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.)

  • @KelsonVEnglish
    15•10 months ago
    • 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.

    • @efstajasEnglish
      2•10 months ago

      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.

      • @frokieEnglish
        1•10 months ago

        I too want to know about good backups

      • @[email protected]English
        1•10 months ago

        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!