Techie Ramblings

Category: Internet

  • My digital setup during these trying times.

    This follows on nicely from my previous entry, and I feel that detailing my setup is worthy of its own post. By trying times I obviously mean the global effort to ramp up mass surveillance and lock down the internet and the devices we use to access it.

    For years I have gone down privacy rabbit holes with my digital life, generally stemming from a feeling of disgust at the knowledge of the level of data being harvested, simply from using a device I own on the internet. Other than this though it has been without a true cause and clear reason for doing so. Eventually I’d often feel like I was doing it for no reason and revert back to standard usage.

    This time however, things are different. The reason for trying to preserve my privacy and anonymity online is now crystal clear. Even if the motives of the powers pushing these agendas are more murky, it’s abundantly clear that these attempts should be resisted.

    Anyway, I wanted to share my setup with anyone interested. Quite a lot of work went into getting where I am now so I’ll break this down into sections. Any questions or recommendations for me feel free to leave a message:

    Background work

    I made the decision to move away from anything that required an app and had no web based alternative. Apps collect data and increase reliance on having a “compliant” smartphone. This involved changing banks (twice!), changing my mobile phone provider, avoiding certain utility providers and accepting that there are some things that just aren’t going to be accessible for me.

    I bought a domain for myself and host my emails with an independent provider. In my eyes there’s no point doing all this work just for [insert big tech co here] to get all the information I’m trying to protect by scanning my inbox.

    I devised a robust, offline system to back up my valuable data, it’s nothing complicated just a series of hard drives in a couple of different locations. However this allows me to keep backups of my data (photos, documents etc) without relying on a cloud provider.

    I began using an open source, independent password manager. No password is recycled, and I can access this via the web if I ever need to.

    My phone

    Currently I’m using a Moto G55 which is a bit of a unicorn in my opinion. It has an unlockable bootloader, a headphone jack AND a micro SD card slot! I bought it used for around £100. I have the bootloader unlocked, the device rooted and heavily debloated. I run a root firewall (AFwall+, available on F-Droid) and do encrypted app data backups to my SD card (Neo Backup, also on F-Droid) which I periodically copy over to my Hard drives. The phone is not signed into a Google account and I have very minimal apps on my phone aside from Signal, Magic Earth (google maps alternative) and a web browser.

    I don’t use the camera on my phone, I use a digital camera which I backup to my hard drives. I keep a local calendar using Fossify calendar (F-Droid again!) which I backup regularly. I have a local copy of all my music and use a local music player. My contacts are also local only and I keep a backup of those. I don’t have emails on my phone, I don’t feel the need to check them frequently and periodically check them on my desktop.

    I disable radios when not in use; GPS, bluetooth, NFC, Wi-FI. If I’m not using them they’re switched off. Same with microphone access and camera access. I have everything in my quick settings so it’s a minimal inconvenience to re-enable them when needed. If I’m out shopping my phone will be on airplane mode or better yet left in the car. The data collection while in shops is well documented.

    My aim with the phone is to have nothing of value on it. If it was stolen or confiscated there is essentially nothing on that device. They’d have access to my boring schedule through my calendar, the phone numbers of my family members and would be able to check out my music. I would simply cancel my SIM card and restore my small amount of data to a new device. As I have no apps on my device it would be very difficult for a thief to abuse having access to my phone number, there would be no way for them to work out who I held accounts with to try and gain access to them.

    My mobile web browser of choice is Firefox Focus. On exit it wipes itself clean. This serves two purposes. Firstly it stops me relying on it too heavily. It adds friction if I have to sign into something every time (plus I don’t keep my password manager on my phone so I would have to manually type it from my PC). Secondly I leave no trace if someone were to steal or gain access to my phone. No picture could be built from my web history, and accounts that would normally be left logged in on any other browser cannot be exploited in my case.

    I have a Google Pixel 10a stashed away for the future with GrapheneOS installed for if restrictions in the UK really ramp up. Knowing that device will be supported for another 7 years gives me some comfort in knowing that I have at least that long before I have to revisit my strategy. For now, the Motorola is sufficient though.

    My computer

    I have a number of computers, anyone in IT will know you just accumulate them. However I’ll summarise.

    My main gaming PC runs Linux. (There are no PC’s running Windows in my house, the telemetry and unreliability are too much for me to tolerate outside of work.) This is the one device I am completely comfortable using. There is nothing on this machine actively trying to steal my data, it is reliable and it is powerful. Any banking or similar tasks are performed on this machine. I also game through steam and any games I have that are DRM free can be played through Lutris. Any programs that I relied on from my Windows days I’ve found have all run flawlessly through WINE.

    Digital services

    Aside from the annual fee for my domain name, the £0.30 a month it costs me to host this website (didn’t want anything pointing at my home IP) and my annual VPN subscription (Private Internet Access) I have no subscriptions.

    That includes Netflix, Amazon prime, Spotify, game subscriptions, cloud storage. You name it, I don’t subscribe to it.

