From: T Wongkee
reading about your USB car limitations, and had just seen this:
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/09/create-virtual-usb-sticks-with-a-raspberry-pi-zero/
Have not tried it myself (don't own a car)
From: JP
I’ve enjoyed Plex for a long while, and Plexamp (as others have pointed out) is superb. I bought a lifetime membership to that Plex “Pro” about 10 years ago and I’m incredibly glad I did, it’s been invaluable for collecting the media I *own* (rather than rent) — even if Plex is swinging over to hunting revenue a bunch now.
I’m not sure if they’re ’pro only’ features, but loudness normalising and being able to sync playlists to my phone are both things I can configure & use, which might handle some of your concerns there!
Finally, if you or anyone else is seeking a similar approach for audiobooks, I can highly recommend AudioBookshelf, a very similar affair that also handles eBooks.
From: John Nurick
I've been thinking about posting photographs to Bluesky. I want them edited my way and not by algorithm so was interested to read your posts there and this blog.
Afterwards, I posted my first image. 2000 px square, jpeg created by LR Classic with the Quality slider at 90% (magick identify -verbose reported 96). File size 2.24 MB.
After the post uploaded, I viewed it in in my browser, clicked to get the "big" image and then did Save Image. Result was 2000x2000 but only 862 KB. Imagemagick reported quality of 80.
On Android (Pixel 4a), touch image to enlarge, then Save, produced an identical file so I didn't investigate that further.
Comparing the uploaded and downloaded versions in Photoshop I couldn't see the difference at 100% except by superimposing and switching back and forth between them. At 200% the difference was clearly visible in the jpeg artifacts.
But there are significant differences in the Imagemagick channel statistics, though I don't have the technical skill to understand them.
For my next trick, I'll upload my version to Smugmug and then download, see what if any changes are introduced there.
From: Andrew Reilly
I've mentioned Kagi before, and so have a bunch of other responses here, but I want to point out a very cool (IMO) thing that they added this week: they've added Stephan Wolfram to the board, and Wolfram|Alpha to the search. The upshot of that is that you can now do symbolic differentiation in the search bar, should you need to, but (more likely useful) you have all of Alpha's facts database and fact-derivation logic on hand, and that drives google-like quick-answer panels.
On the other subjects:
* Nextcloud for self-hosted storage, calendar and contacts. There's supposed to be a chat/video thing too, but I haven't tried it.
* Office: Office, to my great surprise. It works everywhere these days and is less painful than other things that I've tried. I don't really do paged documents much, other than read them.
* Browser: Firefox all the way (mobile too). It now supports password auto-fill (and sharing) in apps as well as web-pages, so it's also my password manager.
* Photo editing: I'm trying to like Darktable. It seems to work, and I think it's raw demosaic-er for Fujifilm is better than Adobe's. It's not especially pretty or easy to use though: still on the learning curve.
* In-car interface: analog dials and gear stick. I don't even turn the radio on.
* Play my music: I've been looking for an alternative to Squeeze Server/clients for years...
* Discover: Bandcamp and youtube
* TV: Telstra Roku with a bunch of subscriptions and with gritted teeth.
From: Tim (but not THE Tim)
"health provider's apps are incapable of generating compliant ICS files" (Geoff, above)
I continue to not understand what is so difficult - the RFCs are out there, a simple event is not huge amount of data to create, and there are examples to be found everywhere. I do note, however, that there aren't a lot of web publishing tools that can take date/time information being posted to a page, create an .ics file from it, and make the info on the page into a link. My usual complaint: tour information for bands I'd like to see; they have complete tour information organized on a page but none of it is actionable (for example, click to add it to my calendar)
From: Robin Puga
Hey Tim, love the post.
I joined Cosocial last year. I love to support the co-op social media model. Also, Boris and I go waaaay back.
Just a quick note, related to your De-Google project, our worker co-op has been hosting NextCloud instances for clients for the last few years and offer it as an alternative to Dropbox and Office - https://cantrusthosting.coop/canwork-cloud/ - though we kinda detest using "cloud" we did for marketing purposes.
Just mentioning it in case you never heard of us ... and of course that old marketing thing.
From: Doug K
It's astonishing to me there are no better solutions.. guess we're all supposed to be streaming Spotify now.
I went to USB for car some years ago and it worked great, until I got a brand-new used car with original stereo that didn't have USB. Now use a dedicated MP3 player Zen Stone 16G, and refresh it occasionally. For non-car travelling another Sandisk MP3 player 32G. These work offline which is necessary on much of my travels. Also much cheaper than buying a phone with enough storage for that music..
Listening now to the Tom Waits version of Jesus' Blood.. on headphones as dear wife also don't care for it or Tom much. Ha.
From: Dan
Thank you for posting this! I'm in the exact same spot: Google Play Music was pretty good at this, Youtube Music has been worse, I'd love a non-google alternative. Plex sounds like it'd be great for me. Thank you and all your Mastodon friends for doing the research!
From: Matt
I've been an avid Plex user for many years, I've even dabbled in their undocumented API to export playlists for the car or move track ratings from one instance to another. The Plex Pass has definitely been worth it for the remote access (via plex.tv), hardware transcoding, etc.
Plexamp has also been my goto music player since it came out. I can put it on my personal, work laptop, phone, etc and it all "just works." The wife also has a playlist and uses it for her runs. Okay, I've always wished they had a more powerful song rating and management system, but that's partially where the python scripting against their API comes in to play.
Putting it in a Docker container also makes management, backups, and moving it a snap. One hint, if you're doing any transcoding, mount the transcode directory on a ramdisk to save your SSD from premature wear and tear.
From: Neal
I switched to Affinity Photo and Designer because of their "one time" cost instead of a monthly cost. I haven't looked back.
