Degoogling
Greetings patrons,
It’s time for another research update. In this letter, two things:
- I’m degoogling my life
- A new archive for my research updates
- Teaching R?
I’m degoogling my life
I’ve given myself until the end of 2022 to get off Google. It’s something that’s been on my mind for several years, but it seemed I was always too busy to pull the plug. That changed when I read a recent NY Times story about a dad who was flagged by Google for alleged child porn. The problem was, the photos were for telemedicine. But that didn’t stop Google from permanently suspending the man’s account and turning over all his data to the police (who cleared him of wrong doing).
Let’s face it … this is just outrageous.
That said, I’ve never been particularly worried about online privacy. (About 90% of what I write lives on the open internet anyway.) What I do care about, though, is having control over the technology (and data) that I use. When a huge chunk of your data lives in Google’s monopolistic walled garden, it’s pretty hard to have control. If Google says ‘jump’, you ‘jump’.
And that’s why I’ve decided to pull the Google plug. Here’s what I’ve done so far.
Google search → DuckDuckGo
I made the switch to DuckDuckGo a few years ago and honestly, it was effortless. I changed the default search engine in my browser and never looked back.
Some people claim that DuckDuckGo is sub par compared to Google, but I’ve actually found the opposite. By default, Google will use your data to send you personalized search results. I find that both creepy and (more importantly) not helpful.
When I do research, I want results based on the search terms I used. What I don’t want is results that are sent back to me because I’m Blair Fix. In fact, I can’t think of anything worse for doing rigorous science than having personalized search results.
Google Chrome → Firefox
In my mind, Google Chrome is best treated as a giant data-harvesting tool whose secondary purpose is to let you browse the internet. Fortunately, there are many good alternatives. Or perhaps I should rephrase that … there are many non-Google flavors of Chrome. Under the hood, most browsers use Google’s rendering engine. (I ranted about this fact in my last research update.) Firefox is the exception. In many ways, it is the last independent browser standing.
Fortunately, Firefox is great. Last year I dumped Chrome for Firefox, and the switch was mostly painless. The most difficult part was moving my saved passwords.
Gmail → Fastmail
Now we’re getting to the real Google lock in. I started using Gmail shortly after it was created (in 2004), so I’ve been using it for the better part of 2 decades. Last week, I finally pulled the plug and switched to Fastmail.
On the technical end, the transition was effortless. I literally clicked a button in Fastmail and it imported all of my emails, all of my contacts, and all of my calender entries. As far as I can tell, the transfer worked flawlessly.
After a week of using Fastmail, here’s what I like. First, I think the user interface is superior to Gmail. And it is certainly more customizable. Second, Fastmail has a simple feature that Gmail purposefully does not include: the ability to remove attachments from emails. Google excludes this feature because it wants to sell you space to store the attachments that you don’t want to keep but can’t easily remove. Not so in Fastmail. You can browse your emails for big attachments and pluck them out with one click, keeping the original email for your archives.
The caveat with Fastmail is that it is a paid service. Honestly, I’m OK with that. It means that Fastmail’s business model is based on actually providing a good email service. Google, on the other hand, simply wants to lock you in so that they can harvest your data. The quality of the service is an afterthought.
Honestly, the most painful part of switching email providers is having to change my info on all of the various sites that I use. I’m sure I’ll be getting a trickle of gmail for years to come. Fortunately, that’s what auto-forwarding is for.
Google photos → ???
The last step of degoogling will be to get my family’s photo’s off of Google photos. This switch is going to take a bit more work, and I haven’t settled on a solution yet.
The problem has two components. First, you need to get your photos off your phone. Second, you need a nice way of hosting them for convenient viewing. Yes, there are apps like icloud that will do both of these steps for you. What I’m thinking of, though, is a self-hosted solution.
On the hosting end, I’m thinking of trying Photo Prism. It provides a nice interface for browsing photos. And apparently, it has some good AI for tagging people and places. The app got great reviews by the folks at Linux Unplugged.
To get photos off of phones, I’m thinking of using either PhotoSync or Syncthing. When I get things working, I’ll tell you what I’ve done.
An online archive for my research updates
In other news, I’ve created a new website that will archive my research updates:
updates.economicsfromthetopdown.com
The site is publicly accessible, but is designed for patrons. (I won’t link to it from economicsfromthetopdown.com.) If you became a patron recently, you can see what I’ve mused about in the past.
Yes, I’m aware that few people care about my old updates. But I like having them around for posterity. (My inaugural update, written during the first wave of COVID, already seems like ancient history.) At the very least, I’ll be able to look back and laugh at my old self.
Teaching R?
It’s fall, which means that untenured academics like me are starting to think about what to do when our temporary positions expire. (My postdoc ends in July 2023.)
On that front, I’ve been toying with the idea of teaching an online course that introduces people to R. Over at my Science Desk, I’ve been slowly writing tutorials that introduce some R basics. The idea would be to collate this material into a digestible form and teach it online in something like a ten-week course.
The plan would be to purposefully not teach through a university. With no middleman, the course would be cheaper for students and more lucrative for me. Except for the lack of credentials, I think it’s a win win.
Anyway, it’s just a thought at this point. I have no idea what the interest would be. If it’s something that interests you, let me know!
Until next time
That’s it for this update. Thanks for supporting my work!
Cheers,
Blair