patrick.net

Polish vodka. Russian vodka is made from grain.

And I thought Stoly production used up the supply of potatoes, and that was why potatoes at dinner were considered a treat in the Soviet Union. But you are correct.

HeadSet says

Stoly production used up the supply of potatoe

I think export Stoli is not made in Russia any more. There was a flurry of assassinations, bombings, executions, followed by lawsuits, and now there is one Stoli for Russia made in Russia, and another for Europe/US of A made in Baltic countries. Typical E. European business experience. One acquaintance of mine exited this business in early 90's after his business partner was turned into a sieve with a help of AK-47.

That sounds about right. I worked with a guy whose parents ran an ISP in Russia, until the police noticed that it was profitable and confiscated their whole setup to run it for their own profit.

Who do you go to when the police are robbing you?

The family moved to Canada after that.

HeadSet says

they did give us corn, tomatoes, potatoes, and sweet potatoes

Well, it's not like they really gave them. They are native plants that the Indians happened to use. I guess they did improve corn yields quite a bit through selective breeding of bigger ears.

Don't forget the peppers!

Patrick says

Who do you go to when the police are robbing you?

@Patrick, A true story from E. Europe 1992: another friend of mine was in municipal police. Main income source for him was shaking down illegal exporters of metals (metal was stolen from State enterprises). After half year of lucrative "business" they shook down a group of crooks who had already paid off State police, so he got arrested. A month later State police who arrested him were arrested as well. Those particular crooks had paid off officials in Interior Ministry...so if police shakes down your business, pay off higher ranking officials.

@Dbr6 That's hilarious in a way. You could almost mathematically model the corruption.

https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/this-is-how-google-is-spying-on-everything-you-do/

Google has been secretly developing a covert version of Google Search for the Chinese Communist Party in order to enter the vast Chinese market. At the request of the Chinese government, Google will link users’ mobile phone numbers to the search terms they’ve used. This is to help the government crack down on dissidents and activists and to become more efficient overall at censoring the Internet. ...

This revelation should have been unsurprising, as Google had essentially been doing this in the West for ages. ...

If they can’t get your number from their services, Google has partnerships with Facebook, Twitter and other tech platforms to exchange that information with them. If that doesn’t work, Google turns to its 100,000s of third-party partners and data brokers like Acxiom to buy your phone number from offline databases.
Thanks to Ed Snowden, we know that all Google servers are tapped by intelligence agencies in the US and in the Five Eyes Alliance countries of the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The US National Security Agency has a copy of your search history tied back to your phone number forever in their data centers. ...

Ever since Gmail came to existence, Google has been actively scanning your emails for keywords to expose you to more ads in your inbox. But Google also used your private emails to study your writing style and the way you type. Similar to how you walk is unique to your person, the way you hit keys on your keyboard and your writing style also belongs to you only.

This allows Google to identify you across your whole Internet presence, even if you create pseudonymous accounts on public forums like Reddit. ...

If you ever deleted your email or even your entire Gmail account, Google visually fulfills your request, but residual copies are kept in their offline backup systems indefinitely and Google doesn’t go after the third-party developers to delete their copies of your emails. Your private emails thus remain copied and stored in data centers across the globe with unknown security and no oversight. ...

The first time Google was caught tracking users location on their Android phones and tablets was through triangulation of nearby cell towers servicing users’ devices. This information was collected even when users turned off location services, never inserted a SIM card in their phone, or even after factory reset. There was no way for users to opt out. ...

This information was collected even when users turned off location services, never inserted a SIM card in their phone, or even after factory reset. There was no way for users to opt out. ...

This year is a big milestone for Google. 40% of global ad spending is expected to take place online, outspending TV advertising by $40 billion. Google achieved dominance in digital advertising thanks to their focus, commitment and sheer will – the will to know every single step you take.

Google is able to attract advertisers thanks to their ability to profile records of your entire activity on the web. By partnering with MasterCard and other credit card companies, Google to now has access to roughly 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the US and they’re able to track what you buy even in physical stores.

From an email:

I’m writing today to let you know that Fitbit is now officially part of Google. It’s an incredibly exciting moment for us as a company and for our Fitbit community of users around the globe.

Great, now even your Fitbit is spying on you and reporting your health info to Google to be compiled into the deep state dossier on you.