    Aside from not wanting to waste money, my goal is not to become reliant on anything that I don’t have full control over. I also don’t want my data to be held hostage in the event an account is closed, banned in my country, a payment isn’t made or a service shuts down.

    The VPN subscription may be in question soon though as the UK government are discussing making ID checks mandatory to use a VPN. In which case I’ll just rent a VPS in a country without restrictions and tunnel my traffic through that. To be honest it would probably work out cheaper anyway.

    Physical aspects

    This seems strange to be writing in a post about my digital life but I feel it’s relevant. There are no pictures of me online. If there are they’re from many many years ago and they’ll have no links to my name or any of my online usernames.

    Anyone from the UK will know we have one of the highest density CCTV networks in the world. I make a conscious effort to wear a hat that covers as much of my face as possible and generally wear sunglasses when out in public. Cameras are usually overhead and sunglasses throw AI facial detection cameras off. I also have a beard where I have neither in my drivers license or passport. I shave every time my photos need renewing.

    Conclusion

    I have nothing to hide. If the police came to me with a warrant I would gladly hand over my devices and they would (eventually) hand them back with nothing incriminating discovered. That’s not the point. I believe privacy is a human right. I do not want my data analysed by marketers to analyse my spending patterns. I do not want authoritarian governments monitoring my innocent movements and communications. I do not want to be arrested for being incorrectly identified by an AI camera. I do not want to be wrongly associated with a criminal act because my phone was geofenced in a certain place at a certain time. I do not want my personal data stored on a server that will inevitably be hacked and sold to the highest bidder on the black market.

    All I want is a simple, private and honest life for myself and my family, free from the poison that’s being forced upon us. Of course I do not want my Children being exposed to adult content, however as a tech literate person, when the time comes I will use the widely available tools to control access as a responsible parent should. The state need not interfere.

  • So, I wasn’t that paranoid after all.

    What an absolutely devastating year it’s been for digital sovereignty.

    The worlds governments seem to be hell bent on stripping every bit of freedom and anonymity that’s left when using the internet. Social media bans for teens, mandatory ID checks for everyone. Anything deemed to be adult content locked behind an ID gate. Supposedly the governments are now considering making ID checks mandatory to use a VPN as they’ve clocked that people are using these to bypass the systems. We’ve also had the UK government pressuring big tech (not that they’d take much persuasion) to mandate age verification at the OS level on smartphones.

    The bots, the shills and the naive will get behind the rhetoric of “it’s for the children”. It’s never been about the children. Many of the “elites” pushing these agendas don’t have the best track record with children. Epstein files anyone? They could not care less about the welfare of children. This is just an excuse to demonise anyone trying to push back at their draconian surveillance obsession. The mega rich, and the nations they use as puppets, despise the free speech without consequence that comes from an anonymous internet.

    The peer to peer event coverage of things that main media is forbidden to broadcast, the collaboration of knowledge that exposes agendas, the pressure a collective of individuals can apply to big corporations, it all undermines the absolute control of the average person that they desire so badly.

    Coupled with this we’ve got entire forests in the US being destroyed to make way for water guzzling data centres. Who asked for all these monolithic buildings? Certainly not the layman. In my social and professional circle I’d estimate that 10% use “AI” in some capacity, even then not to the level that would demand anything other than a small local LLM. Aside from artificially inflating (hey, maybe that’s a better meaning for “AI”; Artificial Inflation!)the stock markets I have an inkling that in time these data centres will become a key part in the mass surveillance engine. “AI” facial recognition, raw data collation, pattern recognition, identifying individuals through their writing patterns, possibly even decrypting encrypted communications.

    When businesses finally realise they’re not getting any ROI on their “AI” spend, I wouldn’t be surprised if these “AI” companies turn to governments offering the above services alongside the already concerning military applications the US are exploring.

    It all seems a bit bleak, doesn’t it? What can an individual person possibly do to fight against this? Simple, resist at every opportunity.

    If greeted with an ID checkpoint online, leave the service. If you have no other choice, upload a fake document. Ideally close your account with the company and make your reason known if given the chance.

    Don’t use “AI” for personal applications. Even though you may find it convenient by using it you’re accelerating the progression by training the models, potentially funding with a paid subscription or inflating their user counts. No matter the service you are also completely sacrificing your privacy by interacting with it in any capacity.

    If your employer mandates its usage, maliciously comply. Ensure you run up token usage as high as possible with poor quality prompts. Don’t check the outputs too carefully, “AI” is always right remember… Make sure any hallucinations get submitted as work. Also consider reminding your employer of any data protection and legislation that could be applied to it’s usage. If you’re in the UK or EU the UK GDPR, data protection act and the EU AI Act would be a good place to start.

