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## Why?
Why *would* anyone want to use the Internet,
really?
Unfortunately, almost none of us use the Internet
for it's intended purpose: finding infomation.
Writing to someone 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. But for seconds: 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," yet these are
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
## 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 much preaching these days
about privacy concerns, but to be honest I don't
believe any service is more "private" than
another. These are all privacy nightmares, your
best bet is to just search often and as varied as
you can.
## 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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