One of the things I chose to abstain from for Lent was Twitch – both streaming and viewing other streams. But it has cut me off socially from good friends I enjoy interacting with there, and it occurred to me during a sleepless night last night that I'm feeling socially isolated.
People are freaking out over Ring cameras being used by ICE. But privacy advocates have been warning that this exact scenario was possible – even inevitable – ever since Ring cameras were first released. And now there are rumors of Apple working on an AirTag-sized AI pin you can wear that has multiple cameras and a microphone. What could go wrong?
Back in mid-November I decided to try using a Linux laptop as my daily driver for at least the rest of the year. Things were going pretty well until the laptop stopped booting into Pop!_OS.
I'm a few days late to the party, but I just heard about the new product announcements from Clicks – the company that makes physical keyboard cases for smartphones – and I haven't been this excited about mobile device announcements since the BlackBerry KEY2 (2018).
To help encourage and facilitate intentional use of technology, I've declared my bedroom a technology-free space. None of my devices with screens will “live” in that room anymore.
I just finished bingeing both seasons of the TV series Andor again before my Disney+ subscription lapses. Along with Rogue One – the film it was based on – it remains my favorite Star Wars story to date. They've made that universe more relatable and real to me than any other movie or TV series.
I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner, but I am now blocking ads and trackers system-wide on my iPhone via AdGuard's public DNS. And anyone can set this up for free on their phones, PCs, or even their home routers.
A friend reached out with a dilemma. He lives far away from the meeting place of his religious community. They use Zoom to broadcast their meetings for those who can't attend in-person. For many reasons, he avoids using proprietary software (software that is not free as in freedom), but he was seriously thinking about installing Zoom in this case. I can empathize with his dilemma. All of us have to make choices like this every day.
I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus calling for a decentralized internet infrastructure. Within the span of a few weeks we have seen web outages on a global scale caused by problems with AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft Azure, and now Cloudflare.
I was blessed to be able to get a used HP laptop in practically new condition with decent specs for free, so I installed Linux on it and I'm going to try using it as my primary personal computer for at least the rest of 2025 – about six weeks.