    Minimise your smartphone dependency on your smartphone. Consolidating all of your digital life onto one device that you carry on your person at all times might seem convenient, but it’s an absolute nightmare for privacy. With as many sensors as a smartphone has, and the priveledged access Google and Apple give themselves you are literally giving them everything. Geofencing, unauthorised Microphone access, contact association, health information, even your sexual preferences. You name it, your smartphone is collecting it. There are ways to minimise this; run a “degoogled” phone (ideally grapheneOS), use a “dumbphone” that doesn’t have the ability to collect said data. The most realistic solution for the average person though is just keep the data off your smartphone in the first place. Turn sensors like GPS, bluetooth, NFC, WiFi/bluetooth scanning off when you’re not using them. Don’t give it your ID, don’t sign into your banking, don’t keep any sensitive data/pictures/videos on there. (I’ll go into how I minimise my smartphone risk in a seperate post)

    This may all sound a little extreme but this could well be a pivotal time in human history. When we’ve all lost access to the free internet, are monitored through every second of our days and have to fight over minimum wage jobs to feed our families, would you rather be on the side that did their best to stop it or at least slow it down, or the side that embraced it with open arms?

    I always like the analogy of the trees voting the axe because the handle was made out of wood. None of this is in our best interests. Shareholders demand profits, governments demand control. Right now those things go hand in hand.

    Obviously what I’m writing here is my individual take on current events without sources. Please don’t take my word for anything, do your own research and form your own opinions. All I am trying to do is make people more aware of the potential dystopia we’re nonchalantly slipping into.

  • Can this year get any worse? (Digital ID)

    I’m sorry, I know I said I was done being political but what on earth is going on this year?! It feels like we’ve gone into some dystopian, authoritarian timeline that just consists of every conspiracy theory over the past few years thrown in and made into a truth.

    I’m genuinely shocked to read the news. We’re still feeling the aftershocks of the Online Safety Act (let’s be honest most people now just use VPN’s to circumvent restriction), which measured by any metric has been an absolute disaster (I wouldn’t expect any less from the UK government). Now our practically unelected, dictator-lite Prime Minister Kier Starmer has just announced he’ll be introducing mandatory digital ID’s for all UK citizens before his term is over.

    With any announcement you have to read between the lines, or realistically completely outside the lines as you cannot believe a word that leaves any politicians mouth. It’s no coincidence that this announcement comes as we hear Starmer has been taking advice from the infamous warmongering, arms peddling ex prime minister that is Tony Blair. Blair, for whatever shady motive, has been desperate to mandate identity cards for the UK for decades. Blair and Starmer have also been cosying up to Peter Thiel, the billionaire behind Palantir. I won’t go into this company in too much detail but it’s bad news and I urge you to do your own research on both Thiel (just today linked to Epstein) and Palantir (mass data harvester and broker). As the UK government loves to outsource and help fund politicians private interests, we can almost guarantee that it’ll be these guys delivering the product. Up until now Digital ID has been rejected by parliament every time, with the government confirming they were ruling out Digital ID as recently as 2024, but seemingly something has changed.

    It’s being sold to the public as a deterrent for illegal migrants, however anyone with more than just air between their ears can see this is nonsense. The jobs that illegal migrants are currently doing will not care whether someone presents their “BritCard” or not. Sharing an Uber eats, just eat or deliveroo account will not be affected, nor will workers being paid cash in takeaway restaurants, nor will the gangs requiring drug runners or farmers for their Cannabis grow houses. No, this is simply another encroachment on citizens freedoms and one step closer to authoritarianism. Let me explain.

    Currently there are multiple ways for a UK citizen to identify themselves, however none of them are required to be on our person at all times. They are our National Insurance number, our driving license, our passport, or a number of documents/bills addressed to us. Right to work checks and background checks can be performed off the back of this identification. Surely this is enough? No, because this has nothing with our work eligibility. This has everything to do with controlling citizens, and is a direct sequel to the failed implementation of the Online Safety Act.

    The UK government is desperate to control the voices of its population, especially online, and squash any dialog that could stir sentiment they deem undesirable. Even when it comes to social media where people are supposed to register with their real name it can be difficult to link a post to a physical person with absolute certainty. Enter digital ID.

    The government have promised that it will only be used as a way to prove work eligibility but we know from previous implementations that this will just be the way they justify it to get it through the gate, so to speak. Once implemented its use case will expand gradually until we forget the seemingly innocent reason it was originally brought in for. The ID will be stored on your phone, immediately linking you to your Google account/Apple ID and your phone number. As it will be stored in a government app, it will ensure this digital ID is linked to your driving license, your NI number and your passport too. From there you’ll need it to sign up for any utilities, including your home broadband, ensuring any activity from your IP address can be traced back to you. You’ll also need it to “confirm your identity” when using any form of social media.

    All this amounts to the desired effect of absolutely destroying any anonymity on the internet. People are already being thrown in prison, getting criminal records and losing their jobs over seemingly innocent posts on social media. Imagine the amount of Reddit posts, X or Youtube comments you’ve read that could land a person in prison if it was easier to link them back to a real person. Coupled with the fact that we’re suffering rampant inflation with a stagnation of wages in the UK and you have a population that’s much easier to control when people cannot afford to lose their jobs or not be earning. Any critics will effectively be silenced through fear of consequences.

