Almost every content provider online tries to access some of your personal info, whether it's to keep itself afloat, improve functionality, or create profits. In 2014, Google made [89.4%] (https://revenuesandprofits.com/how-google-makes-money/) of its profits from advertising, all of which attempts to target users with their interests (though Google does allow this to be disabled).

What do you do to try and protect yourself from data collection? What software, programs, or browser extensions do you trust to protect you, and not just also monitor your activities?

If you don't do any of this, why not? To what extent do you think companies should be allowed to use your data?

Or phone, or after an OS reinstall, etc. Just got to thinking about it because I did a fresh install of Arch on my chromebook the other day, and I'd be curious what other people's priority software installs are. For me, after the basics like drivers, it's xfce, Firefox, Transmission, Libreoffice, and VLC on linux. Pretty much the same on Windows, plus a few utilities like 7zip, PuTTY, and notepad++. For Android installs I grab nova launcher, Hangouts Dialer, F-Droid, NewPipe and MoonReader before anything else.

EDIT: Forgot firefox on android, as well as ublock origin on all platforms.

Also not completely sure if this belongs more in ~tech or ~comp.

Maven tries to be the kitchen sink in a lot of ways - rigid requirements to use plugins instead of scripts, trying to wrap your scm, and even act as a docker wrapper... this is insanely frustrating and an anti-patter for the rest of the software space. I would rather find a new job than work at a company that keeps pumping out maven and jhipster apps. It doesn't play nice with CI, it uses an insanely ugly configuration (xml) and most java developers don't even really know what they are doing when they are using it.

Making a micro-service api? You don't need jhipster or maven or even java - there are so many other better alternatives. Need something simple? flask. Need something performant? go. And there are so many others in between that won't give you a NullPointerException, require you to download the entire internet just to serve some serialized json, or make your devops team hate you.

Interested in hearing rebuttals and other peoples alts and overall preferences.

Didn't know if i should post this in talk or tech, but my focus is on advice, so i guess this is the place.

I am currently in the process of changing my career to be a web developer. Studied IT a few years ago, dropped out due to finances, and spent the last few years working crappy jobs.

I designated all my spare time towards learning the basics. I'm confident enough in my knowledge of HTML and CSS, know how to use Bootstrap and i'm currently learning the basics of JS. The Udemy course i'm taking will cover NodeJS, jQuery and some more backend next. After that i plan on learning Wordpress and a framework i guess (React/Vue/Angular). Have i missed something here?

My final goal is doing freelance web development. My question is, how plausible is this and what else do you suggest learning to have an easier time finding clients?

Also, how soon do you figure i could start doing some basic work with simple websites (even if it means using Bootstrap / altering Wordpress themes)? My country is rather cheap, so even 500$/month on simple projects will be enough of a reason for me to quit my 9-5.

Guess i'll need a portfolio too though.

Anyways, thanks for reading. Any web devs out there care to offer advice? I'm dedicated to achieving this goal, but i'm somewhat lost still.