Libb

I do as much as I can offline and/or the analog way:

**Analog **

• I shop local and offline as much as it is still doable. I had been a customer of Amazon for 20+ years when I became realized I should be… less of their customer. A radical change, really, but it’s OK ;)
• no note-taking app, good old (and highly practical) pen and paper. I will write longhand and only after I draft the whole thing I will transcribe it on a computer (running Mint). When it’s a very long document I’m drafting I will use a… typewriter (one day, we will realize how many of us there are) ;)
• No digital calendar (back to using a paper one), I use a dedicated camera (the rare time I still take pictures, I prefer sketching… using good old and privacy respecting pen, paper and watercolors).
• No digital journaling app, a paper journal.
• I use one of those 90s digital voice recorder from Olympus or Philips (can’t remember) not the voice memo app on the phone.
• Books: I quit reading ebooks a few years ago and moved back to print-only (I started to read ebooks somewhere in the early 00s, reading on my Palm Pilot) because of privacy and ownership concerns.
• Music: offline, CD and files I own. I quit all streaming services.
• Movies: the same as with CD, just with DVD. Meaning that if something can’t be purchased on disc and is by subscription only we won’t be watching it. No big deal since the main reason why we so easily decided to ditch Netflix and the likes was that most of what they produced was of very, very little interest to us. Like, really.
• TV: We have not owned a TV since the early 00s. And we certainly have zero desire to own one of the spyware riddled smart TVs.
• We don’t order food or deliveries either using those online services, ever. We seldom order anything (and when we do we just call the shop) as we like to cook or going to one of the many restaurants around here (real restaurants serving real hand made fresh food I mean, not fast-food serving over-processed junk food), and for errands, well, we walk to nearby shops like we have always been doing. We, being my spouse and I.

Digital

• Web: Waterfox + uBO is my default browser
• Web: Vivaldi, for anything requiring chromium.
• Web: Brave, for work related activities and exclusively for those.
• Computer OS: Mint.
• VPN, when I need one: Mullvad or Proton -since I also have a paid account there).
• Mail: my own domain, Proton when needed, and Infomaniak’s email (Swiss) for publicly shared address.
• Cloud: Filen.io (Germany) for E2EE encryted storage (no subscription, a one time purchase they offer yearly around Blackfriday). Infomaniak (subscription, the same I use for my email) for not E2EE cloud storage.
• Social: beside Piefed, I don’t use social media anymore. I still own the various accounts I created along the years, I simply don’t use them anymore.
• RSS: newsboat (cli RSS reader)
• yt-dlp + mpv for online video (and even some podcasts, the ones I could not get to work I stopped listening to them)
• Phone: iPhone. For me, it’s real simple: I know I cannot trust that phone (Apple or Android), therefore I don’t trust it. Still, I’m expected to have a phone and to have access to a few selected apps. So, I have a phone that contains only those apps I need (security, 2FA, banks, and stuff like that) and no apps I may like, or may want to use. The two exceptions being Uber that I very seldom use but do use from time to time, and the Filen cloud app (see Photo, below). But that’s about it, there is no social media, no games, no personal whatever and I also quit listening to music and podcast on it. Not ebooks. Not even email. Heck, even SMS: people have quickly learned to not use those to try (and fail) to reach me. The only SMS I still receive are those stupid shit for security purpose.
• Photo: most of the time, I will not take a picture and will do a sketch instead. But I may use the camera on the phone from time to time if and when I don’t have my dedicated camera nearby. The photos are not synced to Apple, they are synced to Filen E2EE cloud, then to my computer. Since I barely take any picture anymore it’s all I need (younger, I was much into photography).

Varia

• BT earbuds: Airpods. They are working fine with Mint, I used to but I don’t use them with my iPhone anymore (since I stopped listening to stuff on it)
• Car: we have not owned a car since the early 00s. And if I’m ok with renting a (spyware-riddled) car we do our best to never need to do so (for everyday tasks, I just walk a lot and I will even reduce as much as possible my use of public transportation since it’s getting real difficult to get non-nominative or non-traceable tickets).
• CCTV: not much I can do against those. Heck even doorbells have turned into spying device… thx to so many of us being ok to spend money in order to get those terrifying tools on our own doors.
• Watch: no smart watch. I used to use my granddad’s mechanical watch and for a few years I mostly have been using a Chinese one. It’s not a ‘Chinese copy’ of some other brand it’s an official Chinese brand called Seagull (I have their ‘Seagull 1963’ model), they purchased the tooling from a Swiss watch maker somewhere in the late 50s, early 60s and have been making watches since then. It’s nice and cheap. An , being mechanical, requires no battery at all, no charging and no updates.