All your YouTube history can be easily stolen:

I just submitted a bug, using which, I could simply send a link to someone, and when they click on it and visit my website, I could steal their YouTube watch history, the links to watch all of their unlisted videos, their Watch Later playlist, the list of videos they’ve liked, and more. It was pretty damn cool.

https://bugs.xdavidhu.me/google/2021/01/18/the-embedded-youtube-player-told-me-what-you-were-watching-and-more/

Google is working on getting your browser itself to directly betray your browsing to them so they can sell that personal info.

Never use Chrome! Try Brave browser instead.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea

FLoC is meant to be a new way to make your browser do the profiling that third-party trackers used to do themselves: in this case, boiling down your recent browsing activity into a behavioral label, and then sharing it with websites and advertisers.

The term "Goolag" was coined back in 2006.

https://reclaimthenet.org/obama-admin-ftc-google-2013/

Obama administration refused to act on 2013 FTC report that proved Google’s wildly anticompetitive behavior

Google’s march toward overwhelming search, digital ad, and mobile OS market dominance was visible from orbit to everyone but the most casual technology observer as early as in 2013; but the Obama administration Federal Trade Commission (FTC) experts rejected it.

It was in January of that year that they decided not to sue Google after conducting a probe, launched in 2011, into the giant’s monopolistic behavior. To make matters worse, the FTC of the time neither disclosed the details of its probe, nor explained the reasons behind the decision.

Their hundreds of millions of secret dossiers on all American citizens, and the billions more on the rest of the world, ensure that Google will continue to get to do whatever the hell it wants to.

It's like the old East German secret police, the Stasi.

Sent to a European friend who wonders why I won't use Google at all, ever:

Do you remember the East German Stasi? (Staatssicherheitsdienst)

How did they control everyone?

There was a secret file on everyone where they accumulated embarrassing or legally actionable details about them.

That's Google, only a million times worse now.

Patrick says

Google is working on getting your browser itself to directly betray your browsing to them so they can sell that personal info.

Never use Chrome! Try Brave browser instead.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea

FLoC is meant to be a new way to make your browser do the profiling that third-party trackers used to do themselves: in this case, boiling down your recent browsing activity into a behavioral label, and then sharing it with websites and advertisers.

I've enabled the advertisements through Brave browser and you earn Basic Attention Tokens while doing so. After a month of using Brave, I have almost 1 BAT in my crypto wallet and the value of it jumped 50% this week to above $1. I have hardly noticed ads as they are very non-invasive and more importantly, not annoying the piss out of me. If people keep switching over to Brave, I think this system has legs as it allows users to earn part of the ad revenue and more importantly, cuts facebook, google, and the likes out of the game. I'm actually going to go on Gemini tomorrow and buy $100 worth of Basic Attention Tokens to support the system. If people continue to adopt it, the value of it will rise. I'm a big fan of Brave and after 20 years of using firefox, I was happy to switch over after Mozillas bullshit woketard tweets. I didn't realize the founder of Mozilla was the one who started Brave.

Patrick says

Google is working on getting your browser itself to directly betray your browsing to them so they can sell that personal info.

Yes, and they're already spinning it as they will no longer use cross-site cookies to track you... they'll just get the browser itself to track you

Patrick says

Google is working on getting your browser itself to directly betray your browsing to them so they can sell that personal info.

Never use Chrome! Try Brave browser instead.

https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/privacy/2021/04/millions-of-chrome-users-quietly-added-to-googles-floc-pilot/

Millions of Chrome users quietly added to Google’s FLoC pilot

I'm using Duck duck go...that ok?

I think it is. Supposedly they do not track you at all. Hard to know for sure.

I tried https://swisscows.com/ for a while, but found it slower with a bit worse results.

It seems like trying to not be tracked would make them want to track you more.

That's another good reason all of us should try to avoid being tracked. Make it harder on invasive organizations like Google.

Check out the difference in search results for "riots today" between Google and Duck Duck Go.

socal2 says

Check out the difference in search results for "riots today" between Google and Duck Duck Go.

This is happening because you misspelled "peaceful protests" in your Google search. =))

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for years and found it reliable and also better results for anything political.

Eric Holder says

Duckduckgo is using Google.

Got a link showing that?

I find it hard to believe, given that Google would have a big motive to cancel any contract with them.

Patrick says

Eric Holder says

Duckduckgo is using Google.

