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12 Mar 2021 - Podcast #734 - (14:30)
It's Like NPR on the Web
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If you find the information TechByter Worldwide provides useful or interesting, please consider a contribution.
Maybe you've heard of the DuckDuckGo search engine, you may have heard that people are using it to keep Google in the dark about who they are and what they do online. If you use it for that reason, or you're thinking about it, and you use any other Google services, don't bother.
That's not to say you should avoid DuckDuckGo. I like it a lot and use it most of the time, but I also have a Google-Fi phone, use Google Calendar so that family members can see what I'm doing and they can see what I'm doing, sometimes use the Chrome browser, and have a couple of Gmail accounts. So avoiding Google's search engine to safeguard my data would be rather like placing a gate on a sidewalk in front of a building with no fence.
So why switch from Google to DuckDuckGo? And why is it called that? OK, the second question is faster and easier to answer: Gabriel Weinberg sold a company he had created to Classmates.com in 2006 and decided that what the world needed next was a new search engine. DuckDuckGo was the result in 2008. Weinberg's objective was to improve the search experience by reducing spam and adding instant answers.
You may think that the name came from the Duck Duck Goose children's game, but it didn't. Weinberg says it was "somewhat random" and he thought that it just made sense. Now that we've settled that, let's move on to why you should consider using DuckDuckGo.
As I said, it's not for privacy. Instead, you may find that DuckDuckGo is simply more to your liking than Google.
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Google delivers results in pages with a default of 10 items per page. Sometimes I'll look through several pages of results and then decide that the most promising option is on the first page. Returning to the first page isn't difficult, but it does seem unnecessary. The same is true if I select a link and forget to right-click it to open the result in a new tab. When I want to go back, it usually isn't difficult, but some websites capture the browser and make returning to the search results impossible. DuckDuckGo has two features that eliminate these problems.
Setting DuckDuckGo to "infinite scroll" means that it will continue showing more results as I scroll down. The user can also turn on an option to open links in a new tab. If I encounter an ill-mannered page, all I have to do is close the tab. Google allows the user to display up to 100 results per page, but that slows the response, and also has an option to open links in a new window. DuckDuckGo has considerably more settings, including several that control the appearance of the results.
Both Google and DuckDuckGo can be set to search based on information typed into the address line, but I started on each search engine's main page for comparison. Let's assume that I'm looking for LED light bulbs and I know that Watts is only a measure of power consumed, not light output. To understand the light output, I think that I need to know lumens or footcandles.
So I started by looking for footcandle calculation. Both search engines returned useful information, and Google placed a link to "How do you calculate lumens from footcandles?" on the first page of results. Note, though the relative narrowness of the results means that I see only four results. Because I set DuckDuckGo to use more of the browser's width, I got five results in less vertical space.
In any event, it turned out that the footcandle calculation wasn't what I really needed, but a comparison of footcandles and lumens. The Sciencing.com website explained the difference so that I now know that lumens are a fundamental physical measurement while footcandles take into account the reaction of the human eye to light.
DuckDuckGo also allows the user to turn off advertisements. If you do that, but you'd still like to support the organization by telling others about the search engine, visit the Spread the Word page. Try it with advertisements on first, though, because sometimes the ads can be helpful.
There is one type of search for which Google is almost always the better choice: When I'm searching for an image, Google generally provides better results, and it also has the image search function that will look for similar images when the user uploads an image. DuckDuckGo doesn't have this feature.
Although I've set DuckDuckGo to be the default browser in Firefox, I can search from the command line using Google when I want to by typing "!g" followed by a space and then the term I'm searching for. Other options include "!a" to search Amazon, "!e" to search EBay, and "!w" to search Wikipedia. In fact, there are currently 13,564 prefixes you can add to a DuckDuckGo search so that the search will be limited to a specific site. For example "!nyt" to search the New York Times website. See the list on the DuckDuckGo website.
There are lots of reasons to give DuckDuckGo a try, and privacy may be the least of them.
No matter how strong a company's defenses are, there's one attack vector they have minimal control over: Organizations that they buy from, the "supply chain". Many of these outside vendors have at least some access to the company's computers.
