I am trying to understand something for a while. devRant is full of privacy advocates and to be honest, part of it is almost taken by a group of people that call other people random swear words people because they are using a particular product of a company.

I will raise some points and will try to discuss them with other people in comments.

I will stick with Google. Since it looks like it's the most hated one. A company that has built one of the most intelligent infrastructure, the most popular mobile operating system and of course, the best search engine currently available.

The problem everyone sees is the privacy. Google tracks the search history to give users a better experience and show relevant ads. You might not need this "better experience". In case you don't know, you can turn off personalized search any time to make sure Google doesn't track. Same goes with Google Chrome, you can turn off all the data it is sending to servers in settings. You can simply not sign in if you don't anything to be synchronised.

An argument is Google should be opt-in rather than opt-out. But the general users are not tech-savvy. And yes, going to settings and turning on personalised search is a lot of work for a huge amount of people. Trust me, I worked in IT before. If they find other search engine giving them a good experience without changing anything in the settings, they will just simply move to that engine.

What interests me most if how people back DuckDuckGo. First of all, not all parts of DDG is not open source (it's fucking not, you can argue all day). Parts of it is closed because of licensing issues.

That is perfectly fine to privacy community. But it's not when Chrome is closed source for almost the same reason. I mean when you're using DDG, you are supporting a US-based company that has privacy all over its face and using closed source application on their server. Have you not learned anything from history?

You might be wondering about my obsession with Google. It hurts me when I see a giant company whose popular software is open source is bashed like this. Google has made huge contributions to open source communities. Chromium, Android, Kubernetes, Angular, GoLang, TensorFlow etc.

And PRISM, how do you know that DDG is not part of it? it's US-based after all.

I just saw an article that used a video with a title "TNW - Aral Balkan - Free Is A Lie | The Next Web" while asking us to switch to DDG. Ummm....DDG is also free right?

Maybe we should raise concerns with the US gov first rather than Google.

I've been working late nights for so long that falling asleep when it's still dark is an achievement for me. So is waking up when it's still morning.

there is no way YouTube isn't dead as a product

last night I had to switch from matrix voice chat to discord voice chat to talk to somebody (because their phone suddenly doesn't do matrix well, keeps cutting out their mic if their screen is turned off or they switch to a different app wtf). they misinterpreted something I said as talking about "shock value". I think that's a demeaning term that doesn't capture why "bad" content is good. now I'm just chilling trying not to workaholic and first recommendation on YouTube I have is about "what happened to shock value websites". oh I'm sure that's a coincidence

this has been happening increasingly and I fucking hate it. it keeps recommending videos that have absolutely nothing to do with what I'm watching or have ever watched or would even be in the interest of in the past, but I mention it somewhere and it creepily suggests the content to me, always with videos claiming to have 2-3 million views. bullshit. I tried some of these and there's no way anybody cares about this content in such numbers. it's so lukewarm and dumb. and how the hell do they have "opinion" vlogs about every topic? since when did that become the #1 type of content on YouTube? cuz it's 50% of my recommendations and I've never given a shit

I have like 500 subscriptions on YouTube. I've had an account a long time. a lot of them are old channels that stopped being active as YouTube evolved, which I think was a shame. a lot of them had to do with ad revenue or YouTube algorithm just not suggesting their content to new people. they were wholesome, honest channels with really good content I think -- really good game analysis, compilations of unique or weird viral content and the guy was just a funny dude in his basement, etc. but fair I guess. shame, but fair

Then there was the quiet era, where your front page just didn't suggest the good channels and just the stupid channels. it didn't suggest your subscriptions but in your interest area or something. what's the point of subscriptions if you're not showing me them? this is also about the time if I left a comment on a video I ceased receiving replies so I assume I was shadow banned. I have not received a single reply in years now, even on small channels. some content creators noticed if they post on their own channels and accidentally logged out and looked for their comment their own comments don't show up. just weird annoying nonsense that's inappropriate for them to be doing. bruh, please

and then the next wave came, it wasn't just YouTube won't recommend your channel, in the COVID era what came was if you mentioned something then channels with previously millions of views, still currently millions of subscribers, suddenly went down to 5k-50k views per video. bitch please, you expect anyone to believe this nonsense?

