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<nav id="TOC" role="doc-toc">
<h2 id="toc-title">Contents</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="#why">Why?</a></li>
<li><a href="#how-to-use-a-web-browser">How to use a web
browser</a></li>
<li><a href="#how-to-use-a-search-engine">How to use a search
engine</a></li>
<li><a href="#how-to-read-and-find-scholarly-articles">How to read and
find scholarly articles</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#how-to-use-wikipedia">How to use Wikipedia</a></li>
<li><a href="#how-to-find-articles-with-google-scholar">How to find
articles with Google Scholar</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#advanced-topics">Advanced Topics</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#how-to-use-tor-to-browse-anonymously">How to use tor to
browse anonymously</a></li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
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<h2 id="why">Why?</h2>
<p>Changing times and a forgetful youth have forced me to write this
guide.</p>
<p>I am increasingly disturbed by the amount of people I meet (young and
old) that navigate their lives at least in part online, but are unable
to 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.</p>
<p>For the most part, it is not anyone's fault or laziness. It's the
fault of what the internet <em>has become</em>. For one, there's just so
much more <em>stuff</em> now; it's hard to know exactly where to start
and who to trust. And so much of that stuff is now <em>garbage</em>,
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2 id="how-to-use-a-web-browser">How to use a web browser</h2>
<h2 id="how-to-use-a-search-engine">How to use a search engine</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<h2 id="how-to-read-and-find-scholarly-articles">How to read and find
scholarly articles</h2>
<h3 id="how-to-use-wikipedia">How to use Wikipedia</h3>
<p>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 reliable. Frankly, you should
not consider <em>any</em> source to be reliable, but that's a separate
issue. If you know how to use Wikipedia you can use it to get closer to
a true understanding of whatever you're studying.</p>
<p>For starters, as a general rule, you should not trust anything you
read on a topic that is less than 20 years old. We're still living
through the history at this point and new things can come to light.</p>
<h3 id="how-to-find-articles-with-google-scholar">How to find articles
with Google Scholar</h3>
<h2 id="advanced-topics">Advanced Topics</h2>
<h3 id="how-to-use-tor-to-browse-anonymously">How to use tor to browse
anonymously</h3>
<p>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
<em>privacy</em> of the user's connection since it provides
encryption--only the VPN provider can "see" what is searched. The goal
of Tor is <em>anonymity</em> 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.</p>
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