Kids, look at the Deep Learnings! (We’re just going to slurp your data) Just weeks after Evernote announced that it is migrating users’ data from its own servers to Google’s servers, the company has now casually dropped a privacy bombshell. In order for some (unspecified) occult AI magic to work in the future, your data will be merged with other data. Oh. And Evernote staff can read all your notes …
"There are open source alternatives you can host for yourself, but setting this up is beyond the skillset of the average user."
Presumably you're thinking in terms of Owncloud/Nextcloud. There are a number of businesses which will host a service for you so you don't need to set one up yourself. You can take your pick of whatever you think is the country with the best attitude to privacy.
Good question.
Firstly AFAIK Evernote is Freemium which always raises the possibility of "you're the product" whereas the sites I'm thinking of are essentially paid for hosting sites which is a very different business model. Secondly there's a choice of several EU countries plus Switzerland which provide very different legislative environments to the US - and data protection in the EU is due to get stronger still in 2018. Thirdly https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/9.0/user_manual/files/encrypting_files.html
Not that I used Evernote, amused that people still trust the Si Valley Psychos © with anything personal.
Article prompted me to look at the cpanel interface on my lowly shared server account. Softalicious will install Owncloud with a few clicks, although I'd suggest mods from the default directory names for the app and the data. Mere minutes and I have my own cloud. who'da thought?
There are better ways if you don't need the app, remote editing text processor for one. Of all the sites that ought to have no Evernote users, this ought to be one of them.
This sounds more like "The Color out of Space".
Do not ask me for my opinion. I do not know—that is all. There was no one but Ammi to question; for Arkham people will not talk about the strange days, and all three professors who saw the aërolite and its coloured globule are dead. There were other globules—depend upon that. One must have fed itself and escaped, and probably there was another which was too late. No doubt it is still down the well—I know there was something wrong with the sunlight I saw above that miasmal brink. The rustics say the blight creeps an inch a year, so perhaps there is a kind of growth or nourishment even now. But whatever daemon hatchling is there, it must be tethered to something or else it would quickly spread. Is it fastened to the roots of those trees that claw the air? One of the current Arkham tales is about fat oaks that shine and move as they ought not to do at night.
What we need is for everyone to write and save porn stories about the Google founders. I narrate them into my Android phone, esp. while in the bathroom so I have good background sound effects.
You wouldn't believe what those Google founders get up to. Really sick stuff, and they do it over and over (as long as I'm regular). You'd think they'd get sick of it after a while.
Reminds me of Forbidden Planet. It's out there, and we created it ourselves, and it can destroy us. Hmm... Nuke it from orbit?
What I find the most baffling about these slurpy organizations is their seemingly willful failure to understand that some users are turned off by the lack of privacy, but do otherwise like their services, and would gladly pay for a private version.
For example, its hard to argue that Gmail is one of the better email server implementations, but I can not get a private account, even for $1,000,000/year. I can't see this as anything other than a failure to recognize a money making opportunity.
So if a few frogs look restless then the thing we do is turn the heat down for a wee bit. Offer one frog the chance to hop out, next thing you know it's croaking (or tweeting) about how pleasant the change was, then all the frogs start getting ideas of their own, then no soup at all. Nope, say something soothing, stir less briskly, wait for them to adjust to the "new normal", then put the burners back on blast!
Google will if you're a big enough entity with enough bargaining power. I've known of a couple universities that negotiated privacy provisions as part of their GMail hosting. But you're right, they could trivially sell this to individuals for a decent amount of money, but don't.
"For example, its hard to argue that Gmail is one of the better email server implementations, but I can not get a private account"
You can get a private account by going to a provider who specialises in running paid-for mail services as their business and it will cost you a lot less than $1,000,000 pa. Don't forget, with Google you're the product and it you're the product it's hard to argue that it's even a good implementation let alone one of the better.