    TL/DR: The digital ID, while not a bad thing in isolation, could prove to be absolutely devastating if implemented in the UK. It has major implications for privacy, free speech and autonomy for all citizens. The acting government has proven their words cannot be trusted, and are currently acting completely outside of their own manifesto. Sign the petition against it here https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194 and contact your local MP as a starting point. We simply need to do everything in our power to resist this constant encroachment on our freedoms. Do whatever is within your power and you feel appropriate. If this is implemented, I can guarantee that I will be able to come back to this post in 5 years time and say I told you so.

  • How can we escape the negative news cycle?

    This week the algorithms have been working overtime, and not in a good way.

    Seemingly all from across the pond in the US we’ve been bombarded by snippets of disgusting revelations from Jeffry Epstein’s birthday cards. We’ve been forced to endure the ghastly video of Iryna Zarutska, which highlights the failings of the US judicial system but then hijacked into a racial argument. Finally we’ve bore witness to the ruthless assassination of Charles Kirk in front of a huge audience containing his own wife and Children.

    This boils down to Peadophiles being exposed, and two murders. I’m not trying to downplay this news but I am trying to put it in perspective, for you and myself. According to multiple sources online the average amount of deaths across the world each day is around 150,000. I imagine some of these are peaceful but I also don’t think it would be a stretch to assume that some of these demises are much more brutal than the two we’ve just witnessed. Again, I’m not trying to downplay anybodies death here, certainly not the total figure either. The point I am trying to make is that even on our happiest days, where we receive no bad news and everything feels great, unimaginable atrocities are being committed across the world.

    We are only affected by the news we hear about. The news we hear about is generally the news that someone decides is relevant. I don’t think it is long shot to say that those minds deciding what is, and isn’t valid news for us also have a vested interest in trying to influence our general mood and political feelings. I doubt we’ll ever understand the true motives, but this does happen and has been proven time and time again.

    Social media is not healthy for the human mind. Our brains have not evolved to be able to cope with such large communities and a bombardment of information. In an evolutionary timescale it’s only been the blink of an eye since we were tribal primal beings, living in small communities where one could probably count the total people they knew on their hands and toes combined. Their issues would be local, maybe a lack of resources or a dangerous predator in the area. But these problems were tangible, and generally something that the members of that community had control over dealing with.

    The internet has only served to speed up the news cycle, and in an attention economy it’s a well known fact that negative news sells. No-one clicks an article on a couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary when below it there is an article that demands our shock, horror or outrage.

    Even the tech space has been negative recently, and I’ve been sucked in. Just because one company is doing something we don’t like, doesn’t mean there’s not still enjoyment to be had elsewhere.

    Do not feel guilty for wanting to detach from it all, even if only temporarily. I don’t want to belittle any of my readers by saying this, but we are all relatively significant to matters outside of our local villages or towns. Myself in the UK knowing of the crimes committed in the US has no bearing on their outcome, their due process will continue with or without me knowing about them. The levels of knife crime or mobile phone theft occurring in London will not increase or decrease just because I’m aware of it. The immigration levels in Sweden will not decrease on the basis of me reading about the crimes committed against the natives. Palestine and Israel, Russia and Ukraine will not both magically reach resolutions if I spend days depressing myself watching footage of war zones and trying to pick the side that I feel is most righteous. I think I’ve made my point.

    It may not feel like it with attention grabbing articles littered everywhere but we do have a choice. If, like me you’re currently feeling overwhelmed by negative news, remove it from your life. If you want to maintain the feeling of being well informed you still can be, just limit the locale of the news you access. For example, stick to your local news site or newspaper. If you want more, maybe stretch to your County or State, or at the very most your own country. The rest of the world will continue with its own business while you can get on with yours, hopefully in a much happier way.

    I don’t know who said this, not can I find the quote, but it has stuck with me: “The sins of the world are not ours to bear”.

    Make your world smaller again, find beauty in the small things and enjoyment in the normal.

    For me that entails a self imposed ban of the Reddit homepage. If I want to look at something I’ll go to that subreddit directly. Staying away from other negative news sources too. I’m going to make my world smaller, focusing on my family, my career and the tech that I enjoy.

  • Is it time to ditch Google?

    In light of Google’s recent announcement (banning unsigned app installations from September 2026) I deleted my Google account today.

    I have always been creeped out by Google’s data collection, and only tolerated them anywhere near my personal data because of the flexibility the Android operating system paired with their services offered. Take away that flexibility and they have nothing of value to offer me.

    I don’t use many of the Google software products. The only ones I can think of are Google Maps, Youtube, Wallet and Find my phone. I don’t use Gmail, I don’t sync my calendar, tasks, notes or contacts to their servers as I manage all that myself. I use open source apps or anything I need from the Play Store I download with Aurora.