From: Lars
I recommend the Proton products (mail, calendar, drive).
From: Nick
Another vote for Kagi.
I’ve been finding stuff way easier, they have their own index which is then supplimented by lots of specialist sources that works really well for me ( https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html )
It’s paid which means it needs a login, which means they _could_ aggregate all your searches. I don’t love this. I’ve also accepted that this seems to be part of the territory and at least they have some incentive not to, which feels like a step ahead of the other players
From: Dewald
For Office document storage/data sharing you might want to consider using something like a Synology with their associated apps to replace Google Drive and probably even Dropbox. In that case you are free to use any productivity software (Perhaps LibreOffice as already mentioned above?). The devil might lie in the details, but I'm sure it can be made to work with the benefit of total control over your data. I back up my Synology to Backblaze B2.
For mail and calendar you might want to consider hey.com if you can separate the occasionally contentious ramblings of DHH from the product. I have tried Fastmail for my business accounts, but faced some issues where messages ended up in spam – a switch to Office365 fixed that immediately.
Kagi.com, mentioned several times here already, has been on my list of search options to consider. It is paid, receives praise, and feels like something I'd like to support. Maybe worth a look for you as well?
Lastly, I second a switch to DuckDuckGo having done that years ago and have never failed to find what I was looking for.
From: Len
I spent the time digging into the theory to understand the tech. Dot math with lots of parameters used to sieve lots of data preprocessed by meatware. The I is in the meat that provides the data. In short form as I commented to Sabine: expecting ai to be truly creative is expecting your shadow to evolve.
That said, when doing creative work, primarily writing, recording songs and making no cost videos, I love it. Image generators and eventuality video generators get me out of the sleeve of using sources from the web. The main problem is eventually I have to dip into retirement funds and do a serious upgrade of my production systems. There is little money in music though much joy. So what the hell? The other use is translation. If I give it a lyric that say I want to sing in Spanish as a Mambo, if the lyric was a singable lyric going in, it’s singable coming out. That saves me enormous time.
I did a fair amount of testing. It comes down to being able to write an expressive prompt Quality in; good enough out
From: Colin
Are you a fairly-skilled sysadmin? I set up Radicale on a server and now I have my own private contacts and calendar server.
Postfix and Dovecot provide email service, along with the gaggle of supporting apps (like dkimpy-milter and SpamAssassin).
Plex is the gold standard for personal media. Have you tried Plexamp? This phone app works great on Apple CarPlay, and I assume it’s great on Android Auto, too.
From: Zachariah
Here's what I currently use as Google alternatives:
Mail: ProtonMail (includes a free handy email alias service for random signups and ProtonPass for managing passwords & email aliases)
Calendar: Proton Calendar
Cloud storage and data sharing: Proton Drive
Browser: Vivaldi
Search: Ecosia
Chat: Signal
Find music: Bandcamp (miss out on a lot of music, but I find enough to keep me entertained)
TV: Dropout.tv, YouTube (I end up reading a lot more books these days)
From: Scott Hill
I've been doing a similar de-Googling for a bit, and can also recommend Kagi for search. I've also been using Plex recently, with an OTA tuner for free TV (you can read a bit about it on my post here: https://scottwhill.com/thoughts/cutting-the-cord-over-the-air-tv-and-drm).
I'll also put in a recommendation for the Arc browser, with the caveat that I bounced off of it initially, but after sticking with it for a few weeks, it now hurts to go back to other browsers. They're iterating rapidly, and doing really good work. However, they're VC-funded, and without a clear business plan, so we'll see how the future goes for it.
From: Elliotte Rusty Harold
On the TV side, the best alternative given your requirements and high level of technical savvy is likely a combination of:
1. Over the air HDTV
2. An open source DVR system
3. DVDs
4. Bittorrent over VPN for anything you have to see that isn't on VPN
I haven't bothered setting this up myself yet. The UX of most of this stack is atrocious and not worth my time, but it's feasible for someone with time and skills.
In general the failure to recognize UX problems is the Achilles heel of any open source, non-big tech stack, not just the TV parts. There's a real Dunning-Krueger effect in play. Almost if not quite everyone working on this software (Firefox is a notable exception) is so bad at UX, that they don't know how much they don't know, and they actively resist feedback from people who do know. This is why desktop Linux never went anywhere until Google threw out everything that had come before and built an entire user interface from scratch, twice.
In the closed source world, market forces and consumer acceptance can push companies if not individuals to learn these skills and pay attention to UX. Microsoft, for instance, has gotten much better over the decades. Unfortunately those signals are lacking in the open source world.
From: c1ue
Re Office
Look at Corel. They have aggregated most of the companies destroyed by Microsoft's OFfice.
Re: cloud storage
There is no cloud storage that is not associated with a large tech company. But you can set up a hard drive that is connected to the internet - look at some of the Western Digital offerings for examples but home grown is equally trivial. Security, less so but anyone using cloud storage is ignoring security by construction.
From: Joe
Going through the same exercise here. I used to be a fastmail user, but ever since the Australian gov't passed their draconian access-everyone's-data law, I am uncomfortable.
A number of coworkers have been enjoying Basecamp's Hey, so that's my current front runner.
From: Jarek
Replace
- Google Android with Murena phon
- Google Drive with Nextcloud
- Google Analytics with Wide Angle Analytics
- Google Docs with OnlyOffice or Collabora Online (nicely integrates with Nextcloud)
- GMail with Startmail or Mailfence or Mailo or at least FastMail
From: Michael Miller
Have you ever used this website? It is more privacy-focused than simply “no big tech”, but it’s generally the same idea.