Beside the law here in France, making it so that we’re legally being tracked by our ISPs, my main digital weakness is that I still own and use an iPad.

That iPad is my go to PDF reader when I’m not working at my desk (I can’t find any more convenient tool for that). But I use it just as a reader and don’t take notes on it anymore, like I used to. To get that PDF file on the iPad, I rely on Infomaniak’s cloud KDrive (Swiss-made) and use a free reading app. I also use that iPad as an Internet radio, through the ‘Audial’ app. Both those apps and infomaniak’s cloud are not Libre/Free so by default I consider my every moves using the apps are being tracked. Infomniak is insisting on them respecting our privacy, and I’m willing to believe they are sincere here but they still can access our content if they ever decide to, or are required to. So I don’t trust them with anything important and they’re more than welcome to look at the (legally) scanned PDF of centuries old books, or to look at the (boring) pictures I may take of random shit (never of people, strangers or that I know) and the occasional flower :p

Thanks for reading!

Thx for sharing ;)

+1 for Filen. I use it for its E2EE.

I also use infomaniak’s Kdrive (Swiss-made) with their ‘KSuite’ offer, for everyday cloud storage. It’s cheap for 1To (more available, if needed). I don’t think they’re open source. More info: https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite

Thxs for the link. I’m a Kagi user and had no idea about that ;)

Thx. It is an idea I considered a while ago, like selfhosting as much things as I can, but looking at it and reading the various docs/help I realized it was way above my skills, at least that I wouldn’t feel confident I’m doing it right/safely. For context, I’m well into 50s and even though I run Linux i’m not that much of a geek (I’m already very happy I can blog using Markdown + a static website generator ;)

Alas we don’t live in such a world and I think, as much as possible, it’s safer to not trust much of the US apps and services. Like I said, as much as possible I want to use made in the EU software and services, or EU-made forks of those. But it’s not always doable.

For example, I use the Vivaldi Browser (Chromium) and Waterfox (Firefox fork). I use LibreOffice for writing. I have multiple emails, all EU-based (Proton, Infomaniak + my French-hosted own web domain/email). I don’t use AI, but if I did I would use the French Mistral (is that its name? Not sure about that) and maybe give Proton a try too. I use one cloud from Swiss and another from Germany (this one E2EE).

Search is where I’m stuck. I use the French Qwant but I also use (and pay good money) to use the US-based Kagi search engine. To me, Kagi is unrivaled and offers a mix of features (great search results and many cool options to filter said results), ease of noise-removal (no ads, no seo and the ability to remove specific domains from search results,…) and they promise to not track us at all. Alas, since it’s a US company and since they can’t rise above US law, I simply consider that whatever I search using them is compromised.

I remember using DuckDuckGo a few years ago and I quite liked it. But if I have to use a US search engine that must be Kagi. It’s really good and, nope, I’m not sponsored to say that… As a matter of fact, being a paid-user, it is I that is sponsoring them ;)

Nicholas: Once the system is in place you cannot go back

100%.

Same goes with Digital Euro btw, no matter what the EU says about making it optional. It will be, sure, to begin with but they will also start pushing even more laws to help get rid of cash (in France, we’re already forbidden to carry more than a thousand euros in cash, I think it’s 500 in Greece (not sure about this one). And when cash will be gone so will be our ability to not be tracked when buying stuff. They will monitor every single of our transactions—and penalize whatever they decide is not good for us/the country/the planet/their businesses, be it too purchasing much gas, too much food (because one needs to be fit, unless they agree to not benefit health assurance maybe), too much clothes, or whatever (to just list a few legal things one can buy nowadays). They will also quickly use their (monopolistic) control over that digital euro (and over all our bank accounts) to punish any serious opposing their rules/laws by making said opponents unable to access or, say, to just use their money to buy stuff that would help them organize and contest them. “Sorry, Libb your purchase of Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ can’t be finalized. Instead, you can always scroll some more on social media. Have a nice day.”

What a bright future.