    I realised that when pushed, I don’t need a Google account at all. For the sake of my privacy I can do without Find my phone, I can watch and save all of my favourite channels on Youtube using Newpipe, I can use an alternative for Navigation or if using Android Auto I can just use Google maps without being logged in. Wallet will be an inconvenience but I’ll just use my physical cards again.

    Aside from this I feel a sentiment that I’ve seen echoed quite a bit in light of this recent news. If Google remove what made their product uniquely attractive, then we may as well just get iPhones. It may sound strange to say, but I trust Apple with my data more than I do Google, and if there is no freedom on either devices then I’d rather use an iPhone.

    Apple aren’t saints by any means. They’ve locked their devices down to a ridiculous degree from the very start. However, they are a hardware company where Google are an advertising company. They recently stood up to the UK government when asked to provide a back door into user data. They offered long support of their devices before it was cool to do so.

    Do I think putting more business towards a restrictive company, that already has a near monopoly in the developed world is an ideal solution? Absolutely not, in any other situation I’d say it’s a terrible idea. But in this case it just might be the best option. And maybe, just maybe if Google notices a loss in market share, not just in Google Pixel users but all Android devices they might back track on this awful decision.

    I’ll be having a long think about where we’ll go from here, and whether I’m willing to leave Android behind. What I am certain about is that I will never have another Google account, and Google will never receive another penny from me, either directly or indirectly through Play Store purchases.

  • “The once great internet”

    Logging onto my site just now I read my own homepage blurb, “Welcome explorers of the once great internet”. It made me think, I wrote that over 6 months ago as it was obviously something I was feeling at the time. However fast forward 6 months and it’s got infinitely worse.

    If I thought it was bad then, and now I’m looking back at how it was better (albeit still bad) than it is now are we just on a never ending downward spiral?

    What will the internet look like in another 5-10 years. AI generated marketing masquerading as websites, places of human conversation legislated into extinction and our “consumption” being doomscrolling short form content that is most likely AI created too?

    You can count me out.

    I have enough games from the golden era before micro transactions and DLC to last me a lifetime, in both handheld and large screen form.

    I have offline copies of Wikipedia for information.

    I have a large collection of movies and series.

    I already don’t rely on the cloud or have any subscriptions.

    The point I’m making here is that if the internet does become a government controlled, whitewashed hell hole people will just step back from it. Yes you’ll have your people that are perfectly happy reading clickbait and doom scrolling and you know what? That’s perfectly fine, whatever gets them through their day. But for me I’d rather go back to not having it rather than putting up with that.

    The “internet” is just a large network that we collectively agreed we’d connect and contribute to. There is nothing stopping people getting together and making their own, unregulated mesh networks. If we carry on down the route we’re going I wouldn’t be surprised if we see that start to happen, similar to what Cuban’s have done. I’d be all for it, a new wild west.

  • Downfall of Amazon (shopping)

    I’ve specifically mentioned shopping in my title because Amazon is nowhere near just a shopping platform. However that’s all I’m talking about today.

    Years ago, maybe around 2006 I remember placing my first order on Amazon. It was for a PS3 game and I remember specifically having to register an email address, to then register an Amazon account, and then deposit some money into my bank account so I could pay with my card (back then I was paid cash). It was a bit of a shot in the dark, I wasn’t sure when my order would arrive if at all and it felt strange making a purchase over the internet. The game did arrive (nowhere near as quickly as it would with “prime delivery” today) and it cost me substantially less than if I’d purchased it at my local game store.

    Over the years I’ve used Amazon quite a lot. As someone who finds a day out shopping, particularly around Christmas time unpleasant and downright stressful having the ability to choose gifts for my loved ones at my leisure and from the comfort of my own home has always appealed to me. It used to be a brilliant platform that collated good quality products from all the shops and brands you could imagine and offer you them at a slightly cheaper price. Until it became something else…

    Those products from well known brands are still there, but you’ll be hard pressed to find them. Amazon opened their arms to drop shippers armed with rafts of unbranded Chinese goods. All of them have brands that are just random combinations of letters such as “Oakxco”, “Yatwin” or even “Tiixxa” (Those were the first 3 results from a search of “Phone case”). These random names are a result of Amazon requiring their sellers to have a brand that is a registered company, so Chinese sellers just throw a random combination of letters in to try and avoid clashing with another brand. If you search a generic term like I just have that is all you will see. If you want a specific brand, you have to be specific in your query. However even that isn’t bulletproof, sometimes unknown brands will still creep in.

    So, why am I coining this the “Downfall of Amazon”? Well quite simply, Amazon clearly didn’t realise what their USP (Unique Selling Point) was. You could buy the products you wanted, all collated in an easy to find format, at a better price than a brick and mortar store and it all arrived next day. The tantalising allure of extreme profit margins, only possible from selling lower quality Chinese goods at an extreme margin was clearly too strong to resist. Not only are there unknown brands now, but there are also fakes amongst the genuine listings that are impossible to distinguish until you receive the product.

