James' World 2

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Remember when web browsers were useful tools? Remember when you could follow sites you liked, check your email, and see your calendar, all without leaving the browser? Or, I should say, remember when you could do all that without Big Tech feeding your personal data into the yawning maw of surveillance capitalism? 

I remember those days because I am still living in them, thanks to a web browser you might not have heard of: Vivaldi. 

This week, the team behind the Vivaldi web browser released version 4.0, which seems like an appropriate time for me to tell you that you need to try it out. To riff off Neil Stephenson, Vivaldi outshines all other web browsers “in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars … it is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.”

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Vivaldi offers an alternative to those of us who don’t want Google reading our email.Courtesy of Vivaldi

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I’ve been a happy renter since I moved to Washington, D.C., seven years ago. Neither of my apartments has been luxurious. But in an expensive city with limited housing, I paid a below-market rate for my first place (my roommate and I had our own bedrooms, thanks to a makeshift wall). Later, when I wanted to live alone, I landed an underpriced studio in a rent-controlled building. But as more friends purchase shiny condos or casually speculate about future plans to buy, I wonder whether buying is something I should consider.

The nagging feeling that buying is something you should do is one big reason that millennials choose to buy, says Bill Nelson, a certified financial planner and founder of Pacesetter Planning near Boston. We’ve also been told that buying is an investment, and renting is “just throwing money away.”

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[Source illustration: t:selim bekil/iStock]

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In recent years, more and more online users have grown skeptical of companies gathering data about them. And in particular, the so-called “Big Tech” businesses have found themselves under the spotlight for the information they collect about others.

The internet has become a huge part of many people’s lives, and quitting it entirely might be a tall order. Still, though, you can take steps to minimize the amount of data companies collect about you.

In this article, you’ll find out why technology companies collect data about you—and what you can do to make this information useless to them.

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Phone Data

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Even if your college student received a scholarship or financial aid, odds are you’re staring at a hefty college bill now that the fall semester is nearly here.

Every year, colleges send out their fall bill and every year, thousands of families scramble to pull together the money to cover college costs. For many families, that scramble results in borrowing — sometimes at levels they can’t afford.

At this late stage, you may have no choice but to borrow to pay the bill. But there are strategies you can employ right now that can reduce how much debt you have to take on and set you up on a better multi-year plan to handle college bills.

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Jose Velez / Money

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You might be familiar with Google Drive from its web interface or its mobile apps. But desktop software is available as well, allowing you to seamlessly sync files stored in your Google Drive with the file system on your Windows or macOS computer.

After four years since its last update, that desktop software setup is changing again, and the current tools (Backup & Sync for free account holders, and Drive File Stream for enterprise customers), will be replaced by a new, single platform called Drive for Desktop.

You can carry on accessing Google Drive in your web browser and mobile apps as always—creating Docs, Sheets, and Slides just the same as before. But if you want to keep data from Google Drive on your computer and sync it to the cloud, or if you’ve got large batches of files you need to upload to your Drive, then you’ll want to download the desktop application.

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There’s new Google software you can download for Windows and macOS. Tyler Franta/Unsplash

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