Try Claude Haiku if not already. It is very fast and good enough in most cases. Exact comparison number does not matter as it takes me longer to read anyways.
I pay for Google One and the VPN was a bad joke from day one even on Android. It was absolutely unreliable, the connection was unavailable or cut randomly. The DNS used were random choice between those of Google and the ISP. This service was unusable even on the wifi in my flat.
It was a disaster when travelling, it was very hard to get it to work with hotel wifi or if there was a captive portal. There are different country lists for "You have access to the VPN service" and "You have access to the VPN service when travelling".
The service does not work in China. The service simply does not work in the majority of cases where it might be needed.
Google has made no effort to improve this service in several years, for their paying customers, on their mobile OS.
I'm not convinced the other offerings are actually secure.
For example[1]:
> However, if he controls the responsible DHCP server, he can simply command end devices to send their data past the VPN. To do this, it sends the DHCP option 121 with a corresponding route –, for example, to redirect all DNS queries. The VPN's own encryption is omitted, but the VPN connection is maintained so that the user is unaware of the attack.
> Leviathan Security has reproduced the problem with Windows, Linux, iOS and MacOS – but the attack does not work with Android because Android ignores the DHCP option 121.
this was fixed some 8-10 years ago when most apps trying to make money shifted to subscription services. You can't pirate an APK if it's just a thin client.
There's definitely free/OS ways to run a VPN, but it definitely a clunky process with limited locations available.
Switch to subscriptions was caused by many different factors, like non-existent way to sell upgrades to new versions through app stores or forced BS activities by appstores with crazy deadlines. And yes, more regular, even though lower, cashflow too.
Yes - I didn't mean all Android users would have it. I mean making it available means they basically have an iCloud competitor they can release on all Play-enabled phones, which millions of people would likely pay for.
That already exists, it's called Google One. It's installed on a billion devices and it's pretty comparable to iCloud: more storage, email, and a bunch of other things most people don't care about, all included in one subscription. If anything, this is a story about how there's one less feature most people don't care about.
Of course, Apple only offers like a couple of subscriptions while Google has dozens of them, only some of which are united into that one subscription to rule them all.
Google purposely choosing to very specifically screw over its users like that should be enough for a lot of people (once they know) to avoid buying a Pixel. :)
"Google has assured us that it will not keep phones sent in for repair and that it is changing the wording of its ToS agreement to reflect this better."
A billion-dollar company cannot solve VPN on Windows? Please... The number and diversity of VPN offerings on Windows (including OSS ones) is a clear indication that that's not the issue.
Of course they can solve it if they wanted to. But those people were probably migrated to a more profitable team or laid off. We're in "number go up" mode now, not "market capure" mode.
i believe initially the vpn had something to do with google fi either integrated or a feature or something. so the vpn could be a leftover after they decided to go a different route, just a guess
Really? You don't mind Google's extensive datamining and lockdown of the OS?
I would never ever consider using that. I'm surprised also, in our company nobody uses chromeos. But we have thousands of linux laptops and hundreds of Macs.
I've considered a Chromebook at work where the real coding and builds are being done over SSH on a headless Linux machine anyway, but the fuss involved for just a basic shell and SSH were enough to turn me away. So I can't imagine using one for local development too, data mining aside. I know some people use it and it works with the right workarounds, but why bother.
Also idk why there's nothing as good as the Mac iTerm2 for Linux.
Um, you literally go to Settings -> About ChromeOS -> Developers, enable "Linux development environment" and after 5 minutes have access to fully featured Debian Linux.
The standalone (non-linux) ssh client is indeed not the best, it's okay.
Well no, the problem is precisely that it can't work as well as the normal version. There may be merit to the claim that it's good enough for your uses, but that's a different claim. (Ex. last I'd heard it can't handle CNAME cloaking.)
It could be state that uBlock Lite works fine for what it actually does, but it “only works as well as the normal version” if you ignore the features that uBlock Origin has which it simply does not.
And those features make uBlock Origin much more effective. With Lite, filter lists can only update when the extension does (delaying new filters which stalky advertisers will use to their advantage as they can update faster than the extension), some filter types not supported, no element picker and other options for crafting your own filters, no external filter list support, …
"Based on input from the extension community, we also increased the number of rulesets for declarativeNetRequest, allowing extensions to bundle up to 330,000 static rules and dynamically add a further 30,000."
I wouldn't necessarily call them fishy, but I am very tired of them. They have a very evangelizing tone. But I think they're ultimately just people excited about the tool they're using and wanting to share it with others.
I took a screenshot years ago where 10/14 of the viewable top headlines on my screen where positive Google discussion. From an advertising perspective it was all earned marketing (satisfied customers speaking highly).
While these situations could be a pg-style astroturf submarine, or they could be satisfied customers (the best kind of advertising), I wouldn't necessarily say fishy (you can look at the satisfied users' previous contributions to make that judgment yourself! :)).
Personally, I've not used Kagi, but I hear positive things from people I trust that use it. So I'll likely try it in the future.
Did we not all evangelize Google in it's early days?
Also, none of these accounts saying nice things appear to be bots or kagi-focused in any way, so I think it's safe to assume they do actually just like it.
I never say it but here it is: for the price of 2 packs of cookies, I went from being a 1x programmer to a 1.5x programmer without doing anything. If the results are good, it’s good for me and my job which brings me way more money and satisfaction than $10.
The alternative is Searx and I may try it sometimes, but so far Kagi is cheap and very efficient for me (C++ coding and other languages).
Google Search being a bit rubbish has been in the zeitgeist for a while, it's not surprising that people then talk about an alternative they've found that is much better in their experience
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