then they fucked up the search. I KNOW videos exist and I can't find them. I type in half the video's title, you can't find it. thankfully if you type in every single word exactly you can still find them. bruh that's too much. also just search plain doesn't work. if I'm looking for a specific topic I get 5-10 max videos on that topic and the rest are irrelevant recommendations. this is entirely ridiculous. there's videos I KNOW exist on YouTube and nobody gave a shit about them, like 5 view Benny benassi music clips with a scene from a video game. I can't even meme anymore

this morning a friend on discord sent me a... weird clip, of like an anime skit. problem? well discord embeds YouTube videos. I pressed play. I get... an ad. lol what. I browse away and back to the video. try again. ad. yeah I'm not playing this. I have to refresh the page 20-30 times sometimes just until the ads stop fucking up every time my adblocker ceases working (and then I have to go update it again lol -- by going to the developer page for the ad block because it was banned from the app store so you can't auto update it and have to manually update it every time)

my friend links me a discord plugin to... remove ads... from YouTube embeds... bruh

I used to mod discord but it's annoying, because every time discord updates you have to go re-apply the hack to be able to mod your discord

I think we should just plain move away from YouTube. during COVID era a lot of people got banned in subreddits on reddit. I noticed when you get banned, the subreddit still has you listed as a subscriber. the r/Canada subreddit for example has 3 million subscribers but the activity of a subreddit that's maybe 1k people. increasingly subreddits just became ghost towns after that like that. reddit is a dead website, with fake numbers. I think YouTube is now a dead website, with fake numbers. no fucking way stupid lukewarm opinion videos with absolutely nothing to add are getting 2-3 million views and people are just clamouring for these takes they didn't ask for

also stop listening in on my private conversations. fucking disgusting. idc if an AI is transcribing. ew.

Should I be optimistic about my profession and growth as an android developer, or should i start gaining experience in other domains?

I am currently a Junior Android Developer in a small company which is a subsidiary of a bigger company (TATA) . I currently hold a working experience of 3+ years but in last 5 years , I have mainly explored Android App development the most. I did courses in it, then internships, then switched jobs to reach a decent salary package (more than INR 10 lakh per annum).

Recently I have been pretty worried regarding my career choices and i can't seem to be optimistic about my role as a mobile engineer. I joined my current company 4 months ago, but my switch this time gave me a hike of -10% (you read that right, it was a negative increment since previous company was asking me to relocate and i had no choice but to take this offer)

This switch made me worried not just because of the salary decrement but as a worthy candidate too. I know my tech stack well , but this time, I had very less options. I feel that the demand of a mobile engineer seems to be very less and I am not sure if its only me or for everyone in the same space as I am.

So , are jobs of Native Android Development really dying? My goal is to reach at premium salaries of INR 80-90 lakhs or 1-2 crores per annum, so can I reach there while just being a good android engineer? I am not sure what to run for. Please help

Some paths that i came to conclusion are for me, based on my limited knowledge are :

CONTINUE ON YOUR PATH : Stay in 1 place , grow as an engineer, get your salary/ role increase slowly and you will probably be able to reach that amount in 5-6 years

SWITCH YOUR PATH TO OTHER TECH SKILL : Do web frontend/backend courses in your free time, then grab a job of 4-6 LPA , start as a basic web dev, grow into senior dev and then reach that amount in 5-6 years (coz frontend/backend devs are the real deal?)

SWITCH YOUR PATH TO HIGHER STUDIES : do courses to crack foreign exam papers, then take out all your savings and got to foreign to pursue some masters in management, then do a job there and get settled / come back to India and grab a better paying job as a manager, then grow/switch into lead managerial roles and earn the goal amount in 5-6 years (coz foreign studies are the real deal/ foreign countries give fair wages to skill?)

GET INTO BUSINESS : start a business of something , grow it, reach that amount in 5-6 years (coz doing business is the real deal and only way to get lots of money in black/white)

Which do you think is the most accurate/realistic?