I figured this may lead to an interesting discussion in the comments.
How has your use of Technology changed in the past year? I’ll start.
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Due to the rise of streaming services and Sony/discovery removing content from libraries, I downloaded all my iTunes purchases onto a 2TB SSD (which I’ll soon need to get another).
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Like many, I’ve stopped using Reddit outside of Google search.
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I’ve reduced my subscriptions to just two. (Apple One and Google One)
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I’ve purchased DVDs/Blu rays of my favorite uncensored shows (Family Guy and American Dad) and ripped them and watch them through Cloud storage (Google Drive via Infuse for Apple platforms, and Kodi for Windows)(I’ve also purchased MakeMKV just because it is so damn useful)
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I’ve used Google App Scripts to bypass some Gmail limitations to make filters that I otherwise couldn’t. For instance, in Outlook.com, you can block email addresses and domains before you have ever gotten an email from them. In Gmail, you can’t. The best you can do is create a filter that deletes them. In my case, I’ve created a Google App Script that runs every hour and looks for (@.mil) domain emails and marks them as spam. (I am in college, and I fucking hate that they give my email to recruiters.)
I’ve started archiving my media much more vigorously. Due to the corpos enshitifying so much, the amount of media I have ripped and preserved on my own NAS has exploded.
I started torrenting again for the first time since college.
I gave up reddit and use Lemmy and Fediverse exclusively, except for the occasional tech issue I have and then search old reddits for advice/solutions.
I watch YT exclusively through GrayJay, NewPipe, and FreeTube now.
I’ve become much more active converting people to Linux. So far I convinced two friends to buy Steam Decks, one friend to buy a Framework laptop and put Fedora on it, converted my parents to Linux Mint, and may have two more people switching to Linux on their main computers in the coming year.
I’ve also been pushing more FOSS software and hardware to family and friends, trying to convince them to care more about right to repair, FOSS and the like.
This year I am planning to build a new NAS that will be a self-hosted defeater for streaming and get my close friends and family onboard. Hopefully they will slowly give up their subscriptions.
We’ll see how it all goes, but I’m very optimistic about FOSS tech in the coming months and years, so much great stuff happening!
So good to hear! Well done
I definitely feel the enshittification of such platforms will/has led to some great software, updates, and alternative front ends. It sucks seeing platforms decay, however, I love seeing the fightback from users who aren’t going to tolerate bullshit from any company.
- Switched to Linux
- Switched to Firefox
- Set up email forwarding to a new account on Proton Mail
- Finally upgraded my PC
Aye, congratulations on the new/upgraded PC!
- deleted my Reddit account. Only use it if I land there from a web search
- Started using Firefox containers - keep Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc in their own containers
- Deleted my Dropbox account when they started deploying AI tools late 23. About to delete Google Drive.
- Migrated to paid Protonmail. Intend to wipe my Gmail data in next couple of months
- Migrated to paid data backup service
- Bought a steam deck, connected it to my living room TV and now PC game in my living room (had a steam link but never got into it before, but steam deck has changed how I play)
- Cancelled most streaming services
- Started using Freetube software and Libredirect to escape YouTube
- Installed fdroid open source store on my phone and switched to many foss and non cloud apps.
Basically mostly I’ve started taking my privacy and data much more seriously. I was already privacy “aware” but the explosion of so called AI tools in my industry (healthcare) has made me realise the value and importance of my data, and how much of it is being stolen and exploited by private interests. There are also examples of how private data is being extracted from this bullshit AI tools.
I’m increasingly understanding how important it is now to actively protect my data and also fragment my internet presence as much as possible.
What backup service are you using if I might ask?
Not OP but I’ve been using duplicity for over a decade. Zero lock-in to any particular cloud storage, uses rdiff and gpg for the incremental computation and encryption… it’s awesome.
Just this month I’ve switched over from S3 to Dropbox for cloud storage due to price, and other than the large first backup, my backup script worked flawlessly.
I can’t recommend it enough.
I’ve stopped trusting anything online due to AI being a cancer on the internet and it’s only going to get worse.
My trust in anything on the internet has eroded over the last ten years. Information, news, offers…it’s all pud-pulling capitalist circlejerking and the most cynical propaganda imaginable.
I don’t trust what you just said
Good! You’re learning.
Deleted my Twitter account and switched from Reddit (accounts are not deleted) to Lemmy.
Switched from Chrome back to Firefox after more than a decade.
Dropped Windows in favor of Linux Mint.
Unsubscribed from Netflix, Disney+, etc. Now I only torrent the films, series, etc. that I know I’ll watch more than once, for stuff that I only plan on watching once I use Stremio with the Torrentio add-on.
Started using my old Facebook account after several years just for Marketplace.
That’s all I can remember at the moment.
EDIT: Oh yeah, ditched PornHub for NoodleMagazine.
What’s NoodleMagazine and why is it better or freer?
Free porn site, full videos.
Self hosted a lemmy server for myself
Switched to Firefox
Got a VPN
Using said vpn to share my dad’s YouTube TV(only works on my TV though, not mobile)
Started using copilot which improved my productivity at work
I got married, so now im sharing more online accounts
Kudos on getting married!
What’s copilot?
Bing’s ChatGPT - they have a standalone app now.
I was referring to the GitHub one, which I now realize is confusing cause that word is being overused by Microsoft lol
Ohhhh my bad, yea that is confusing
No more Reddit
Ditched Windows for Linux, man, feelin’ free like a bird. No more Microsoft bullshit, nah. And instead of Google Search, I’m rollin’ with SearXNG. It’s like Google but decentralized, no data sellin’, straight up respectin’ my privacy. Open source all day, every day, that’s my way now.
