I’ve been de-coupling from the reliance on “cloud” services. Earlier I removed everything important from Google servies, and Google Drive in particular. However I still needed to share a couple of important things to my other devices, especially my phone, when not home. So, I still have to maintain a minimal prescence.
Then I found Syncthing. Essentially it lets any device sync to any other devices (which you cofigure), bypassing the Internet. That way, Big Tech companies do NOT have your critical data. It works on Windows, Linux, and mobile platforms.
Why is having your data on Big Tech clouds a big problem? Imagine if Google or Microsoft bans you for some stuff, you no longer can log in until you make a new account, or get the current ban revoked. You’ve just lost all access to your documents and data on your “cloud”.
Background – I’ve been a Unix / Linux sysadmin since the early 2000s. Hence I’m no stranger to Unix environments.
With the recent shennanigans by Microsoft pushing ads to their start menu as well as their insistence on making everything AI (not to mention their Recall “feature”), I finally decided enough was enough. Time to ditch Windows.
Previously only ONE thing held me back from moving – games. Yup I need the ability to run games on Linux if ever moved over. Now, Linux does!
My Jaybirds would no longer charge – red light doesn’t come on. Changing cables, using wall charger etc did not help. They just would NOT CHARGE.
Sigh, for the price I paid for the Jaybird X4s, one would have thought the customer service would be better. But no, whenever you write to them for assistance, all you get is a canned response, and it’s exactly the same regardless of who replied. It’s like they have this template reply on a corporate server somewhere and every customer service rep just copy/paste it to every incoming ticket. Even if the issue reported has NOTHING to do with the instructions sent in the reply to you.
Once bitten, twice shy as they say. I will no longer purchase anymore Jaybirds (or Logitechs, but that is another story). I had thought that by paying a premium price, I might actually get a quality product, and if I encountered problems, a decent customer service would be available to assist.
