I like computers. Always have. There is something comforting in the certainty of silicon, the feeling of untapped potential, the steady march of progress towards a brighter future.
It is 2026. Shit’s changed, yo.
I’m putting together this blog not simply as a rejection of modernity, but as a safe vehicle for me to be public again.
My wife and I have been taking a good look at technology usage. These days I’m mostly talking about services rather than programs - at this point the vast amount of tech any of us use day to day has some sort of backend baggage that comes with it. Let’s take a look.
I’m going to make a few categories to boil down my feeling about these services / software:
- No Problem
- Steam
- Jellyfin
- Lil worried
- FireFox
- Gmail
- Android
- Google Drive
- Very worried
- Discord
- Windows (11)
- YouTube
- Already Hot Garbage
- Riot Client
- TurboTax (Business)
- Cox Communications (ISP)
- Amazon.com
Bonus categories:
-
Things I’ve cut out / moved on from
- TurboTax (Personal)
-
Things I’ve just started using
- Memos (Self-Hosted notes server)
- VSCode (Writing this post / website with it)
- Hugo (Static website “framework” / helper thingy)
- Racknerd (VPS)
- Porkbun (Domain)
Work version (Gamedev)
-
No Problem
- Steam
- Blender
- Old 2021 version of Substance Designer
- Old 2020 version of Zbrush
-
Lil worried
- Visual Studio
- Extremely old theoretically still licensed Photoshop CS5
- Google Drive
- Cubase 11
- Self-hosted Perforce
-
Very worried
- Unreal Engine 5.x
- Windows (10)
- Wix
- Trello
-
Already Hot Garbage
Realistically, the goal is reducing the amount of services I rely on, full stop. Self hosting can be a solution to this (like using Jellyfin over Netflix, or Memos over Obsidian), though the most obvious is to simply avoid service based stuff in the first place. This is pretty easy to follow in principle, especially with productivity stuff.
If it is a single user application and I have to log into it, don’t use it.
Visual Studio begs me to login everytime it opens. You need an Intuit account to use Turbotax. Even Windows demands you use a Microsoft account to login to your personal, local computer (Yeah you can get around it. I got around it on all of my computers… but for how long?)
Functionally, there are a few unavoidable logins. Email is a huge one - you gotta have an email, and everything I have read says self-hosting is a nightmare for email - so you gotta use a service. I’ve used gmail since it was “Google Mail” in 2004. I even remember getting an invite to it from my sister, wow 1 whole gig of storage! Needless to say, I’ve got a log of baggage with the service, not to mention a strong reliance on Google Drive since college.
Discord continues to be
Web Stuff
Firefox (Browser)
- Switched back to good ole FF in 2023 after years of the Great Chrome experiment
- Has a LOT of service stuff built in. As of right now I have yet to sign into Firefox but I do see some advantages (syncing tabs between devices, for example)
- HIGH chance of being rug-pulled. There is currently a back and forth over them adding some “AI” features, that, even if well implemented, is clearly a symptom of “well, erryone else is doing it”, which is never a good sign.
Coms
Discord
- IE Chrome in disguise + maybe we have your data + IPO incoming money money money
- I have pushed nearly all of my communication onto this platform. I have a channel for chats with my wife, a channel for my company, one for “gaming with the bois”, etc. I have joined dozens of community channels where I mostly lurk.
- From a functionality side, it rocks
- semi-permanent text and images, including parsing links sensibly
- excellent VOIP stuff
- Vid / screenshareing good enough TM
- Everyone is there. Massive marketshare with the computery folks.
- UI is solid
- Bots are neat / API stuff makes sense. (I should make a post about my discord bot adventures)
- I have my grievances
- Heavy ass program (yay chrome)
- Search suuuucks.
- Weird forced name change they did a few years ago
- But the main problem is the company / service, right?
- IPO stuff. Classic cycle, Discord gets started in the ol silicon valley business incubator, gets a bunch of users, gets more investors, then years later the bill comes in. I’m- I’m struggling to think of software or a service that was built on this pipeline that has NOT enshitified.
- Similarly, if the service is free and the company needs money, then you are the product. There is no doubt in my mind that Discord, like nearly every other “big” free service, is flirting with or is already outright selling data in some way shape or form. That is the world we live in these days, I suppose.
- Discord isn’t a website, and thus communities creating awesome content and helpful information are creating it in an unindexable vacuum only accessible to those who a. know of the channel’s existence, b. actually join the channel, and c. were present when the info was posted (forget searching in Discord). This is a well documented and shared grievance, but still, it bears repeating. There are no frontrunners in the upcoming great discord replacement, and I’m not sure if we will see one. My prediction? Ultimately, eventually, it will go the way of Twitter. Hmm.