From: Haiku
For maps I use OSMAnd+, which is libre/open source and available on F-droid. It is bases on open street maps and has many feature that are not available in google maps, like elevation based routes. Unfortunately, there are no reviews feature.
From: Tom Atkins
Check out Zoho Workplace for mail, calendar and office: https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html They deserve wider recognition outside of India. Excellent software - not open source, but less 'big tech'.
Whereby for video meetings with nothing to install: https://whereby.com/information/meetings
DuckDuckGo is surprisingly good for search these days, it's replaced Google for me: https://duckduckgo.com/
From: Tom Atkins
In case you're not aware, Plex have a dedicated music app, Plexamp, which I can recommend: https://www.plex.tv/plexamp/
From: Gavin B.
* On the desktop Thunderbird makes using Gmail and Google Calendar ad-free once your set up.
* On Android Thunderbird will do email anytime soon (in the interim there's K-9 Mail)
* On Android the F-Droid store provides a basic set of apps (from Tibor Kaputa), gratis and ad-free:
Simple Calendar
Simple SMS
Simple Voice Recorder
From: Murray
I can second Fastmail. The email client is solid. Calendar not as good as Google but good enough. I miss the integration between my calendar and maps but not so much that I would go back.
Interested in why you would include Dropbox in a De-Google project? Is there some connection I am unaware of?
From: David Carlton
I’ve been using Kagi as my search engine for several months now, I think it’s good. And it meets your criteria 2-4, it’s bootstrapped instead of VC-funded, and they make money off of monthly fees instead of ads.
They also make a browser, but I haven’t tried it. (And it’s Apple-ecosystem-only, so it might not work for all of your needs.)
From: Ivan Sagalaev
You mention carrying a USB with you, but another simple option is to dump it all into your phone and use it to play it. You car works as a Bluetooth headset.
Also, Plex is quickly becoming another content-pushing enterprise. Have a look at Jellyfin instead.
From: Amy
I replaced Dropbox with an instance of Nextcloud running on a hosted server. Nextcloud also has other apps that might replace other things on your list, like calendars, contact lists, and task lists.
From: Nelson
Organic Maps is very good for mobile OSM based maps. However it's really only good for displaying maps. Placename search and route generation is much harder, I don't know of good open alternatives to Google / Bing / Apple.
From: Geoff Arnold
For email, I've been a longtime customer of Fastmail. I manage email accounts for half a dozen family members, and I've never considered changing. Their calendar service is OK, but I'm stuck with Google Calendar because my health provider's apps are incapable of generating compliant ICS files. 😒 I'm starting to use their "masked email" service, which works very nicely, and works with 1Password to let you use a unique email address for each web service.
For Chat, I'm using Discord with friends and Signal for untrusted parties.
And in a category that you don't mention, I can't imagine life without Feedly. RSS still works really well.
From: Rob
As for streaming, as long there is no actual free market with pay per view at a reasonable rate, only indentured servitude, well there's always the historical response to such systems: Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, mateys! Lets you be selective, and the extra finagling required makes your viewing intentional rather than reflexive.
Mind you, its not that I would EVER break the law or steal anything myself. Just a totally innocent thought experiment yunnerstan, as I bound the intertube main.
(Arrr, me hearties!)
From: Joseph
For "office suite," try LibreOffice and/or LibreOffice online.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice_Online
From: Anonymous Person
Interesting!
I personally try to ue Ecosia as much as possible as they plant a tree every 50 searches you make and dont even have an account system, though searches can be synced using your email address.
From: Matthew
Kagi is worth having a look at for search.
From: Owen Miller
I think you're being too harsh on the idea of AI hastening government work.
AIs have proven useful for software engineering, for the postal service, and for medicine, amongst other fields.
Governments are not sufficiently competitive and we saw during covid that actually, they could rapidly change their paradigms if they were really pushed. We needn't believe them when they declare that this is the only way of doing things − they're just lazy and accustomed to cushy jobs where they can't be fired.
AI could significantly reduce the cost of living and could significantly improve our society. I discuss it further in Why Robots Desere Rights: https://nonhuman.party/post/why_give_rights_to_robots/
From: Mike B
Have you tried GitHub copilot or other LLM programming assistants? They are legit useful.
From: Paul Boddie
And eventually along came the boosters, claiming that they are n-times more productive, presumably "freeing themselves up for more strategic thinking" or whatever those too precious for actually writing software (and who never really did, anyway) tend to say.
Meanwhile: "For example, the pace of innovation in this domain since October 2022 has no equivalent..." Really? Have you ever heard of the Manhattan Project? And that was something that happened eighty years ago, before Internet Time or whatever publications like Wired used to bang on about.
And to bring up that endeavour turns out to be quite pertinent, given that the most hyped form of "AI" is effectively being weaponised to fight information wars, as the credulous gush at all the fun it provides, and as the technology billionaires profit from its proliferation.
From: Soph
Regarding use of AI by governments, I think two previous events can point at how damaging it can be: the Horizon Post Office scandal in the UK (a few suicides, people wrongly sent to prison or made bankrupt) and the Robodebt scandal in Australia (an assumed attempt at hitting the poorest hard that also led to suicides and lives destroyed).
Searching for the exact names made me discover that Wikipedia has an Algocracy category.
From: Leo
While I tend to agree with most of what you said, I do not share the overall pessimistic sentiment. We have barely scratched the surface of what LLM-powered products are capable of, and as another reader mentioned, it has already drastically improved our productivity. Combine this technology with advancements in AR and things straight out of sci-fi novels become reality. So when you say "I’m pretty sure, is that AI/ML will, inevitably, disappoint", I disagree. I think this comes from an "empirical" mindset, based on previous inventions. We shouldn't try to compare GenAI with previous inventions. For example, the pace of innovation in this domain since October 2022 has no equivalent, and as such, we should refrain from applying the same mental models.
