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## Why?
Why *would* anyone want to use the Internet,
really?
There is actually purpose to connecting all the
computers in the world with near-instant speed
beyond just streaming television, phishing scams,
pornography, punditry, and Fortnight competitions.
Unfortunately, almost none of us use the Internet
for it's intended purpose: finding infomation.
Writing an angry tweet to a celebrity or
posting a picture of your cat seems to be
second nature for most people, but converting
a picture from a PDF or looking up a study
(or even a word!) you saw in an article is
something else entirely.
While that's in part the fault of our laziness,
it's equally the fault of what the Internet has
become.
For one: there's just so much more *stuff*
now; it's hard to know exactly where to start and
who to trust. And so much of that stuff is now
*garbage*, either in the way it's presented, with
disruptive ads that don't close correctly, or in
the way it's written: vague, misleading, or straight
incorrect.
For two: no one really teaches you how to use this
thing do they? There are no courses on "How to use a search engine"
or "How to find good posts on a forum," and definitely not on
"How to *write* good posts on a forum." But these are
exactly the kinds of skills you really need if you want to
navigate the modern world without getting
constantly distracted, misled, or totally lost.
There are of course, countless guides on
"netiquette" geared towards every possible
internet subculture you can find. While many of
them have influenced this document and give many
helpful tips on writing good informative posts,
none of them really go over what I think is most
important: what to do with the information you're
reading.
This will probably be an evolving document as new
services and websites become available (or go
down), but much of this material in the beginning
should be pretty generally applicable no matter
what services are available.
## How to use a web browser
This is your main vehicle to the information super highway (remember
when they used to call it that?)
Almost everyone knows how to use a web browser to click links and get to
where they need to go, but use only a fraction of the software's
power. Web browsers at this point are as complicated as operating
systems. Aside from basic HTML and javascript rendering, most web
browsers are expected to provide:
- A PDF reader
- An image display
- A history database with tunable settings
- Support for hundreds of languages and emojis
- A password manager
- A video and audio player
- A scripting language for extending functionality
And that's only what I can think of...
## How to use a search engine
As for which search engine to use: you should use
all of them, until you get the results you need.
In my experience, none of the major search engines
are particularly good and I get inconsistent
searches on all of them depending on what I'm
searching. There is a lot of preaching these days
about privacy concerns, but I don't really
believe any service is more "private" than
another. These are all privacy nightmares,
arguably by design. Your best bet is just to
search often and as many platforms as you can.
### Basic search syntax
Searching for specific pieces of information is rather simple.
"Who is the prime minister of England?"
"When did World War 2 start?"
"How many roads must a man walk down?"
"Funky Kong talks you through your divorce"
All of these queries entered as is will get you the result you're
looking for. But how about something we can't boil down to a single
question? Like how to do calculus? Or how to learn Python?
You could try those phrases as a start. But you're not likely to get a
specific answer out of this.
...
What if we wanted to bring up a funny cat meme we saw on a forum three
weeks ago? Searching for "funny cat meme" is not going to get you very
far.
## How to read and find scholarly articles
### How to use Wikipedia
A common complaint lodged at me whenever I
recommend Wikipedia is that it's not a source of
truth since they found X mistake somewhere, or
made Y edit when they were a teenager that's still
there. No one has ever (or should ever) claim
Wikipedia is a source of truth on it's own. But
you can use it to find more sources and maybe get
a little closer.
### How to find articles with Google Scholar
## Advanced Topics
### How to use tor to browse anonymously
Many in the advertising world will boast about
using a VPN for anonymity, or using a VPN in
conjuction with Tor to "increase privacy." This is
simply a misunderstanding of terms. A VPN provides
*privacy* of the user's connection since it
provides encryption--only the VPN provider can
"see" what is searched. The goal of Tor is
*anonymity* not privacy. Anonymity means "no one
knows who you are" not "no one knows what you're
doing." Technically, traffic is encrypted between
nodes of the Tor service, so some level of privacy
is provided as well, but this is most effective
when using hidden services, not using Tor in
general.
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