utopiah

PS2: I also notice you start with content. Well for that at home I have a RPi with minidlna, serving videos to any device on my network.

PS: something fun I did a while ago, and still repeat whenever I can, is offline holiday. I still take a bunch of devices, e.g phone, RPi, SteamDeck, etc but I do NOT go online. Instead the RPi becomes a hotspot and I can code or enjoy content on any of my devices, but still within the privacy of my own network, without any notification. It's a very fun and empowering experience

Yes it's a pain ... but it's because your are considering a state compared to an ideal state, e.g feeling trapped with devices you don't trust versus running in an empty field. It's simplistic and it's not now versus then. Instead consider where you were, where you are now, and how it is a succession of decisions. Nobody forced you to buy a smartphone. Nobody forced you to install a chat app made by an ad company. Nobody forced you to have a free email.

Instead, for years, you made terrible decisions and now you are "waking up" to it and it sucks.

How do I know? Well, I did the same.

I even felt terrible about it and it felt impossible to change. I also discovered the concept of learned helplessness. How I was convinced that not only it was bad but I could do nothing about it.

Then I changed. I made a ProtonMail account (which I paid for, still am), moved my data from GMail. In fact I downloaded ALL my data from Google, and moved away from it, e.g from YouTube I installed on my own server PeerTube. I warned family, friends and colleagues I wasn't using WhatsApp anymore but they could reach me with email, SMS, phone, Signal, Telegram, Matrix, etc. I then deleted Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.

I could go on but hopefully you get the idea : it sucked, I realized it sucks, I tried to change, it was hard requiring a lot of effort but, step by step, I removed a lot (not all!) of those terrible behaviors from my life.

TL;DR move away from learned helplessness by DOING things, taking a single step in the right direction makes a world of difference.

Nobody I know refuses to use email or SMS. They might find it odd but usually don't even bother asking. There are equivalent outside of Meta for everything I know, from ads (e.g CraigsList) to events (e.g neighborhood public calendar) so I understand the feeling but I'd argue, just like people who use Amazon for everything, it takes little trying to find viable alternatives and weeks or even days later you'll forgot what Meta even was.

Might be correct but without any source for the number I can't even share this back. Asked them, will update if I get an answer.

I'd be curious about the access speed comparison, because I'd assume for the brain it's be RAM equivalent, not SDD

Avoided using it until now but I guess in this case that's justified, if there is no other distributors and it's made there.

Interesting video based on "No "Zero-Shot" Without Exponential Data: Pretraining Concept Frequency Determines Multimodal Model Performance" https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04125 which basically says (my interpretation) that temporary techniques, i.e not LLM but LMM are statistical models based on large datasets which don't, and can't unless at a ridiculously (basically impractical) high cost consider the long tail, namely what is not quite popular.

How can I even buy one in Europe?

Kudos, it's indeed a long road but a bright one!

Regarding what's left :

• I still use Steam, and even have a SteamDeck (running only Linux) but if you want to avoid that itch.io is probably a good option, namely no launcher, only what game developers provide
• Discord, well you could use the Web page, that's what I do and even calls work. If you want to remove it entirely you will obviously lose your contacts so trickier problem
• banking, same principle, you can do most of it via the Web. Some convenient options won't work, e.g QR code to login or pay, but overall your bank probably have solutions that don't require anything but a Web browser and your physical cards, do ask them and if it's not up to your standards, check for other banks that might have better terms than the big ones

You don't have to immediately drop the few left but IMHO it's not about being a purist or completionist but rather a journey and you already did a lot!

Normal people: Gladly give google maps access to location data at all times and never think about it

Yet also same normal people get utterly genuinely shock when they see a map of their past locations for the last 3 months.

I for one don't talk about it... because I don't use Google Maps. I briefly mention OSM or CityMapper when people send me GoogleMaps links but otherwise better to show than tell IMHO.