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 completely gave up on Google Search and started using Kagi which has changed the way I find things on the Internet.
Switched from Chrome to Firefox.
- Switched to Linux
- Switched to Firefox
- Set up email forwarding to a new account on Proton Mail
- Finally upgraded my PC
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!
I got a subscription to nebula, since my favorite creators are on there and YouTube’s subscription costs too much.
Quit Spotify for Apple Music and PlexAmp.
Slowly starting to phase out everything Google but it’s taking some time.
I’m using Google search less and now Ecosia has become my primary search engine.
Next thing on my list is to reduce streaming services. I quit Netflix and HBO in 2023 after having it for many years.
Using a VPN more and more.
I’m using much less Reddit, Facebook and whatever the fuck twitter is now. Instead I’m using Lemmy and Mastodon. Maybe this year I’ll delete all the old accounts finally for good.
Started using RSS again for news.
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.
switched to linux, ditched vivaldi for firefox, quit reddit, quit youtube and started using invidious. probably a lot more that i can’t think of.
i got off reddit
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.
Got rid of all of my centralized social media accounts apart from YouTube, moved from Proton to Migadu on my own domain (unlimited aliases! when signing up for a service I can just make up a new username and it gets organized into a folder in my inbox!), and moved my homelab and laptop to NixOS
I ditched reddit and twitter. Intalled Lineage OS and use as many foss apps as I can. I am also moving all my Google cloud to Proton Drive
Stopped using reddit, started lemmy Switch chrome to firefox
Seeing many with these same ones, but that’s me!
I switched from Chrome to Firefox completely and from Reddit to Lemmy like 80% of the time, for me that is a huge upgrade.
Ditched centralized social media and started a personal diary
What exactly do you write in a diary? I’ve tried it so many times and yet can’t keep it up
Don’t try, just write in it whenever you feel like it: congratulations! You have a diary! That could be several times a day, or once a month, depending what you need and want out of your diary. But realistically if you’re just starting out it will probably be diary meta, like about the writing you’re doing in the diary lol.
For me I find it useful for
- jotting media reviews.
- nurturing my stationary fetish.
- an excuse to practice my cursive.
- relaxing at the end of the day, or week.
- reading over to gain insights into my moods (like how I was always sad after drinking)
- purging “negative” feelings (anger, insecurity, etc) - just get them out of my head and on to a page.
Anyway, here’s an example of me just talking about Quake 2 and having trouble focusing at work:
At the end of the day, I just like making marks on the page.
I tried something like that once. I was going to write about a weird nightmare I had. Ended up creating a “short” horror story that I write on days I’m feeling a little more angry — you can read that as violent if you want — and down. It isn’t done yet, that’s the reasons for the quotes, but I hope to get to the end sometime.
That’s cool. And if it continues to be useful / enjoyable to you, then you don’t necessarily need to “end” it ever, unless you really want to.
For sure! But i feel I’ll probably make many short stories instead of just stretching one out. As an aspiring author i guess I’ll use this as a kind of practice
Ah yeah that makes sense. I’m an eternal hobbyist with different creative things (art, games, stories, etc), so I get the challenge of just finishing something.
PS feel free to send me what you’ve got if you want a totally impartial “beta reader” or whatever that’s called
- 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.