I’ve done mostly the same thing! Good to know I’m not alone in doing that stuff this year
- Dropped Reddit and Twitter completely. Actually deleted my Reddit account and deleted most of my Twitter history.
- Stopped using Gmail as my primary email.
- Went back to DVD and Blu-Ray for shows and movies I think I might want to rewatch.
- Slowly importing stuff I’ve posted on various social media to my website.
- Slowly moving stuff off of Google Drive and Dropbox to my local PC and/or Nextcloud.
- Finally set up my Nextcloud server to use object storage so I can use it for auto-uploads without worrying about space.
- Tried out a bunch of different Fediverse platforms.
- Made more of an effort to report bugs instead of just living with them or using something else.
- Deleted Chrome as my secondary browser and installed Vivaldi. (I’ve been using Firefox as my primary for a while.)
Moving stuff is slow because I don’t want to just copy it all over, I want to decide what to keep in the process.
As you migrate files off the cloud to your local computer, what are you doing for backups? I’d love to self-host everything personally, but having my life’s data in just one physical location is not making me feel great at all.
There are a couple of options. What I currently do is an.encrypted borg backup of my important files which is then synced to Dropbox and Google Drive. Currently looking for an inexpensive tape drive though to back up everything locally. Those things are flipping expensive!
I too want to know about good backups
I quit Facebook for good, almost quit Reddit and am enjoying reading more books and exploring fediverse a bit.
Also protectively try to get less and less screen time, using the morning time which usually was lost to doomscrolling to do zazen.
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Stopped using reddit & facebook
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started using the fediverse
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Got my own domain and set up an email via proton
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vanced->revanced->greyjay
How’s grayjay compared to revanced?
It’s pretty good actually. No ads and you can access videos from a lot of platforms in the one app (including premium ones if you have a subscription to them). It also makes it easier to follow a single creator across platforms. Also, lets you download videos for offline access, allows casting, PiP and a bunch of other stuff.
My only real complaint is that the recommendations aren’t very good yet, so I end up going back to YT/revanced to discover new stuff, and there currently isn’t any way to use sponsorblock with it.
Still, considering it’s in alpha, great stuff.
Only real downside is the inability to comment but otherwise it’s great.
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I finally overhauled my home server. I built a 12TB storage and media server using a few parts from the old server but am running it on Linux using docker rather than my old gaming PC’s windows 7 install. Should be much better for security and easier to upgrade or move.
Paid for PlexPass finally since hardware transcoding is locked behind the paywall.
Dropped Netflix after over a decade of using it regularly because the prices went up and I had been using it less.
Have used ChatGPT for help planning trips and developing goals and plans at home. I was restricted from using it or anything like it at work so I haven’t been able to properly use it to my advantage much.
Finally upgraded my router to WiFi 6 and my Internet bandwidth to gigabit from 250 mbps. It’s refreshing! Probably the best decision I made in 2023.
Dropped reddit (to include blocking the domain on my pihole). I still waste time but less of it is on social media.
I was wondering if you ever tried jellyfin, since you mentioned paying for plex.
I haven’t tried Jellyfin yet mostly because I rely heavily on the native Plex apps for my TVs and phones. Outside network streaming without having to set up a proxy or VPN is another big reason.
I haven’t liked the direction Plex has been going for a while, but it’s hard to beat the convenience.
Nice setup + great Wi-Fi for steaming, downloading, etc. congrats!
Similar to you I built a home server and got all the networking done in the house and started self hosting as much stuff as I can which is what got me interested in lemmy, got a ai chat docker installed but wasn’t that useful on its own
One of the national mobile networks finally put up a blisteringly fast 5G mast near my house. I have finally reached the totally cable-free nirvana I dreamt of in 1997 when I held my first Motorola Startac in my hand and took an office call on a park bench.
- No longer using imgur for hosting images
- Reddit use reduced to specific communities. Former use cases are migrated to Lemmy
- Changed mobile browser to Firefox
- Using a searxng instance as my search engine
• Ditched Reddit for Lemmy
• Twitter for Mastodon
• Netflix, Apple+, Prime for Plex
• Gmail for Protonmail
• Outlook for Thunderbird
• partly Degoogled my android Smartphone
• switched from Vanced to Re-vanced
• Chrome for Firefox with add-ons
• Alexa for Home Assistant
• Partly switched off telemetry on Windows 10
• Got my first all unlimited contract on my smartphone
• Upgraded my ADSL to 200 Mbps
• Used FOSS quite more frequently
• Used Calibre for the first time
• Learned a lot about emulators on PC
Tbh, didn’t realised about all these things until I wrote them down
edit: formating
Since you’re already good with these, might as well go witb Mull instead of Firefox on android. Also VPN and private DNS could be interesting next steps.
Thanks for the advice.
Already bought a VPN subscription with PIA and also setup a private DNS with cloud-flare on my android smartphone and tablet. Will look into the PC settings later.
I LL take a look into Mullvad later as well since I saw it’s a fork of Firefox which makes it a very interesting prospect.
Nice! Good luck on your journey. My next step is setting up Nextcloud…
NextCloud and BitWarden. But that’s a project for later down the road. Local and Foss all the way
Looks like you’re just missing Linux to compete the list. It’s not for everyone yet, though.
Thank you for the suggestion.
I’m planning on buying an AMD GPU later this year and then, I’m planning on installing Linux on my Desktop since Windows 10 will not be supported.
Don’t forget to check your Amazon Alexa privacy settings to disable personalized ads, and for using your Alexa data for ads. Likewise, you can have it to where while Amazon keeps a log of what is said, it won’t save voice recordings.
That won’t be necessary, because I completely uninstalled it and it’s not connected to the network anymore
