Libb

I understand. Hopefully someone will be able to suggest something more useful ;)

When I go some place I tell my spouse I’ll be there. Are you looking for something more specific in ‘sharing you location’?

Given the volume of writing I do, I don’t think hand-writing is feasible.

I write everything longhand. Many people have been writing entire books longhand, and have been doing it for centuries. And a few of us still do ;)

The last few years average out to about 2000 words a day, and most of it is done on computers where I can comfortably type for long periods, and much faster than I could write by hand.

Depends what you want to write, but speed may not be the key elements. Obviously, with tight deadlines from your publisher it may be a valid point but (I’m 50+) along the years I realized I would save more time by writing slowly but then spend less time rewriting/editing (less, as editing is still an essential part).

All of that to say: sure, digital technology may be a great help but it is not a necessity (unlike what big tech want us to believe). Tolstoy did not use a computer, neither did Flaubert, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, nor did Nietzsche or Plato (to name just a few authors that have written a lot). It’s mostly a question of habits, aka developing the hand, arm and shoulder muscles used to write, and of endurance: the more you will write by hand, the longer you will be able to write without feeling too much fatigue. And of organization—aka, how you take your notes and maybe how your organize them. When I draft a text or take notes on the go, something I do every single day of the year, I use my own shorthand which helps me saves a lot of time. I also organize all my notes (research and personal alike) in an analog system that has been formalized many years ago: Zettelkasten. It works wonders and, in its way, it’s easily ‘searchable’.

One last suggestion: using the right writing tool may help a lot in reducing fatigue too. Have you tried using a decent fountain pen (with good quality paper)? But enough about handwriting :p

If you’re using iCloud, have you activated the optional Apple’s Advanced Data Protection? It ensures that no one, supposedly not even Apple can read your files on iCloud.

For anything digital (I draft longhand but I still need to type the final version), the moment I became privacy-conscious, my solution was to switch from Mac to a Linux PC, with full disk encryption. With This Linux PC there is no tracking and no telemetry (I was horrified to realize the volume of data that was send back to Apple by my Mac, it’s easy to test it: install LittleSnitch and tell it to not let apple’s services connect to the web. Sure most of it is probably fine. But probably was not enough for me) and I can use VSCodium (a Microsoft-free version of VSCode) for Markdown and LibreOffice Writer for word processing. For cloud storage, I would suggest Filen.io a small German company that offers zero knowledge end-to-end encryption.

I think many dedicated journaling apps (like DayOne on iOS/Mac) do offer password-protection but I have no idea how reliable it is. I would rather trust some Free/Libre software and the community to tell me what is safe.

BTW, feel free to come say hi to our small !journaling@sh.itjust.works community (I’m the admin). As an analog user myself, I would love to have more digital users participating. Well, to be perfectly honest I would love to have more people participating, digital or not ;)

Clicking the link should not say anything special when you land on the page (which is rather dumb) but once you create your account you should get double the base free storage (20 instead of 10). I don’t recall them announcing any change in that policy.

Got their reply this morning (it’s early evening when I type this), useful but leading to one more question on my part. Wait and see ;)

Experience is great so far but I have send my very first help request… yesterday evening. Will see when/if I get an answer, but it’s not even about any issue just a question about some stuff I could not understand ;)

free replacement for Gmail

have you tried infomaniak? They also have a calendar and an online office suite… and their free plan is nice (paid user here) ;)

Just in case, I wrote a little more in details about my impression, what I like and don’t like, on my blog (ignore the beginning of the post if you’re only interested in Filen itself) ;)

that’s how I understand it.

Data is encrypted during transfer and also on their cloud, using a key only you have access to.

Using them. Quite decent if a little bare bone. I wish for their notes app to be leaner to use but beside that it does exactly <hat it tells. Also, I quite like that, unlike so many clouds, I don’t have to move all my files and folders to a ‘filen’ folder, it can sync as many folders as one needs, even on external drives.

If you can, wait for their Black Friday deals, prices are fine but they’re even better then. They also offer more options for lifetime plans if you’re more interested than in monthly sub.

When creating you’re account, try to get an affiliate link before creating the account, as you will get double the free storage to begin with (20, instead of 10GB) and if you later decide to sub to/purchase a plan you have to keep that extra storage as a bonus. In case you need one, here is my affiliate link so you or anyone else using it can get the extra 10GB—and, nope, I won’t get anything out of it anymore, as I already did get all I was promised (up to 3x10GB more free storage), and yep, I did keep them l when I upgraded to one of their lifetime plan ;)

Capitalists all over the world: but can we sell carbon to people?
Trump: Sure, just don’t forget to pay tariffs if carbon is not made in the USA!

I havent switched operating system yet due to fear of losing my data.