    I don’t use Amazon at all anymore. If I want something from a well know brand, I’ll purchase it from Argos. I can collect it the same day, and I can be confident it will be genuine. If I want some Chinese tat I’ll go direct to the source. Aliexpress is my Chinese marketplace of choice, but others use Shein or Temu. The prices are generally less than half of what Amazon charges for the exact same product and I’ve even received genuine products from there when I didn’t expect to. For small electronic components, or things needed for a repair they’re unbeatable. Just this week I received my replacement Oneplus 13 screen with frame after ordering it only 5 days earlier. It was delivered to me for £130 and is a genuine product. Amazon don’t even sell this screen and sourcing the part directly from Oneplus would’ve cost me £280.

    More and more I’m hearing people turning to buying direct from China. People that barely even know how to use a computer, not just the savvy. When someone can get a product for less than half price they could locally, with good customer service and within a week you can bet they’re going to jump at it.

    Some people will say we should be buying local, supporting our own countries economy but honestly our government has made that impossible. We are in a cost of living crisis where every penny counts. Food is getting more and more expensive every week. Aside from that our brick and mortar shops have become so poor that I wouldn’t even be able to find the products I needed if I wanted to. Our town centres seem to be transforming into services rather than shopping. There is an abundance of bars, coffee shops, sandwich shops, butchers and bakeries. However if I wanted an electronics shop I’d have to travel 20 miles, and they don’t even have a store front I’d have to either order online or order at the counter from the catalogue. All we have in towns are vape shops, phone case shops and charity shops. I’m afraid the damage is done, and as much as I want to do the right thing I don’t have the energy to keep fighting.

    If Amazon does fall I can’t say I’ll be sad to see it go. They’ve become too much of a monopoly, they’re prices aren’t that good anymore, the sales are appalling and “prime”‘s pricing has increased far too much over the last few years. They treat their staff poorly, and the Amazon delivery drivers desperate to meet unrealistic targets are a danger on the roads.

  • Online Safety Act 2023

    The UK has always been a nanny state. After all we’re a member of the “Five Eyes” (If this is the first you’ve heard of it, look it up and fall down a rabbit hole for a while). GCHQ have been charged previously of mishandling the data of their bulk intercepted communications so this is no conspiracy. However up until now a privacy concerned individual has been able to take steps to preserve their online privacy, at least to a certain degree.

    The Online Safety Act 2023 is the first step in destroying that possibility entirely and making any movements on the internet entirely traceable.

    Under the guise of protecting children (SPOILER ALERT: This Act has nothing to do with protecting children and everything about surveillance) as of 27/07/2025 anything deemed to be “Adult” content must be be locked behind age verification. So far this has been through either a “selfie” to estimate your age (and be able to link you digitally to your online passport photo), or directly uploading scans of your photo ID.

    The blocking pornography part of this is the part I’m least bothered by. Anyone with half a brain will have browsing their “adult entertainment” using a VPN for years now, and will have no problem continuing to do so. The part that really worries me for the future of the world is that this will be used to control access to information. Anything deemed “graphic” will be locked behind the ID verification, and the aim of this first stage will be to normalise sharing this information.

    With the threat of “Digital ID” being thrown around as a “solution” to the migrant issue this will go hand in hand perfectly. Out of convenience, I’m sure if this ID system does come into effect you’ll be able to link it to your smartphone to automatically verify yourself anywhere it’s required. At that point your entire digital footprint will be directly linked to you as a person.

    In theory you wouldn’t have an issue if you’re just shopping online, watching funny cat videos or looking up a recipe, but the problems may start to arise if your political views don’t align with the current government. Should you start looking for news sources different to the current preferred state propaganda your future might start looking less bright very quickly. In this digital dystopia you could be denied access to finance facilities, blacklisted for jobs, banned from places in person or online. We only need to look to China and the CCP to see just how authoritarian things can get if we let them.

    What can you do then? Unfortunately not a lot. The time to act before the bill has passed, and the majority of people ignored any calls to action. The government played their games very cleverly with this one. Branding it as a bill to “protect the children” meant they could very easily demonize anyone who spoke out against it. All you can do now is at the next election vote for a party that promise to repeal the act.

    Similar to the mass surveillance laws enacted post 9/11, watch out for Digital ID being pushed as the solution to illegal migrants. It won’t solve anything. Someone willing to hire someone who can’t legally work in the country won’t care if they have a digital ID or not. It’s just an excuse to push it through parliament. Do what you can to resist the authoritarian regimes and do not allow governments to encroach on your freedoms.

    If we carry on the route we’re going, it won’t be long before I could be arrested for posting something like this.

  • The current, bleak state of things.

    15 years ago if someone had told me about the dead internet theory I’d have laughed in their face. To quote Wikipedia a definition of it is:

    “The dead Internet theory is a conspiracy theory which asserts that, due to a coordinated and intentional effort, the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithmic curation to control the population and minimize organic human activity.”