Got a link showing that?

I find it hard to believe, given that Google would have a big motive to cancel any contract with them.

Looks like I got it wrong and they are indeed using their own search engine. False memory. Probably should delete the orig message and the replies to not spread the fake news.

Eric Holder says

False memory.

Not entirely. There is such a site but I am having memory problems myself. It's basically a layer between you and google so they can't see tie searches back to you. I do recall searching side by side and the results differed.

@just_passing_through

I think Duckduckgo does not use Google at all.

Can you find any link showing that it does?

It's the same exact results Patrick.
The only way I would say they don't use Google, would be if the search results were as organically rich as all search engines used to be.

Why the limited useless results if they built their own system?

Patrick says

@just_passing_through

I think Duckduckgo does not use Google at all.

Can you find any link showing that it does?

It wasn't DDG that did this as far as I recall.

This is what I was thinking of:

https://www.startpage.com/

Startpage (previously called IXquick) is a metasearch engine based in the Netherlands. It takes its results from Google and delivers them to the user. As such, it essentially acts as a proxy for users to view Google search results without being tracked by the company. Startpage was recently crowned the best search engine available, even beating out Google.

The service doesn’t track any of your information, including your search queries. The short version of its privacy policy reads:

Startpage.com doesn’t log or share your personal information. We don’t track you. We don’t profile you. Period.

Right, I remember that startpage.com is just a filter for Google.

I'm still pretty confident that DDG is not that, but its own index.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/google-leads-us-tech-giants-effort-to-support-work-authorisation-for-spouses-of-h-1b-visa-holders/articleshow/82653910.cms

WASHINGTON: Google is leading a determined effort by US tech giants to support a programme that gives work authorisation for spouses of those possessing H-1B foreign work visas, the most sought after among Indian IT professionals. Goggle is joined by 30 other companies to support the H-4 EAD ((Employment Authorisation Document) programme. An H-4 visa is issued by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to immediate family members (spouse and children under 21 years of age) of the H-1B visa holders. The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.

"Google is proud to support our nation's immigrants. We joined 30 other companies to protect the H-4 EAD programme which spurs innovation, creates jobs and opportunities, and helps families," Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted. Google on Friday filed a legal brief in a lawsuit called Save Jobs USA vs US Department of Homeland Security.

Google hires foreigners to drive down US wages.

https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-government-adviser-cummings-google-lockdown/

CEO and co-founder of Alphabet Inc. subsidiary DeepMind Demis Hassabis allegedly played a big role in convincing the UK government to ditch its initial COVID-strategy, the herd immunity approach. Herd immunity is an approach used in previous pandemics, where, instead of lockdowns, the disease is allowed to spread so that a large portion of the population become immune.

In a testimony before the UK parliament’s Health and Social Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee, the Prime Minister’s chief advisor Dominic Cummings detailed how Hassabis and others convinced him to ditch the initial official government’s plan to handle the pandemic.

In the early months of 2020, just as the virus was starting to spread in the UK, the government’s plan was to limit, but not stop, the spread of the virus in the summer, hoping to achieve herd immunity by fall...

Gosh, I wonder if that could have been influenced by Google's self-interest in keeping people at home so that they would spend more time on the internet, specifically on Google, boosting Google revenue...

https://reclaimthenet.org/google-bans-dr-vladimir-zelenko-from-sharing-google-docs/

"Your" Google docs are not yours at all.

They exist at the pleasure of Google, and if you say something Google doesn't like, they disappear.

https://www.euronews.com/2021/06/07/google-fined-220m-by-french-competition-watchdog-over-online-advertising-market

Google has been fined €220 million by France's competition authority for favouring its own services in online advertising.

The tech giant was found to have given "preferential treatment" to Google's own "proprietary technologies" in digital adverts, the authority said.

Google has not contested the facts and the fine was agreed as part of a settlement procedure, it added.

It's something, but not enough by a long shot.

Google's revenue was 181.69 billion last year, so this is a fine of (0.8169 x 220000000) / (181.69 x 10^9) = one tenth of one percent of Google's revenue, pretty close to nothing.

https://timcast.com/news/google-founder-has-new-zealand-residency/

Patrick says

https://timcast.com/news/google-founder-has-new-zealand-residency/

I read a lot of the tech elite have been buying residency and homes out there the past 5 years or so.