What on earth are you talking about? You don't have to use gmail - there's plenty of other webmail out there, both paid for and "free". I personally have started paying for email again, because I want to be the *customer*. I use Fastmail and love the webmail interface, the IMAP implementation is great etc. etc. I've also deleted my Facebook account this week and started using DuckDuckGo instead of Google search. Yes, I know my tinfoil hat seems odd to some, but I have to say, I'm feeling much happier for it.
My impression of DuckDuckGo is that the results look like they are headed by entities that have paid for the privilege. Since we've had Naked Lunch and Dhalgren in this thread, let's not forget TANSTAAFL. I use DDG only for searches that contain the word temor or something like that, because I'm afraid.
Uber’s dirt-diggers, Michael said, could expose Lacy. They could, in particular, prove a particular and very specific claim about her personal life.
Michael at no point suggested that Uber has actually hired opposition researchers, or that it plans to. He cast it as something that would make sense, that the company would be justified in doing.
Generally "stalking" by a Silicon Valley company means trying to Facebook friend, etc, but in Uber's case there's the fine prospect of making it physical: I know where you were last summer... But luckily it's all ok because "The remarks attributed to me at a private dinner ... do not reflect my actual views and have no relation to the company’s views or approach." I just love the slimy "attributed to me" - if they were actually false he'd say so. Yet another case of "I'm terribly sorry ... that I was caught". This would be the same Uber that was lately in the news for having its app continue to track the user location for a while after the ride's over. Or maybe if you make them upset, the ride's never over? For the customer's benefit of course: what's good for Silicon Valley is good for you. Share and Enjoy!
What Evernote has done is reveal the arrogance and moral bankruptcy of a Silicon Valley, a culture that neither respects humans, nor the things we create. It's all “data” for their machines, and they're driven by a higher purpose: intelligent machines.
Yup. The arrogance there is staggering actually.
Oh, and I'll be closing out my evernote as well. Idiots.
Sad truth is, most of their user base will blindly continue using it because, hey, this is neat. And free!
that putting anything 'out' there is a big juicy target for the hackers, data slurpers and ad men.
With Google involved as well. Sheesh. Isn't that warning enough?
Their deep AI system will be chomping at the bit to get its teeth into your nice Evernote data.
Get off Social Media
Get off Gmail and/or Hotmail.
Keep your data to yourself.
Starve the slurpers of their lifeblood.
You FOOLS! The first thing I needed on my device was a note taking app. I stumbled onto Evernote, AKA Evernot, and the clues were right there for me to see and take the proper action to avoid it; it was from Microsoft, and you had to sign up to get it to work, and it forced the notes to their cloud. Simple as RPi... avoid that shit. I chose Color Note and have not had a problem with being marketed to by a clumsy bunch of cloud-happy assholes.
You think your Azure Cloud VM is safe from prying eyes? HA! You're a fucking idiot, you are.
When you host your own data, you're mostly safe. When you let some company host it, you are under their control and auspices. And then to the company they sell it to, or the company that gets it after their bankruptcy. Don't be stupid, you dummies!
The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
Share and Enjoy (all of your data with us).
But seriously SysOps have always had that power. And without end to end encryption they always will.
Not to mention it's on servers in a country where THE PATRIOT Act is still viewed as rather a good thing by the government.
I'm surprised by the surprise. Why did this ever need to be a cloud based service anyway? Can it be that hard to synchronize between devices securely without perpetual web based storage? Why do few if any companies seem to be interested in offering that as an option. The fact that Evernote never did, told me that they had no interest in privacy, and that their user base wouldn't be savvy enough to mistrust their data management. After kicking the tires on Evernote years ago, I concluded that note-taking didn't need a minor paradigm shift at the cost of privacy, intentional or accidental.
"Sometimes the old ways are the best "
"Why did this ever need to be a cloud based service anyway?"
For a lot of use cases I don't see the point. The common point of contact is the user. User has portable device and base computer, records data on portable device whilst away from base, has no access to base computer at that time & hence doesn't need it synced at that time. user returns to base with portable device and only now can use base computer but portable and base are now within BT/LAN/USB cable distance and can be synced.