In terms of energy footprint, a good comparison is the advent of combustion engines. In the 60s, all we cared about was building faster cars, and paid no attention to how much they would pollute. Since the early 70s engine size and emissions have been cut drastically. I envision the same happening to LLMs, which we're already seeing with much smaller models performing almost as good as giant ones. That being said I'm not saying it's all smooth sailing from here, and I agree there are significant challenges to overcome. I guess I'm just more optimistic we will overcome them.
This is just my opinion and I'm sure I'll be wrong on many things. I enjoyed your post and can't wait to see what happens next!
From: Ole Eichhorn
I’m as impressed as you are by prompt parsing, but for a different reason: as it turns out, you don’t need seriously great NLP to do this, all you need is seriously good applied statistics and a sufficiently large cohort of tokens. To me that’s an incredible finding, and a key to why AI/ML is powerful.
I have ChatGPT open 24x7 and use it for everything, and it’s made me X times more productive. It’s not perfect and not always accurate and mostly needs to be checked and edited, but … wow! We blew right past the Turing Test at 100mph and haven’t looked back.
I can’t foresee the economic impact - agree the computing power required is vast - probably many lower income jobs like customer service will be replaced - but the societal impact will be massive.
From: Dave Pawson
Fully agree with your overall conclusion Tim. Wondered if you'd considered the political input to this potential market killer? How will they react when all their friends (and funders) are screaming as gelt runs through their fingers?
From: philvec
AI specialist here, by both degree and job experience. I was looking long for an opinion like this, particularily on the insufficiency of LLMs alone to model "meaning". Not all the statements I 100% agree with, but THANK YOU TB, since my hope for humanity has risen from the dead - as now I know somebody is also aware of the problem!
From: Rob
The UK may be thinking about it, Canada has been using it for I think a couple of years now: https://www.cicnews.com/2023/05/minister-fraser-clarifies-how-ircc-uses-ai-in-application-processing-0537338.html#gs.57gcdt. Basically, when you apply for a Temporary Residence Visa to say stay in Canada with your spouse whilst you wait on IRCC (ie Immigration) to process your application, your application is processed by a LLM. If it turns you down, you have no avenue of appeal to a human, no, all you can do is re-write it and submit it again.
I see the day coming when you will have to pay for a LLM to make your applications (to say welfare, immigration, parole board, the tax man) more palatable, much like paying SEO shysters nowadays to show up on Google, or the vigorish for Amazon. Because that has worked out so well.
From: Justin Watt
From one willy-nilly investor to another: aim for average, invest in index funds, and enjoy the ride. But I'm sure you already do that. For further reading/self-soothing, check out The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins or The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.
From: Max Pool
Aswath Damodaran (a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at NYU) recently analyzed the magnicifient seven.
Nvidia is 55.84% overvalued with five year Expected CAGR Revenue 32.20% and target operating margin 40.00%.
Exel:
https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pc/blog/NVIDIA2024.xlsx
blog post: https://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-seven-samurai-how-big-tech-rescued.html
From: Tristan Louis
As always, a fascinating and thought provoking piece.
One of the area where I believe you may need to modulate your thinking is in the proverbial shovels vs. gold framework. Nvidia (and by some extend, your previous employer) are selling shovels (chips or time on system) that allows them to get value right now from those panning for AI gold. Assuming they see the curve well enough, they could adjust to the downward demand in the cycle when the craze subsides.
If we were to think in terms of the dotcom era as a comparable bubble/bust cycle (albeit on a much larger scale now), a lot of companies making AI central to their existence will make the same mistakes as dotcoms which made their being an Internet asset central to their existence. In the same ways, the companies that provided tools (eg. The telcos and hardware vendors) or companies that added the new tech to their offerings without jeopardizing their code business (or used the new offering to repackage old ideas into new enhanced ones (eg. Turning the Sears catalog into an Internet ordering system) will survive the incoming crash and potentially amass enough cash reserves to build a longer term large asset.
From: James
It's entirely possible that the missing bits on Mastodon are stuff you wouldn't necessarily want available to the world, such as exif data? It's quite a small adjustment, which suggests to me that it has little to do with saving storage space.
From: Jarek
It seems to me that any general-purpose platform is right to default to reprocessing any media upload. Most users aren't doing as much processing as you are. I'd wager that even on relatively techie-heavy Mastodon instances, vast majority of uploads are JPGs straight from a phone camera. They could add a checkbox to not reprocess for the Lightroom set, but evidently no one has taken this on for Mastodon yet, and the commercial platforms don't see the value yet.
If you care for the bytes as you created them, a dedicated platform for photographers or graphic artists is probably a better bet. A decade ago I'd have said Flickr. These days... have you tried Pixelfed? What does it do?
From: stayce
Ah, the cloud cafe! Your reminiscence serves as a bittersweet reminder of simpler times. I was a raw vegan, burning-man-going, naively optimistic coder in my early days there, basking in the glory of those green smoothies, Paleo crepes, and delightful desserts at Cloud. *sigh* Leaving in '20 rather than '13, I now realize, was witnessing the end of an era rather than its zenith. This post is so relatable, and really stirs a shared sense of loss and a yearning for what once was. Thank you for articulating this collective nostalgia so eloquently!
From: dm
Nathan:
I think the point is that if I want C2PA-signed disinfo, can just
- Use DALL-E (or whatever) to generate my image of the pope wearing a funny hat
- Print it out on a nice inkjet
- Photograph that printout with an expensive Leica
I think the counterargument is that you'll be able to tell by, like, depth of field and stuff that the image is of a 2D printout? Tim, correct me if I misunderstand.
