[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 5 points 4 months ago

I don’t think this should be downvoted. Brave Search is one of the very few search engines that is building its own index.

DuckDuckGo and Startpage are both great, however DDG uses results from Bing and Startpage uses results from Google.

We need proper competition against these big tech giants, and Brave Search is one of the few alternatives which is attempting to provide it. Mojeek is another search engine which uses its own index.

[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 16 points 8 months ago

If you’re English, then you misspelt the word ‘colour’.

[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 5 points 9 months ago

Am I missing something here? I count the total number of net beneficial decisions to be 22, and total number of net disadvantageous decisions to be 21.

Shouldn’t both totals be the same number? When one team gets a beneficial decision, it can only happen at the expense of another team (i.e. it’s a zero-sum game).

I could understand the discrepancy if this analysis were counting games in other competitions, but this is only counting Premier games so I would expect equal totals.

[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I would say, if anything, the fear is likely under-blown.

Sure, you’ll find many users here on Lemmy who hate what Google are doing… but we’re not the typical internet user. I mean, we specifically found this niche platform called Lemmy rather than use one of the mainstream social media platforms. The typical “normie” who uses Chrome probably has no idea about the privacy risks of using it (either in its current form or when the Topics API is being used). We need to help others understand, and hopefully convince these people to move over to Firefox.

[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Except you’re giving your passwords in an encrypted format. So if the company is trustworthy, it’s safe to let them store your passwords because it’s encrypted in such a way that even the company who own the password manager couldn’t access your passwords even if they wanted to.

(Note the caveat of “IF the company is trustworthy”, which rules out Lastpass)

Now I accept that there are legitimate arguments against storing passwords in the cloud via a password manager… so in that case, you may wish to use a local password manager (like Keepass) instead. But realistically, a typical person isn’t capable of memorising lots of unique, secure passwords… so the passwords need to be written down or stored in a password manager, just to avoid weak passwords or password reuse.

[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 19 points 10 months ago

Do you have a source for the claim that DuckDuckGo browser is selling user data to Microsoft?

You might be referring to the time when the DuckDuckGo browser was blocking all known trackers except Microsoft trackers. After that information was made public and users complained, DuckDuckGo was able to renegotiate its agreement with Microsoft so that it can block their trackers.

Furthermore, DuckDuckGo now publish their blocklist on GitHub.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/duckduckgo-microsoft-tracking-scripts

So this privacy issue has been rectified now. But even if it hadn’t, failing to block Microsoft trackers isn’t the same as collecting data and selling it to Microsoft.

But if you are aware of DDG browser selling data to Microsoft, please share a source.

[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Look how they massacred my boy…

For real though, if it bothers you that much, I think it’s possible to change the shortcut icon on your desktop. You would have to download the old Firefox logo as an image on your computer, and then edit the properties of the Firefox shortcut to use the downloaded image of the old icon instead of the regular app icon. This won’t help for the mobile app though.

[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 18 points 10 months ago

I’m a native English speaker so I can’t really contribute much to this post, but I remember watching a hidden camera prank show in the 90s, and the victim of the prank started yelling at the guy who pranked him. Unfortunately, I don’t know what language the show was in.

The TV show translated the insults he used and put it in the subtitles… and one of the insults was “curse the pig who delivered you”.

It probably sounded fine in his language but I remember thinking how oddly specific and personal to insult the midwife who helped your mother give birth to you lol.

Maybe there’s someone here who can recognise what phrase and language was used here?

[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 4 points 10 months ago

Well the privacy/security enthusiasts will prefer open source browsers, as these are viewed as more trustworthy.

Safari is closed source (although WebKit, the rendering engine that Safari uses, is open source).

[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 6 points 10 months ago

Apple devices are only more "private" in the sense that the prevent third parties from collecting your data (don't get me wrong, this is great), but then proceed to go and collect the same data for their own uses instead.

While I accept that Apple are far from perfect, my understanding is that even their data collection for their own purposes is still less than the data collection that Google use for their own purposes. And since their are only two major phone OS (Android and iOS), we can only choose between the lesser of the two evils.

After all, do you want to give your data to a company which is the world’s biggest ad company? Or instead give your data to a company whose business model is convincing people to buy $1000+ phone every year?

But yeah, I agree that Apple’s anti-consumer practices are awful. I wasn’t aware of the aftermarket parts re-using chips just for the serial numbers and I’m not even the least bit surprised. We need governments to bring in legislation to protect right to repair, because companies like Apple can’t be reasonable.

[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 75 points 10 months ago

I hate the tribalism regarding Apple products. There are loyal fanboys who won’t hear a bad word about Apple, and then there are Apple haters who criticise everything about them.

I wish we had some more nuance in this debate. The reality is that there are advantages and disadvantages to Apple products. I’ll outline a few:

Advantages

  • Long iOS support. Typically you can expect an iPhone to be supported for 5-7 years, which is well above the average in the industry.
  • No bloatware or adverts on the iPhone
  • Better privacy than Google Android/Microsoft Windows
  • High-end hardware, e.g. M1 chip in MacBooks.
  • User friendly design. Nice user experience.

Disadvantages

  • Overpriced. Seriously all Apple products are more expensive than the competition.
  • Anti-consumer business practices that influence the industry. They normalised removing the headphone jack and using non-removable batteries, which other manufacturers followed. Another anti-consumer practice is using their proprietary Lighting port, rather than USB (luckily the EU should be forcing them to adopt USB-C and removable batteries soon). Also, no SD card slot because they want you to use iCloud
  • Walled garden. No support for side-loading apps
  • Required to use iTunes to add/remove music to the iPhone, which is a problem if you use Linux (you’d have to use Wine to install the Windows version as a workaround)
[-] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

However, this is of course annoying for people who don't mind holding the phone vertically or who are watching videos on a widescreen device

I think you meant to write “horizontally” here :)

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RIP_Apollo

joined 1 year ago