believe is actively harming. I've also chosen a salary cut for working for companies that I believe are actively helping. Most of my IT friends think alike (which may be part of why we're friends ;-). For example a friend quit his job after realizing some things his work was enabling. Purely anecdotal of course. But not nonexistent.
soganess 7y ago
I do. I could go on about how I decide what is and is not moral, but that’s all my personal brand of compromised hogwash. The really important part is that every interview has me honestly asking the interviewer about employee trust and revenue streams.
pgt 7y ago
I have turned down immoral projects because I could afford to: - a conference room proxy that intercepted and replaced HTTP ads - an app for a quack that promoted a cancer cure - a high-paying gig in gambling software, - building a white-label browser that would give people in East Africa free airtime to punt horse-betting and hide its competitors' ads.

situational87 7y ago

I thought moving my life off of Google was just too monumental of a task after being tied to them since the gmail beta invites, but yeah after like six months of no Google it's not really that big of a deal at all. Occassionaly DDG returns very bad results and you have to go back to the old search engine, but for the most part it's just really easy to avoid them. Make sure you're using some sort of extension to block all of the Google analytics/trackers as well, they are on almost every site.

phs 7y ago

A year+ ago I switched to FF, DDG and Fastmail after briefly evaluating Protonmail. It was surprisingly easy. Fastmail works nicely on Lineage as well. My hardest remaining FAAMG property to kick is Youtube, followed by maps.

guitarbill 7y ago
Almost exactly the same experience. FastMail is definitely worth paying for, the custom domain ability is great and would make switching in future less painful. Firefox has never been better. Don't delay, the sooner you make the switch, the better. I wish I'd done it earlier.
dredmorbius 7y ago
OpenStreetmap is improving, and the maps themselves are good. Its search leaves an extreme amount to be desired. Recently, looking at the path of Typhoon Hagibis, I'd entered "tokyo japan". I was returned a restaurant in downtown Moscow, Russia. Even direct latitude/longitude searches often fail completely (I've reported this as a bug), apparently if there's no reasonably local specific place record. Where Google Maps will deal with a vague street + city or business-name + city reference, OSM is completely lost. Even comma-delimited "<city>, <state>, <country>" specifications often fail. You can report these, and the reports do get attention. But there's a lot of work required of the team.