The problem I have with the counterargument is that, while true, it seems to devolve to *existing* anti-fake-image arguments: "I can tell from the pixels." Which is the whole thing C2PA is meant to avoid, no?
From: Duncan Ellis
I also recommend Charles Stross' book "Halting State" for a take on more pervasive AR wearables.
From: David
I've lived in Washington a long time and it was interesting to read a visitor's perspective.
After many years here, I still find the city beautiful.
From: Paul Hoffman
Lead Belly - "The Bourgeois Blues" - from 90ish years ago
From: Philip Storry
I suspect that the Barbara is Barbara Broccoli, daughter of "Cubby" Broccoli, who was the producer of almost all of the James Bond films.
Think of every stereotype of the hard-nosed, commercially savvy and very successful 1960s/70s film producer. You're probably now thinking of Cubby Broccoli, right down to the cigar he's smoking.
Barbara apparently learned the family trade very well, although I have no idea about her taste in cigars.
And yes, if the gentleman had offended her, or worse, crossed her, I'm sure a certain amount of professional prostration before her would be required before gainful employment could be further sought.
There ain't no business like showbusiness...
From: Ellie Kesselman
I first bookmarked one of your blog posts on 6 Nov 2011, Broken Links, about breaking the web with hash bangs. The sweet URL .../When/201x/2011/02/09/Hash-Blecch still works.
I'm an outsider (former IBM GPD San Jose, modelling storage performance then Motorola phone reliability then bank liquidity). Yet I could often understand your blog posts!
Google was the Happiest Place in Tech for good reason. Everyone I knew wanted to work there. They were exhilarated if hired. But I noticed that-starting in maybe 2015-some would leave after a few years.
Google was different than IBM, in that it didn't make most of its money from service contracts. This was good. And bad: remember the Google Blue Mini search appliance? It cost $40K in 2012. Corporate customer support was through a Google Groups forum run by one guy who wasn't even a Google employee. There were no hardware service contracts or service at all: only a 2 year guarantee and buy a new one.
I loved Google's consumer and small biz products that I even wrote a Google fan blog for years https://gooplex.wordpress.com No updates after 2014 because the joy was gone by then.
Shnnon is right, about trying other ways to scale and size, to prevent big corporate pathology. Oligopolies aren't great, but we barely have that with search. I'll check on kagi as I'm eager for alternatives. I'm glad to pay for quality.
Be well, Tim Bray. Thanks for this post and for permitting my long comment. It is okay to mourn Google. I do too.
From: Rachel Jade Grey
I also remember "ten blue links" and its derogatory connotations. However, in early 2020 when COVID was threatening but nobody knew how bad it was going to get, there was a rather secretive effort to reinforce the critical infrastructure of Search. People tried to make sure that for every essential pipeline that keeps Search up and able to iterate, there were folks at multiple sites who were able to perform the necessary production duties to keep those pipelines up (yes, there seemed at that time to be a real possibility of entire sites being taken out by sickness at the same time). It was an effort that felt good, important, serious, grown up... and its internal name? Ten Blue Links.
Amusingly, Search now has a notion of "human voices" and the idea that some of these should be promoted on the SRP; because everything old is new again and corporations have no memory.
From: Steve
I can kind of relate. I joined HP when it was considered to be "cool." An engineers "paradise.". It went through the same denouement as Google is going through. Retired before it got split up and became irrelevant.
At least for tech companies, getting big and staying cool is an oxymoron.
From: drew
Still rock an AEK I bought off Craig's List at work and my mom's old AEK II at the home office. Both with various combinations of ADB -> USB-A -> USB-C hubs/adapters. Every once in a while I think it's time to get on board with something more modern, but I can't quite bring myself to quit these clacky, old Alps monsters. They're still my favorites even with the occasional missed keypress as their switches wear down from many years of use.
From: Joe Marini
I joined shortly after you, and I remember feeling the same way back then about how cool it was to work for the coolest place to work.
I now feel the same way you do.
From: Charles Bassett
Beautifully articulate,and ethical as well! I am an 80yo ex Vic20 novitiate.
Google seemed the answer to prayers; so many usable resources.
Like Libre-Office, filled the enormous space left by the most utile WP5.1; which was Windowcided by "big-tech"; not BIG in Ethics though. So the black hats rule the roost. Good! The White Hats ultimately win: there is No other way...
That's the Universe. US.
Thank you T Bray. cb
From: Shnnon Jacobs
Sure wish there was a way to correct a couple of typos I noticed in my earlier contribution.
From: Cole Maclean
Another quality low profile keyboard that seems quite similar: the [NuPhy Air75](https://nuphy.com/collections/keyboards/products/air75-v2). I bought a V1 mostly for travel and it has taken over as my desktop keyboard.
From: Shnnon Jacobs
Thanks. Very insightful and I like the tilt towards thinking about solutions, but you didn't really get there. The anti-nod towards "Late Capitalism", though I think it would be better to describe it as "Post-Capitalism" or possibly "Late-Stage Capitalism". From that perspective, I think the real problem is a bad system where bad people win and then use their winnings to make the system worse. Negative spiral from bad to worse...
My favorite fantasy solution? A progressive pro-freedom profits tax linked to market share, not just size. When you dominate a niche too strongly, when your corporate cancer is cutting too deeply into freedom, then your taxes go up. The path to higher retained earnings would then become dividing the company into sincere competitors.
But how to detect the dominance? Aye, there's the rub. The bad guys are nothing if not flexible, especially morally, when it comes to heir love of money. Can't cast it in cement, but two starting points would be asking the wannabe customers who many REAL choices they have. I think less than five is a bad number. Also listen to wannabe competitors who can't can't get into the niche because of the cancerous gorilla that owns the tree.
