News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by mcv on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @04:00AM (#19856784)
I agree. I used to be a fan. They were explicitly not evil, gave lots of open source stuff away for free, made lots of other free services.

Turns out they were just making us dependent on them, and now that they've got us, they do whatever they want. We need to make ourselves less dependent on Google. Move away from GMail, use Firefox, DuckDuckGo, OSM, federated social networks, etc. I don't have a good replacement for Android yet, as iOS is just another walled garden. Similarly, Facebook is no replacement for Google+. We need stuff to be opener, not dependent on another company. For email, you need to own your own domain, so you can easily move from one provider to another.

Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by tiredyam on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @04:59AM (#19857076)
god I tried. DuckDuckGo just does not work as well as it needs to. It gets touted as a turn key google search replacement but it’s simply not. 4 times today, I searched 5+ different ways for something after poor results, each thing took one search to find on google. Granted, maybe I am just more familiar with how to get the most out of googles search, maybe it has such a vast profile on me that it understands what I want i am looking for. Either way, i am pretty close to caving and it’s sad
Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by m0nty on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @05:18AM (#19857165)
You can use the !SP operator before your DDG search to invoke StartPage, which uses Google results. I mean, it's the same thing, just it doesn't look like you're using Google search ;)
Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by npongratz on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @09:19AM (#19858534)
Even better, with same results: use !s as a token anywhere in your search string :)
Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by Liquix on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @02:57PM (#19861811)
LineageOS [0] is also worth a look, it's like Android without all the un-uninstallable Google spyware. No play services, no need to log in to a G account to use the device, no G apps (but you can install them separately if desired), no background data harvesting, etc.

The open source MicroG project [1] takes things a step further by acting as a drag-and-drop replacement for Google Play Services. It provides a FOSS location provider backend, allows the device passes SafetyNet checks (Snapchat/Pokemon Go/online banking), and generally makes for a seamless mobile experience.

I've been using both for ~6 months now and the only noticeable difference is GPS taking a few seconds longer to get a satellite lock. Definitely worth a shot if you're interested in de-googling your Android.

[0] https://www.lineageos.org/

[1] https://lineage.microg.org/

Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by skykooler on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @09:22AM (#19858550)
>I don't have a good replacement for Android yet

It might not suit your needs, but I've been happily using SailfishOS for the past four years.

Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by mcv on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @10:13AM (#19858948)
> SailfishOS

Descended from MeeGo, I see. I hadn't heard from it yet, but I'll have a look.

Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by Angostura on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @06:58AM (#19857650)
... use the contact pages on web sites you like that use AMP- to stop using AMP.
Re:Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API by mcv on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @07:58AM (#19857979)
They use AMP to get ranked higher by Google. We need to stop using Google Search if we want sites to stop using AMP.