Regarding Technology

Last year I was able to setup my server which is currently running nginx and hosting nothing on the internet, I am only hosting some things locally including a personal cgit instance. I might switch to something different but currently cgit is my choice along with Nextcloud which I mostly use for file transfer between my two other computers I have, which is my own personal desktop and a Thinkpad T480 which I use for work or if I ever need some kind of portability. I am also running my own self-hosted LLM using Ollama, through which you could use multiple models such as DeepSeek and others. But I rarely use this server because I do not want to consume a lot of electricity, only when I need to backup some things because it kind of functions like a NAS for me or like an LLM. Lastly I also have a phone, technically this is the third computer but I do not use it for anything else other than calling and messaging, it has no Google Play or Google Play Services installed, all unnecessary apps are disabled. The phone is a Google Pixel 7a with GrapheneOS installed, I sometimes also use it to take pictures but I have other cameras that I might use even though they might be a little bit too old.

Software and Internet Usage

On all of my computers I avoid proprietary software as much as I can, you obviously cannot get rid of the additional drivers provided by Linux which are not open-source and are proprietary blobs, because if you do, your computer will basically stop working. Not to mention proprietary BIOS/UEFI which you also cannot get rid of, I have not bothered to install Libreboot on my Thinkpad T480 but I might in the future if I have the time to do that. Other than that, everything else is all FOSS. Also regarding programs I only use terminal-based applications in order to stay as productive as possible, aside from things like the browser, password manager and other programs that you just cannot run in a terminal-based environment. While YouTube is completely enshittified now, the content being made is nothing but YouTubers trying to make as much money as possible by making their videos longer, to gain more ad revenue, everyone already knows the algorithm and nothing happens other than the platform getting worse I still use it but not in the traditional way through a web browser. I watch YouTube videos through the terminal by subscribing to an RSS feed of a YouTube channel using Newsboat and play the video using FFmpeg, yt-dlp and mpv. I avoid all social media now, I do not even use messaging apps like Discord that often anymore, usually when I am on the internet I visit some forums or read some articles, and maybe see what some of my friends that I know are up to on their personal websites and projects. I also have a strong preference for software that is written in C, C++ or Rust, because all of this software usually runs fast and compiles fast, usually C compiles the fastest but it depends on the program, regardless of people’s opinions on Rust or C++ due to their slow compile times they all run fairly fast and consume less memory than stupid garbage collected languages like JavaScript and Java or any other garbage collected languages. This is not to say that some programs that are written in garbage collected languages are bad or slow, because depending on what the program is for it might be faster to use a garbage collector or more efficient for the programmer but this still does not change the case for compile times. An example would Python programs like yt-dlp which are good because the language despite being garbage collected is good for the use case of how this program functions because Python is an interpreted language and useful for manipulating strings and code data to find or I guess grep the code needed to download something like a video. In general I try to avoid using the internet unless I have to or maybe I just have some spare time that I do not know what to do with, but my time is usually organised because I like to organise everything but not to the point of it being overkill.

Other

I read a lot of books, they are mostly technical books that I downloaded from the internet but I usually prefer physical books because using the computer for books sucks (this is my opinion). I prefer to hold the book or put it down and read it, I recently started reading a lot of philosophical books from people like Aristotle, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler, and a few others that are either cited by these philosophers or they are inspired by these philosophers. I am currently reading “Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None”, in German as “Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen”, some other books that I am reading include technical books for POSIX or Unix-like programming in C89 and C99 as well as books on computer architecture. Lastly books that are related with religion include The Bible, I am curretly reading The Old Testament and The New Testament, this is because some context is needed to read the New Testament so I sometimes read them on different days but usually I read The Old Testament because it is way larger in terms of page numbers and the amount of texts. Additionally I also sometimes revisit some texts from The Bible based on the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar and what texts are being remembered on the current day. I am also planning to read The Quran someday, maybe over a summer because I already know enough about The Bible and the texts included. Other than reading I like learning new languages and writing. I am currently planning to learn a few languages including French, Old Church Slavonic (maybe), Japanese (only speaking and Katakana/Hiragana), but currently I am learning Greek and also strengthening my Russian and German because I am forgetting some things, but I am still able to hold a conversation, read and write, I guess this is called fluency. Another language I practice is the language of music because I sometimes play the piano just to practice my memory and also as a hobby. As for writing I write these posts because I just want to put something out in the open and it also gives me a sense of security that I am able to write and actually publish something onto the internet, I do not really care if someone will read it, if someone is and learns something new then that is great but I mostly write all of this for myself and to also practice my English writing because I am not a native English speaker.

Conclusion

I do not really know what to put here but I noticed how bad a lot of websites are getting from reading some news articles and what people are saying about mainstream social media websites all I can conclude here for the average person reading or for myself is, to just stop using social media, and use the internet less in general, living offline or using the internet less is better and you can still consume content locally on your computer without using the internet if you know the right websites of where to download and find that content from :)