Much more could be said, but this doesn't seem to be a conversational venue so I can address your interests, whatever they are. Too bad I can't recommend a non-evil social network, eh? (I do like the Trust Cafe Jimmy Wales has been diddling with, but I don't think it's going to last much longer.)
From: Stephen
As far as low-profile, portable keyboards go I recently discovered this one from Logitech:
https://www.logitech.com/en-ca/products/combos/mk470-slim-wireless-keyboard-mouse.920-009443.html
Now, it's definitely a Windows keyboard - I'm not sure if they make a Mac version. I imagine the keys translate roughly - Win = CMD, alt = Option, etc.
It's skin, quiet, perfect for the open office environment I use it in. In my line of work I do use the number pad so the fact that it's included is wonderful.
I originally bought it because I was carting a keyboard back and forth to my work location, because we don't have designated desks. I since got a locker, but I still use this there.
From: Nathan
I am confused by your first paragraph after the photo. My understanding is that your ire is directed at the keyboards at the top and bottom of the photo due to their lack of nav keys (Home, PgUp, PgDown, End). However, on the top keyboard I see those keys staring right at me in their usual location above the arrow keys.
To me the middle keyboard (the topic of this post) looks problematic because when it comes to non-standard layouts I have to retrain muscle memory acquired over decades. The top one appears much more usable in that regard, as the nav keys are where they should be.
From: Aleks
Google's journey to an average large company was always the most likely scenario, so I can't be sad or mad about it.
What does make me mad is that search is terrible. Search is why Google exists. They'll tell you that according to their internal metrics user satisfaction has never been higher, but it is obvious that whatever metrics they are using are not the same thing as search quality. And it is their fault, serving traffic and ad money to terrible sites. They've poisoned the well for other search engines who have to avoid terrible content made viable thanks to Google.
There is actually a part of Google search that does not suck: the shopping tab. So you know they can do a good job if they really wanted to.
Brave is my browser, and a search engine because they have their own crawler. Quality is on par with G. And Brave search team is like 20 people.
It is a bit sad that the tech utopia that was Google2005 gave birth to Google2024.
It's been 2 years since I've quit, and the only Google services I use regularly are Gmail, docs, maps.
From: Stuart Dootson
You might well find Matias have a keyboard to suit you, whether it’s an Apple style flat keyboard (they do a tenkeyless layout that should suit - https://matias.store/collections/all/FK408) or one of their clicky keyboards (the 60% comes closer to your spec - https://matias.store/products/60-keyboard).
I’ve been using a full size TactilePro for quite a while and it’s the best keyboard I’ve used.
From: Thomas Koch
I believe there is a window of opportunity for decentralised (distributed) search engines. I've layed out my thoughts here:
https://blog.koch.ro/posts/2024-01-20-rebuild-search-with-trust.html
TL;DR:
- More people are searching for alternatives to Google.
- Mainstream hard discs are incredibly big.
- Mainstream internet connection is incredibly fast.
- Google is bleeding talent.
- Most of the building blocks are available as free software.
- "Success" depends on your definition...
From: Doug K
thanks Tim, that was both entertaining and illuminating..
"Larry and Sergey were smart guys who recognized they didn’t know shit about corporateness and quickly got into a pattern of hiring and empowering psychotic pricks who were presumably “good at business”. "
This will quickly ruin a company. See for example Boeing which went from an engineer's company, to a profit-seeking missile after the McDonnell-Douglas takeover. The collateral damage from these missiles is immense. As we find out again and again, there is a great deal of ruin in a company: but corporatism and profit-seeking at all costs are up to the challenge.
I use the Brave browser for most things except Gmail. It's Chrome-based like everything else with several layers of privacy protection added. The downside is it's overenthusiastic about crypto cons.
So far it has not been a big issue. They did make an attempt at micropayments which I was excited about, until finding it required payment in crypto con-currencies.
DuckDuckGo works for most search. Occasionally I have to fall back to Google which still seems to have an edge in IT questioning. Thanks to those who mentioned Kagi, that is interesting and I will give it a try.
Google Maps is still very good in my experience. Waze is an alternative I've used occasionally, not enough to be convinced.
Youtube is unavoidable I find. It is nearly as transformative as the original Google search. Most every song I know is there in multiple versions, there are videos to fix every car on the road and many that aren't.
From: Brian
I started in January 2007 and retired in March 2022. Fifteen years; five in Zurich and ten in Montreal.
I agree that there were some bad leaders. Vic would be my pick.
But there were some awesome ones, too. Ben Treynor for example... Though I wouldn't say he was the best manager, when I (publicly) confronted him about a choice he made, he didn't just shut me down. He said, to my astonishment, "That's interesting. Tell me more," and then proceeded to listen carefully to my arguments.
I worry about the layoffs and what it means for the morale and dedication of the people still working there. I knew a great many fantastic people who truly believed in the work they were doing. I have to believe that they still feel that way.
Is Google "going down the drain"? Possibly. But then, I've been hearing those same words since I started in 2007 when people complained about the removal of the bulk M&Ms from the microkitchens, a thread I found on "misc" after returning from a free lunch of fillet mignon. I kid you not.
From: Tony Aiuto
I've been there since 2007, and it is indeed a different company than the one I joined. Not all changes were for the worse - we are less of a "bro" culture than before - but we are just like any other large company in fundamental ways.
What magnifies the change for me ties in with the "Late Capitalism" you mention. That has only gotten worse in the last 20 years. The economic inequalities have widened - the bottom being pushed down further. I few months ago I was working in my lawn on a Sunday afternoon as US Postal service mailman delivered an unimportant package. I asked why he was delivering on Sunday. His response hit hard "Welcome to late stage capitalism." My tenure at Google had insulated me from this widening gulf between the haves and have nots. Surviving the rounds of layoffs makes me ask myself now "Are we the baddies?".
