Ready to move away from Big Tech?

There are options. Choosing those options will require you to learn something new, but that is a small cost to pay to get away from Big Tech, IMHO

Here are my suggestions. Feel free to add your own:

1. Browser : Vivaldi. That one is a given for me, obviously.

2. Mail client : Vivaldi. You may wonder why you need a mail client, but besides the technical benefits, it makes it a lot easier to move between mail services or even use more than one.

3. Mail service : Fastmail. They have been around for a long time.

4. Office software : Libre Office.

5. Video conference : Whereby.

6. Desktop OS : Linux.

7. Social : Mastodon and the Fediverse in general.

As said, I am eager to hear what you are using to help me move away from Big Tech as well. Always looking for new things to try.

#Mastodon #fediverse #Linux #Windows #BigTech #Politics #Technology #Computers

Interesting job, keeping old technology running.

IEEE Spectrum: What It Takes To Let People Play With the Past spectrum.ieee.org/vintage-tech #vintagecomputing #computers #technology

What It Takes To Let People Play With the Past

Libi Rose keeps obsolete technologies running at the Media Archaeology Lab

^{Stephen Cass (IEEE Spectrum)}

Upon recommendations, I tried this AI prompt injection game for the first time. I made it to level 7 with no help from the internet!

If you want to donate to me, donate to me on this page.

My website is here where I usually blog. I'm not much of a video person, so I blog and write more than I do video!

ICQ is closing down. It was really at its height in 2000 and that is when we integrated ICQ into Opera. We made a small (5k) client and it worked really well.

AOL had purchased ICQ and they were concerned about MSN taking users from them by connecting to their service, so they stopped supporting 3rd party clients. We contacted them, to see if they would make an exception for us, but they did not.

They said that if we removed our 5k client, we could maybe discuss bundling their client, but it was bigger than Opera, so that was not going to happen.

#Windows #Computers #PC #ICQ #AOL #MSN #Vivaldi

So apparently the term "patch" in software development comes from punched paper tape.

"Small corrections to the programmed sequence could be done by patching over portions of the paper tape and re-punching the holes in that section."

chsi.harvard.edu/harvard-ibm-m…

#til #computers #development #language #history

#Linux on the #desktop is becoming more #popular in my home town, but for the wrong reasons.

It's #poverty: many people have no money for a new #laptop or desktop. Their old #computers still work fine, but can't run the latest versions of #Windows.

We backup their data, install #LinuxMint, restore their data, install some extra programs, show them around and they're good to go.

Interestingly no one had problems making the switch so far. All quiet on the support front.

I can't sign this as I am not a constituent of the EU, but I hope this comes to pass and the EU forces some responsibility into the #tech corporations. Goodness knows the US isn't going to lead the way.

#OpenSource #ConsumerRights #Computers #PlannedObsolescence #FOSS #ElectronicWaste #environmentalism #RightToRepair