    Doesn’t sound too far fetched in 2025 does it? Just yesterday my Android phone installed an update and notified me of improvements to “Gemini”. Namely that it could now do deep research on a prompt, and convert those generated results into a podcast style summary. Curious, I gave it a go. The topic I’d been debating online (who knows if I was talking to a bot) was whether or not we need to use cases and screen protectors on modern smartphones anymore. So that was what I asked.

    About a minute later I’d been given a huge wall of text on the topic, and a click of a button and another 1 minute later a 10 minute “podcast” was ready to listen to. I popped in my earbuds and pressed play. I was deeply disturbed at the results. There were two voices in this audio, a male and a female conversing on the topic. This didn’t sound like text to speech at all, there were breaths taken, pauses in the right places, consistent accents and what sounded like organic conversation taking place.

    If LLM generated audio can sound so convincing, there is little to no chance we’d be able to discern between true human written text and the “AI” content. I’ve seen videos exposing the uncanny “AI” generated videos, that unless told we would have no idea weren’t real.

    These tech companies have scraped through all of humanity’s history on the internet, our books, our movies, our music, our conversations and even our photos. In a very simplified explanation they’ve boiled all this content together and given it to very powerful computers that can now recite all of this knowledge and do it in a manner than appears very human. It can create images from a prompt, videos from an image and new music from artists that have long since passed.

    This is undoubtedly an achievement like no other, even 5 years ago I would never have believed any of this would be possible this half of the century let alone the same decade. But at what cost?

    It’s rapidly destroyed our online communities that closed the gaps between continents, allowed for collaboration in ways never seen before and more importantly gave people that struggled to fit in places they felt at home. Government regulation has closed down all but the biggest of these communities, and most now rely on their own little spaces within the major social networks. Namely Facebook and Reddit.

    Facebook is never something I’ve been comfortable. My online identity and my “IRL” identity have always been kept separate. A platform trying to force me to combine these identities was never going to sit well with me. For that reason (amongst others!) Facebook is a no go for me, and I’ll never have a profile on there.

    Reddit used to be what felt like the final outpost of humanity on the internet, but now I’m not so sure. Regulation has been weighing it down for some time, as the owners have been deemed ultimately responsible for any content posted on there censorship has increased dramatically. Recently the “Online Safety Act” has come into play which has made things much, much worse. To even be aware of the existence of what Reddit deem to be “adult content” on Reddit, you now need to be logged in and have your age verified with either a selfie or your national ID. Aside from being absolutely dystopian this now puts it in the same boat as Facebook. Your online identity and your real life identity become one.

    Anonymity online is essentially dead anywhere it actually mattered now. No longer can you enjoy discourse around your hobbies online without it being linked back to you. No longer can you vocalise political views without risking a knock at your door.

    As an old school internet user I vehemently oppose regulation of the internet, I promote open source collaboration and promote free speech whether I agree with the opinion or not.

    Unfortunately the internet as we knew it is dead. The only certainty in browsing it in the way we used to is that you will be spoon fed marketing and propaganda. We can no longer guarantee that anything we read on there is real, especially when it’s claimed to have been posted by an individual.

    Does that mean our communities and collaboration are dead? Absolutely not. The communities will just migrate to places that have less regulation. Encrypted chat channels, tor networks and private online communities to name a few. The downsides of this is it’ll be much harder for newcomers to find their way, and that actually nefarious communities such as black hat hacking groups and people that have interests or beliefs that are actually a risk to the public will be harder to find. However the latter is not our problem, and is a direct result of the lawmakers actions. Surely these people would learn from history, just one look at the results of alcohol prohibition and the criminalisation of drugs would tell them that! Overnight the population of the UK’s knowledge of VPN’s increased dramatically, a very bad result for what can only be described as a nanny state if you ask me.

    Anyway, I digress. What, if any value can be extracted from the internet in it’s new form then? In traditional use, very little. Unfortunately, the only way to interface efficiently now is to use the new tools. Use “AI”. While “AI” is still in its early phase the tech companies are still very keen on improving their algorithms. That means they want people to converse with it, en masse. As a result, there a very little ads being served and very little if any cost passed on to the consumer. Use “ChatGPT”, “Gemini”, “Deepseek” or whatever you fancy to trawl the web for you. But use it as a starting point only, it generally gives you its sources of information so use those links to your advantage. Don’t blindly take its output as gospel, it’s often inaccurate, or slightly but importantly incorrect and misleading.

    Will I follow this advice myself? I’m not sure I can bring myself to feed its language models, nor do I want to help them build up an even clearer profile of me. There’s also a part of me that feels like it’s completely destroying peoples ability to think critically. For some though, especially those that really learn how to extract value from it, it’ll be an opportunity to get ahead of their peers. For me, maybe I’m just happy to be left behind.

  • Smartphone addiction or social media addiction?