From: Bob Wyman
You may remember that Digital Equipment Corporation was also destroyed by "psychotic pricks who were presumably “good at business”"...
bob wyman
From: Bill Brown
I share your fondness for Old Google. As far as search goes, I think Kagi is where the innovation lies and I heartily recommend it.
From: Geoff Arnold
For me, the service which most dramatically illustrates the decline and fall of Google is Assistant+Home. Three years ago when we moved into this house, I decided to go all in on smart home stuff: lighting, HVAC, security, speakers, etc. Apple and Amazon were ruled out for various reasons, so I went with Google. And ever since then, we've watched the services go downhill, one automation step at a time. "OK Google lights off" uttered in one room will now turn off a random selection of lights in different rooms. "OK Google time" used to respond with the local time of day; now it gives me UTC time, and I have to say "OK Google what time is it?" to get local time.
I feel that a big part of the problem is that all of these "free" services have no contractual basis. I'd be very happy to pay to subscribe to a Google Home service with a defined set of features and some kind of SLA. But apart from its business-oriented offerings, Google has never been able to adopt a traditional customer-supplier relationship model.
From: John Luther
"And Google, in 2010, was the coolest place in the world to work."
It sure was. Thanks for this post.
From: Luke Stanley
If you suspect they are "double dipping", and it's hosted in Dublin, doing a GDPR request is probably a good option to find out what they store. They should respond without undue delay.
From: Chris N
An interesting article - there's just one sentence that I can't parse- could you unpack: "I decline to use iOS; If I wrote code for it I might not be able to give it away." - I'm not quite sure what you are saying here.
From: Asim Aslam
I was at Google 2011-2013 via an acquisition based in the UK. Honestly Google was tech company #1 and a decade ahead of everyone. It was like looking into the future. I think so much of that was strategically great acquisitions of companies that hadn't done well but brought in product minded people who could then leverage Google's scale and brand to deliver services that the world needed. Like anything that lives long enough, it ossifies, its doing a job serving billions, things get complex and large, but I'm not really sure it can be done better. If you look at any other 30+ year old company, they all go through waves of change and trying to maintain relevancy while operating with hundreds of thousands of employees.
Google operates as a base layer for whatever comes next. I don't know whether we can rebuild from the ground up without it but I know a lot of people are trying with AI. I think a decade from now with a new CEO and fresh faces Google will become the new shiny thing again, just like Microsoft.
From: Nils
> Did I mention Android? I can’t stop using it, because I used to work in that building and because I decline to use iOS; If I wrote code for it I might not be able to give it away. And I carry Pixel phones, because I love the cameras.
Perfectly understandable. Have you looked into GrapheneOS (https://grapheneos.org/)? It seems to be a viable, privacy respecting alternative to running stock Android on Pixel phones.
From: Matěj Cepl
I have to admit, I was very surprised by the level of enthusiasm you showed for working at Google at the time. I was then already persuaded (https://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/do-whatever.html is from June 2012, and https://da.gd/iXrO7 from September 2013) that Google is spiralling down the AOL-trajectory (I am dating myself, who now even knows what AOL used to be? ;)), and I was thus surprised about the level of your enthusiasm. Perhaps the situation at the wreckage of Sun was so horrible, that any help you got from Google made you really appreciative, but it really surprised me.
From: Dan Ciruli
We overlapped significantly (I was there from early 2013 to mid 2020 -- and incidentally, I still remember being thrilled when I heard you had joined).
I still feel like Google was a unique company when we joined, and not just because of the food. They just did things differently. I remember people talking about the economic slowdown of 2008/2009; when others started laying people off, Google *accelerated hiring* to take advantage of the talent available. There was no optimizing free cash flow to juice the stock price for the next quarter.
I knew it would end at some point.
And when Google announced layoffs last year -- not because they were losing money, of course, just because they weren't making enough -- it was clear that Google was no longer unique. They were managing to the market, trying to ensure that the shareholders would view them as prudent, cautious stewards.
Unique no more. Now just another big company.
From: Andrew Reilly
When casting around for a search engine that is not trying to sell you stuff, have a look at Kagi. I've been using it for a while. It costs money, which means that it (search) is the product, not me. Doesn't do paid placements or ads. The results seem good to me: I've not felt the need to go and re-try any recent searches on Google in the hope of a better answer. Claims to be doing its own crawling, and using its own algorithms: it has a blog (an opinionated one).
I don't mind there being an advertising-supported system, but I do appreciate being able to access an advertising-free one, even more, especially if it's good.
From: Cynthia Kiser
Yes it is OK to miss it. And thanks to good old fashioned RSS feeds, some of us out here got to miss it vicariously. Thanks for sharing.
From: Len
On the fifteen minute city: as one living in a city/county being rapidly gentrified, some observations in no particular order:
Gentrification is driven by migration and this ensures the process is controlled by the tourism bureau working with the real estate capitalists.
Two things result:
1. Much of the new building is done in areas of the city center and comes in the form of sprawling apartment complexes using sketchy codes. Don’t look too close and always ask yourself how fast a fire will race through the building. Know your materials.
2. The native character of the area dissolves as once open and natural land becomes a concrete culvert. It carries the excitement of newness but it doesn’t last. What you give up is quality of life. It is nice to have a massive amphitheater for the latest over priced mob acts to perform in but do you want to live next to it?
Because the rate of rearchitecting the city is furiously fast, infrastructure is overwhelmed. The roads, city services, etc. sag . One goes from a ten minute drive into town to a thirty minute drive in a span of six months.
