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.)
• 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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
- I stopped using reddit and created this lemmy account.
- SSD failed on my desktop system, so I switched my gaming 100% to steam deck and bought Raspberry pi 400 for browsing the internet, light video editing and bank stuff.
That’s about it.
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?
deleted by creator
I was referring to the GitHub one, which I now realize is confusing cause that word is being overused by Microsoft lol
deleted by creator
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.
Or… are we!??
I don’t know!
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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?
Only real downside is the inability to comment but otherwise it’s great.
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.
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- 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
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.
- 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!
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 wish I could use/get used to Firefox, but Vivaldi really has spoiled me. I use Microsoft Edge for PWAs (due to sleeping tabs) and Vivaldi as my main browser, and the customizable interface, easier CSS theming (in my experience) and community around it make it such a pleasure to use. Command chains are so useful too!
i admit it has been difficult to get used to ff, especially the android version with its terrible homepage. but seeing how tracking and spying is increasing, AI getting better, and constant data thefts, i feel that i have to minimize my footprint so i can’t trust any chronium based browsers anymore…
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.
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.
I’ve done and tinkered with many things in 2023 like most of us here (migrated to lemmy, degoogle, unsubscribed to streaming services, linux, etc). Some things that are less known that I think worth to mention are:
- Using shift+right click to open the full context menu in Windows 11
- Finally set an Address bar shortcut for searching reddit content with Google. No more typing “site:reddit.com…”
- Anilist with TachiyomiJ2K(mobile)+Taiga(desktop)+Mal-Sync(browser extension) for maximum anime/manga tracking automation!
- My only shame in 2023: Creating a Facebook account (anonymous account) for the messenger and local hobby groups. All I can say is Facebook seemed to intentionally obfuscate its setting/option menus because they’re all scattered in different pages and just a plain mess. f u zuck
Ty for shift+right click suggestion
and fuck MS for needing the shift+rclick tip in the first place