The use cases I can see this making sense are non-portable work and home computers (but even then a portable device can intermediate) or needing a backup for the portable device whilst still away from base. This last sounds like something a journalist could need but wouldn't it require encryption whilst in transit at the very least?
"What Evernote has done is reveal the arrogance and moral bankruptcy of a Silicon Valley, a culture that neither respects humans, nor the things we create. It's all “data” for their machines, and they're driven by a higher purpose: intelligent machines."
Bingo. A thousand upvotes for this.
Except I'd venture that to be more accurate, you should replace "intelligent machines" with "greater profits".
This is why I have a deep-seated aversion to the cloud, and am hollowly, bitterly resentful of the way the IT industry has gone in the last handful of years - whereas before, the ethos was "let's get cool technology into peoples' hands to empower them", now it's "let's bribe people with trinkets so we can harvest as much as possible of their data and milk them for recurring revenue".
I'm not so deluded as to think that profit was not a motive in the past - that's how people eat and support themselves, and I don't think profit is intrinsically bad - but what we're seeing is this shift from "get rich by giving people control" to "get rich by taking as much control as possible away from people".
Just my opinion. I'd be interested to hear differing views.
The icon is me - bitter, twisted and cranky, yelling at the kids to get their Agile DevOps Cloud SaaS stuff off my lawn.
I'm mostly happy with the 'if you don't pay then you're the product' idea: if I don't want to be the product, I pay. I paid for Evernote for that reason. But they still tried to force their loathsome store on me: it turns out that even if you pay you are the product. I'm only glad I got out a while before this latest fuckwittery. Of course, people who use it seriously are now fucked: it's going to take them weeks to pull all their notes into some other system (it took me days), so they probably will just live with it, and the bad guys win again.
https://owncloud.org (note .org...the .com has a few enterprise toys and they charge for it). This is probably the easiest to deal with and you can install it on shared hosting
https://www.seafile.com/en/download/ (You need root to install this, so not shared hosting, but they do do a Raspberry Pi version)
...there's some more here:
https://www.cyberciti.biz/cloud-computing/7-awesome-open-source-cloud-storage-software-for-your-privacy-and-security/
"There is no cloud. It's just someone else's computer."
Evernote is using cloud computing to save your data, so you should expect limited control of your data. Just like any other 'Free' cloud services. Also, Evernote users should be backuping up their data since saving on cloud is not really a backup. If their server failed or require a rollback, you lose if not most but all data.
On the other hand, is there a reason to even use Evernote? It looks just like a better organized email or dropbox. If the note taking part is important, there are plenty of alternative solutions with apps that can save notes 'locally'. You can easily sync local files to a pc with a cable.
I've been experimenting with these things to see if they are really useful and most of them come out around 3/10. I personally prefer Zim (4/10) cos its basically piss-easy and nearly does what is needed and you can get web-pages at the end of it and even its shitty little web server means its actually pretty useful as an educational tool.
It seems good enough to actually help design, build and document what I hope will be its replacement which is a full-blown HTML5 wysiwyg front end on a nice database backend which will allow deep learnings of your own choice. If I ever finish the 1200 page book on deep learning that is!
do a text-only version – notebooks, of notes, made of text – stored in Switzerland and encrypted end to end, and readable on any device (Evernote basic package now limits you to 2 devices, just to get you to upgrade).
if that was a tenner a year I bet that would disrupt Evernote big time...
Either your data is under your direct control, or it isn't. If it isn't, be prepared for those who do have direct control over it to change the rules, get hacked, suffer a leak, sell their business to a company you don't trust, or any other of a plethora of things you'd rather not happen. If it's not securely encrypted before you send it out there on the net, it's out there on the net.
I don't use this kind of service for anything confidential or personal. I'm wary of putting anything like that on someone else's server. So when Evernote limited the number of devices we can share across it, a few months ago, I moved to Onenote 2016. Because I want to share odd jottings, reminders etc across a phone, two PCs and a tablet. And anything there Microsoft are welcome to read. (I have a nice list of restaurants I have visited on it- if Microsoft staff want a nice lunch..........)
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