Also since the city is being colonized, driving styles warp and woof. Put a Boston driver in an area that was a year earlier county property and aggression meets caution. Ever see a car after it suffers an 80 mph collision with a deer?
And road rage incidents are spectacles particularly when the hyper aggressive drivers don’t accept the aborigines are a gun culture.
Then there is the drive by the tourist bureau to suppress local culture to make migratory options more attractive. If you are someone who weeps for the indigenous while championing the fifteen minute city your hypocrisy could not be more glaring.
Gentrification also brings predators. Not simply street crime but organized crime. You will see it first in your entertainment industry. Follow the money and discover who is investing. The rules change fast.
The fifteen minute city is a trade off of serenity for convenience. Be careful what you wish for.
From: Farai Gandiya
Yeah I can’t buy the whole car as a service thing. The A/C and honking I had on a car from 2013. I guess the cost is to access the cell network which used to be free via 3G but that’s being retired.
Yeah where I am I doubt we’ll make any progress towards a pedestrian friendly future even though most people are. In that case if I could afford an EV, the one I’m looking at is the Mini EV from China for $6k. It was cheaper and had no airbags, A/C or power windows but it’s gotten better. Not the best EV but I would be comfortable using it where I am where it’d cost like $17k after shipping and duty. Not as cheap as a fit but way cheaper to operate.
From: Jarek
> The most important electric vehicles aren’t going to be personal automobiles. They’re going to be the buses and trains ... They’re going to be the trucks that are currently a huge source of carbon loading.
Considering you've got an e-bike yourself, it's an interesting omission in this paragraph. There's a ton of hype for e-bikes and scooters and such, and there's some reason to believe the claims that they're preventing more emissions than e-cars are. Mind, I think that's more in places where a fossil-fuel scooter is currently the norm for getting around, but.
From: Len
Happy New Year to you and Lauren! You are a lucky man.
Music: I am in a wonderful time when beyond physical issues all I have to stretch is my music. So advanced harmony (hello stacked poly chords), orchestration (love the cinematic composers on YouTube; they are scene painters, not songwriters but elegant colorists) and sound production. God bless the guys who wrote Reaper. What a fine piece of code for the right price. God bless Kenny Gioia for masterful tutorials. The heart of smart open is still beating. I’m mainlining Eydie Gorme because without big tech that woman was a sublime singer.
Life is good. My son and his wife bought me a pop filter and an experiment iv cd sleeve signed by Kate Bush. The artifact is a treasure but being loved that much by my kids is priceless.
Politics: The big donors think that guy will tank but seeing that the 14th implicates other officials on their dole means they are looking for a candidate who will pardon profligately. Say hello Nikki. We have to ride with Biden and ignore the Doubting Thomas’s patting their feet while pointing at their watches. They will overthink us into losing.
The border: a real problem. I think the best solution is to put them on buses and send them to Vancouver. Y’all have lots of room. ;)
From: Hanan
The first photo is so beautiful and sad it makes me want to cry.
From: Matěj Cepl
The problem with AI is that it is so crazily overhyped that it is really difficult if there is anything there. We are back with Minsky & al. problems: AI is either true intelligence and then it is impossible, or it is absolutely anything computers do and then its definition is so vague, it is useless.
We are now on the upside of the hype wave, so I guess it is the best just to stand by and wait until the fog clears. I am just sorry for all people who will get hurt by premature replacing human intervention in situations when computers are not yet mature enough (see self-driving cars).
From: Dave Pawson
"The entire population has decided to “put Covid behind them” I guess. I can’t begin to understand how they see the trade-offs. I don’t think I’m crazy and it’d be ungenerous to think that everyone else is."
Sadly I agree Tim. Masks are a thing of the past for most.
Best wishes to you and yours for '24.
From: Mike Seymour
Near winter solstice light is extraordinary. It gives that whole "Tuscany" lighting effect to landscapes. As you say, clear blue sky days after a series of gray days give everybody a bit of lightness in their step. It's especially impressive when there is snow on the ground and it's cold. The contrasts between the cold and the sun and the white snow and the blue sky are arresting. In any case, thanks for your post!
From: Kyle Burford
I too think Sabotage/Live is one JC's best. I saw one show on that tour when I was in high school and it was crazy. I would love to hear your 'behind the scenes' memories of that tour. And thanks for the list.
From: Sean C
It’s a little bit weird that the test image of a German camera manufacturer ends up on a Canadian blogger’s site that I happen to read and I recognize the picture was taken in Australia (the base of the Goodwill Bridge in Brisbane).
From: Paul Morriss
Can I recommend "The Ambient Century" by Mark Predendergast. (You probably have it already.) It's very wide in its scope of, well, 20th Centry ambient music, as you'd expect.
From: Michael Schürig
My limited experience with books about music is that, apart from books on music theory, they tend to be about people who make music.
Admittedly, there's a good chance that people who make interesting music are also interesting people.
From: Yakoumis
just a small correction: Angola & Equatorial Guinea are on the west/south west coast
From: Lisa Spangenberg
You might check out bookshop.org; you can link to a consortium of independent bookstores, including Canadian ones.
From: Doug K
thanks Tim.. already read most of these, but there are couple of new ones that look good.
Now since 2016 I've been averaging over 200 books a year, which probably qualifies as some kind of addiction. Always read a lot, these days it is as you say part of my mental-health protocols.
Just finished Katherine Arden, Bear and Nightingale, medieval Russian folk creatures in conflict with the new Orthodoxy. It was solidly researched and well told. I learned in those days the house spirit (think Dobby the house-elf) was called a domovoi, and there were spirits for each part of house, stable, etcetera.
From: Rich Sands
So sad for your loss. Great friends are very rare, and losing one cuts deep.
(hug)
-- rms