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.
-
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).
-
Like many, I’ve stopped using Reddit outside of Google search.
-
I’ve reduced my subscriptions to just two. (Apple One and Google One)
-
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)
-
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.)
As the market for physical discs dwindled, I started using the best dvd ripper for mac to save DVDs to my computer.
To save my collections of videos on iTunes, I choose to burn M4V to DVD so that they can be played on home screen.
Rip-Software that can bypass Blu-ray protection can be really useful. Here’s a tutorial for digitalization of discs I can share: blu-ray rippen trotz kopierschutz freeware
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!
- Switched to Linux
- Switched to Firefox
- Set up email forwarding to a new account on Proton Mail
- Finally upgraded my PC
I’ve stopped trusting anything online due to AI being a cancer on the internet and it’s only going to get worse.
- Stopped using reddit, went here instead.
- Intensified my Mastodon usage, winding down my Twitter activity.
- Started using my own mail server for more than just a few tests.
- Changed search engines a few times (I’ll probably stick with Kagi now).
- Reduced my subscriptions and cleaned up my RSS feeds.
- Stopped doomscrolling (I subscribed to a weekly paper newspaper instead).
- Started using Ulysses for writing. Works very well.
If you subscribe to RSS feeds that sometimes due ads in the form of articles (looking at you daringfireball); services like SiftRSS let you use Regex to filter out titles that match (i.e., sponsor, sponsorship) so you only get organic content.
My RSS reader (Newsblur) lets me do that too, to some extent.
No more Reddit
