When you search google it fingerprints your browser then attachs that to the other information it amasses from tracking your other activities from other websites.

By not giving them the search content you reduce what they know.

Scenario a) you search up particular health issues on google, for the US say “how do I know I’m pregnant” then you go to an online pharmacy (Walgreen is the big US one I think) and order “plan b” (anti pregnancy drug). Google doesnt even need to know from walgreens what you ordered it will infer a pregnancy test and/or plan b then from later activity

Scenario b) you use proxy and thus google knows nothing of your search, then you go to walgreens, for all google knows you ordered makeup or hayfever tablets.

Scenario a is or will be illegal in some US states - best not to leak it.

Not a perfect example, i can poke holes in it. The point is searches are usually sensitive info, keeping them out of the hands of the most egregious activity collator keeps more privacy then if you don’t. The proxy buries your senstive search in with thousands of others that can’t be attached to you

Oh how the worm turns

It’s not, but it is better than using google

I agree, all of those are good approaches which is, presumably why VdL has made several announcements about defence spending in the last week (€800bn euro or something today - only saw headline havent read it yet).

Europe does have petroleum (although technically EU doesn’t) both Scotland & Norway have a fair bit so they don’t HAVE to buy Russian or American, and Australia & Canada are definitely still allied. Middle east are dodgy but most of them aren’t part of the fascist conspiracy.

The problem with the last point is the same reason it’s hard to get a soldier in a war zone to quit smoking, if you’re imminently likely to get shot, worrying about lung cancer down the line is hard to focus on.

I think we definitely need to push hard to decarbonise, but not at the expense of being dead before getting there. Particularly not when the US is actively seeking to reverse its climate change efforts and recarbonise.

It is if looked at in isolation.

Consider the context though. The EU is under direct political attack from a fascist enemy through both propaganda and direct threats.

Causing thousands to be laid off in a time of global turmoil is NOT going to help prevent the likes of AfD and FN taking power. It would in fact garner them votes. Couple that with the US deliberately starting an economic war and this is sub optimal but necessary if the EU is to survive the fascist rise.

I can’t trust anything made by google. It’s a company that literally makes its money capturing everything everyone does on the internet…and yet the phone they make is the ONLY phone immune to having everything captured…

Sorry. Not buying it. There will be a chip in there phoning home we’ll find out about in a decade.

Fairphone

Theoretically the major cloud providers like MS have redundant geographically dispersed servers that mean there should only be an outage if the individual user can’t reach the internet.

In practise however those promises are hollow for a number of reasons, cost usually. Legal issues like GDPR also impinge (EU data being allowed to be in the US has been blocked by the courts the other day for example). In addition there’s a long list of other configuration reasons which almost always come back to cost indirectly.

Theoretically an ideally configured cloud solution is far superior to on-prem.

In the real world, not so much: corners cut, pennies saved by non technical managers not understanding the ramifications of their choices & etc

On prem is certainly better in the real world if you’re big enough to afford proper redundancy and to hire and keep good techs.

Many many firms can’t tick those boxes though and so you get to imperfect world optimisation where what is good for coy. A is bad for coy. B

That last paragraoh had a positive little gem though. The fact he got to go on Fox and quote Reagan should help him. Might try to see if I can find that interview

Good to hear because I watched that fiasco, they were trying to provoke a meltdown and failed

Fuck. Even the guardian are whitewashing Mango now ?

Zelensky didn’t “melt down” what sort of bullshit is that ?