If you value any data, you should already have backups (plural), right? So, if you decide to switch OS you don’t need to worry about your data since you have backups (plural). Hint: if you don’t do backups already, start now with or without OS switch.

If i delete google play services, will my phone not work correctly?

Depends what you do with it. What OS you use. My spouse is using /e/OS and she has access to all the apps she needs, but I reckon you probably don’t use the same app as we do (we’re both 50+) ;)

I have been replacing my apps with open source apps, is that helpful?

Depends. It’s probably a good idea but if you use open source apps to access and use non-privacy respecting services, well, they won’t help much.

What vpn should i use? I have malewarebytes.

One you trust. I use Mullvad and Proton. Both are paid for.

I’d wrap it in a towel inside the box. Have you considered making a DIY Faraday cage? I’ve been thinking about it but my physics isn’t very good

I may consider doing that, thx.

Thx a lot for the explanation :)

I’ve heard the name, but don’t know what a docker is used for. Kinda like a vm? Not really a geek, I’m afraid ;)

Either someone randomly downvoted (ok, bye). Or someone thinks downvoting me is punishing me in some way for daring say something they don’t agree with (no idea how that could be punishing me, but hey). Or someone is too lazy to explain their reasoning. In any case, I don’t think it’s worth much consideration.

And, yep, as far as I’m concerned I consider this an OK approach. Not faultless, but usable ;)

Not much

• Full disk encryption on my computers.
• Password manager, for strong & unique passwords everywhere
• Linux as my OS
• Firewall.
• Backups: local (encrypted) and remote (encrypted).
• Computers are all wired to the network, no WiFi.
• Also, I use my phone as a… phone and for little else.
  I mean, there is a 2FA app and the few mandatory apps I must have access to (finance, and banking) and that is it. No social, no games, no nothing. Not even email is configured on that trash piece of corporate spyware. I sincerely consider it a threat to our privacy so I don’t trust it beside what I have no option to trust it with. I also suppose that this device, even though I deactivated the setting, is constantly listening to what we say nearby. So, when I don’t need it, I store it in a thick box to reduce whatever it may be recording.
• I use as little digital tools as I can. I went back to analog (ie, for my agenda and I hardly see any reason to go back to digital). I take all my notes longhand too, and it’s been more than a year I have not read an ebook as I went back to analog there too. Why? No spying, no tracking of what I read and what I write. And no sudden ‘termination’ of services or ‘removal’ of a book from my device for any reason.

I really, really don’t understand how people see LLMs as the only options for stuff like this…

We can’t tell that is what the OP thinks and I would rather not assume anything. But if that was the case, I would imagine OP is from this generation that seems to have completely lost connection with the written word. It’s a huge loss for them (and for the whole society), a dramatic one even but one can’t realize how tragic it is, and how much they are losing, if they don’t have an opportunity to experiment what it’s like to be writing (and reading).

To the OP, if you’re wondering about writing in a journal (paper or digital, it’s up to you but be assured it can be private), feel free to come say hello in the !journaling@sh.itjust.works. I’m the admin there and if there isn’t much activity going on, I’m pretty sure this kind of situations may be of interest to way more people than we imagine. At the very least, if you have questions I will do my best to answer them, hopefully others would chime in too ;)

Edit to clear: not being able to read/write long-form content anymore is a tragic loss for younger generations, and that will cost dear to most of them because the few that will have learned to master those ‘low-tech’ activities, and to focus their attention, will outperform the others and they’re the ones that will get the all the rewards we associate with ‘winning’. But if they’re the ones that will pay, for the most part they’re not at fault. It is us, the adults that were supposed to be educating them, that are responsible. We failed. Hard. Now, they will pay the price.

But lately I’ve been in a rough state mentally (I say lately but it’s always been with me) and having GPT guide me and being able to just dictate what I think helps me a lot on various levels, for various reasons.

Do you mean you use it to brain dump your thoughts and things like that?

If so, have you considered simply… writing stuff down with a pen on paper? Aka, journaling.

I’ve been doing that for, well, almost all all my live (started as little boy, I’m now well into my 50s) and it has always been tremendous help to better understand whatever is going on in my head/happening around me/with other people/the world.

Pen and paper journaling is also 100% not online, unless you want it to be. And it’s cheap, when it’s not completely free ;)

Still, I’ve been wondering. I’ve come to learn that plastic recycling is largely a myth/scam, but what about glass and metal recycling?

They recycle fine but they still need a lot of energy to be recycled. Energy is the main issue here: energy needs to be extracted/produced which has a huge environmental cost (even solar/wind turbines have an environmental cost, as well as has their maintenance). So, the best thing we can do, as consumers, everyone of us at our humble level, in our everyday live, would be to consume as little as we can of everything. To create less waste, we should buy less, which would also mean we would need to waste less energy, a lot less, to recycle whatever can be.