    We see it all the time. People are at war with their own screen time. Or not. I’d argue some people don’t even know they have a problem. It’s very telling though when both of the major smartphone operating systems have built in methods to help limit screen time and use their devices in more productive ways. Would they actually want you to use your smartphone less though? Obviously not, but there is enough of a demand that they need to be seen trying at least.

    If you use a smartphone, take a look at your screen time in the settings of your device. If this isn’t something you’re mindful of you may be surprised at just how much time you spend staring at it every day. Secondly take a look at the breakdown by application, if you have any form of social media installed on the device I’d bet with fairly high confidence that the social media application is at the top of the list.

    The argument I’d like to make is that when we hear people talking about smartphone addictions, with people regularly hitting 10 hours or more a day on their phone (which is frankly insane!) they’re actually incorrect. I think what most people are describing is a social media addiction, the reason that the smartphone is blamed as the culprit it because it enhances the problem due to it’s convenience and portability.

    Have you ever noticed that neither Windows or Mac computers have settings to limit screen time? They simply don’t need it. When we use a computer it’s more intentional. Generally we perform the task we set out to complete and then we switch it off again. In my case I primarily use a desktop computer, to use it I have to sit at my desk and if I’m not at my desk any task I need to perform on the computer would have to wait until I’m there. The 27″ monitor I have can display information at a much larger size, I can type at 80 words per minute on it’s full sized keyboard, and I can select things and operate much more accurately with a proper mouse. Considering this and many more reasons, using my desktop computer is the most efficient and productive way for me to interface with the digital world. Yet if I wasn’t mindful of my usage I would be sat on the sofa trying to do these things on my phone. Why? Because it’s more convenient.

    Yes you can use social media on a computer, in a web browser but I doubt many people do this, especially those that aren’t mindful of their social media consumption. The majority of people will use social media on their mobile device, with a dedicated app that can send notifications to them at any time, and that’s when social media can become a problem.

    A smartphone, when used intentionally can be a very powerful productivity tool. It provides a way to interface with the digital form in a portable form factor. You can access and manage your finances. You have the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips through its web browser. You can take photos, record videos, play them back or send them to friends and family. You can take and store an almost infinite number of notes. It can be your alarm clock, timer or stopwatch. You can read books or watch films on it. It can also replace your wallet. Obviously it’s also a phone! This is really only scratching the surface of the near endless functionality of a smartphone. Looking back only a few years having a modern smartphone in your pocket would be the equivalent of having access to a pocketable super computer. Is it the most productive form factor? Absolutely not. A relatively small touch screen as the only input and display is not a particularly ergonomic or effective way of using a computer, but considering it has to fit in our pocket the options are quite limited.

    I argue strongly that it is not the smartphone that should be demonised, for it’s merely a tool it is in fact the social media apps that have completely hijacked our smartphones that is the problem.

    Don’t believe me? Don’t take my word for it. Take part in my challenge. But before you do anything I’d like you to record some data as a baseline. For 7 days, at the end of each day, write down your total screen time for the day.

    Once you’ve done that delete every single social media app from your mobile phone, and block access to their web versions from your web browser (depending on your device the steps for that will be different but the information is easily found on popular search engines). You don’t need to delete your social media accounts, and you can still access the accounts on a desktop, laptop or even a tablet as often as you like but just not your smartphone. Do this for 14 days, and at the end of each day write down your total screen usage.

    I’ve done exactly as I described above, however I went one step further. I also completely deleted the accounts. The only account I still have is Youtube and I limit my usage of that to my tablet.

    The first couple of days you’ll find your screen time is still high, however it will be slightly lower than before. You’ll find yourself unlocking your smartphone regularly out of sheer habit, but because the allure of social media is gone from it you’ll probably swipe through the Home Screen for a minute or so before putting it back in your pocket. Try your best not to replace scrolling social media with mindless web browsing. By the end of this challenge I am almost certain that (unless you’re involved in multiple group chats that you participate heavily in) your screen time will have at least halved. You’ll find that when you do use your smartphone it will be to complete a task that you decided upon before you unlocked the screen, and once that task is completed the screen will be switched off.

    If you have taken part in this challenge, please share your results in the comments if you’re comfortable doing so. What I’d also be interested to know is that at the end of the challenge will you be reinstalling the apps or are you going to continue to keep them off your smartphone?

    For me personally I enjoy being intentional with my consumption of media, and I like to be present when I’m spending time with friends or family. A face to face conversation is much richer and more fulfilling than anything I could ever see on my smartphone so I prioritise that. I spend less than an hour a day on my smartphone now, and yet I still listen to music, I still use my GPS, I keep in touch with people, I do mobile banking and I keep on top of email. My device can go almost a week between charges because unless I need the phone for something, it’s not being used.

    To conclude and summarise: When you next hear the term “smartphone addiction”, consider correcting it to “social media addiction”. It’s nigh on impossible to be addicted to a tool. To put it crudely; a drug user is not addicted to a syringe, but the drugs they administer through it. Used correctly a syringe is a powerful tool that can be used to saved lives, but it can also be misused to devastating effect.