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That's what happened to grocery chain Kroger and several other organizations. With headquarters in Cincinnati, Kroger has nearly 3000 stores and more than 2000 pharmacies. In late February, Kroger was one of several companies that received a notice about a third-party's file transfer service. Accellion, which has more than 3000 customers, says the software involved was being phased out because it is nearly 20 years old. Other organizations that may have been affected include US law firm Jones Day, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Washington state auditor, and the University of Colorado.
Kroger says it believes less than one percent of its customers were affected — specifically those who use the company's health and financial services. The attack apparently began last December. After being notified of the breach, Kroger stopped using Accellion's services. It has already begun notifying those whose information may have been compromised and offering free credit monitoring.
Although the company believes that no grocery store data was affected, the faulty application was used to transfer pharmacy and clinical data for patients. This could include names, email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, dates of birth, insurance claims processing data, prescription number, prescribing physician, medication name, and more.
The breach of the Washington State Auditor's system exposed files related to 1.6 million unemployment records that were being used to investigate fraudulent claims. Kroger says that some records of its current and former employees were affected, but that the breach did not affect the company's IT systems.
Anybody who uses headphones knows that they need to be replaced occasionally. I thought that might be necessary, but replacing just the earpads for one fifth the cost of new headphones made me happy.
Headphones are helpful if you need to listen to audio without disturbing others. Audiophiles know that a good set of earphones can outperform speakers because speakers need to to be carefully positioned so that they're tuned to the room they're in. Speakers also have just a single "sweet spot" and, for best audio quality, you have to be in that spot. Headphones don't care where you are.
I need to use headphones when I'm editing and assembling the TechByter podcast because they allow me to hear the program, edits, and transitions clearly. For the past decade or so, I've been using a pair of Sony MDR7506 Studio Monitor headphones. Better headphones are available, for the MDR7506 headset is a great value at $100.
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The original ear cushions that come with these headphones are well below what Sony's standards should be and the black coating has been flaking off for a while now. After wearing the headphones for a recording session, I'd be covered with black flecks. I didn't want to spend $100 to replace what was essentially a working set of headphones with bad cushions.
The solution turned out to be Wicked Cushions. For $20, I bought the WC Replacement Ear Pads for Sony MDR7506. One fifth the cost of a new set of headphones. The company even provided a video to show how to install the replacements. It took about 45 seconds to do one side and, having gotten the hang of the process, 30 seconds for the other side.
Everything should be this easy.
Backup is very much a hot-button issue for me. I share this in hopes that it will save someone's data or time. Or both.
Every now and then a feature that you'd never considered needing arrives, and after you give it a try, you still can't figure out why you'd need it. Carat browsing may be one of those.
If you've used a word processor or a text editor, or any other application in which you type or edit characters using the keyboard, you're familiar with the carat. It's the little vertical line that shows where the next letter you type will go.
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Would you like to have a carat in your browser? Having one doesn't mean that you can edit what's on the browser screen. Instead, you can use the arrow keys and the Shift key to select areas of text. The oddity here is that if you can already select text if you have a mouse, a trackpad, or a touch screen. Carat browsing means you have to click a location in the text on the page, and then use Shift and the arrow keys to select a block of text.
Since you have to click to set the cursor, why not just click and drag?
Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge all support Carat Browsing. In addition to selecting text, you can use Carat Browsing to click a link. Again, I'm not clear why this would be better than just clicking a link with the mouse.
But if you want to turn the feature on:
In fact, the only reason I've mentioned Carat Browsing is that somehow all three browsers use the same key to toggle the feature off and on. This is probably violating some law of software development.
I was wondering when somebody would be able to make an electronic book or magazine that's as easy to use as the printed version. I predicted that it would happen, but it hasn't yet. I also said "Don't hold your breath," and that, at least, appears to have been correct.
Today many of us read newspapers, magazines, and blogs like TechByter on screens, but things were bad in 2001. E-zines were closing, and I was still a big fan of print. "Even with wireless devices that can let you read these web sites while you're on the go, it's still much more convenient to carry around a copy of The Economist and read it as time is available."
The advantages I cited at the time still exist, but many of us have opted for immediacy over ease of use: "You don't have to turn it on or off. You don't have to set a bookmark. Just fold over a page corner as a reminder of where you are and — when you want to read more — open the magazine to that page." Folding a corner over is OK if it's your book. If you've borrowed it from the library, a scrap of paper is better. French fries and hot dogs should not be used as bookmarks.