Defenestrating GenAI, Big Tech, and other miscreants

• I’m going to migrate to KeePassXC and setup Syncthing for syncing the database to my phone and laptop.
• I’m going to migrate off all Proton services. There are just way too many ethical red flags with Proton. I submitted a support ticket to Proton to see if I can get refunded for my subscription. Hopefully they’ll be good about it. 🤞
• For email, I might use Fastmail or Tuta. Is there any reason I should avoid Fastmail? Fastmail was $5/month last I checked, and they have email address masking and other features. Tuta is about $3.48/month but doesn’t have those features. I also like the Fastmail web UI better than Tuta’s.
• I cancelled my Kagi subscription and am now using StartPage for a search engine. For reasons why, see this blog post. Honestly I really hate that this information was out there long before I even started using Kagi. It just hadn’t made its way to my awareness until today. Something something we’re doing the best we can with the informations we have available at the time – except the times when I do have the information available and choose not act on it out of convenience, lack of spoons, and a kind of jaded and cynical absurdism.
• As far as operating systems and Linux distros goes, I can’t not use Linux, but I can avoid using IBM and Canonical products where possible. My desktop and laptop run CachyOS. I have FreeBSD on my NAS right now for native ZFS support. If I want to increase my ethics points I could run Gentoo, as they’ve taken a stance against GenAI. This might be feasible on my NAS, but for my desktop and laptop it would be a whole ordeal that’s likely to turn into a shitshow. It figures that the least unethical option is the most inconvenient. Can’t get a fucking break there.
• I’m working on making my vim-classic experience closer to my Neovim setup.

I still haven’t quite recovered from my jaded and cynical absurdist affliction.

Honestly there ought to be more content on the internet about how to make your computing experience more ethical. Maybe even a sort of quiz you can do to rate how ethical your computing setup is, just for funsies.

Here is one such resource for using ethical hardware and software: https://stopgenai.com/how-to-avoid-gen-ai/. These recommendations are apt to change in the future, but as of 2026-05-26, they are still relevant.

This has got me wondering something else, though. Some time in the next few years, my gaming rig, which I currently use as my main workstation, will become obsolete, or components will break, or whatever else happens to computing hardware over time. I’ve decided that this will be the last gaming rig I buy. I think it’s much better if I separate gaming from my everyday computing, because the hardware requirements and energy usage for gaming are vastly different from what I need for everyday computing.

The Steam Machine is looking like a viable alternative. It’s an x86_64 machine itself, so it’s basically a PC in a console-like form factor. By the time I’m ready for a new rig, the Steam Machine would be more refined¹. To be able to use it only when I game and shut it down when I’m not gaming would save a lot on energy usage. Also, this way, I can use a miniPC from like System76, Framework, TUXEDO Computers, or possibly a RISC-V vendor for my main workstation. I might even be able to have a completely liberated computing setup, from the hardware to the software, and even run an FSF-approved distro like Parabola or Trisquel².

UPDATE 1 (kinda rambly)

This might be my jaded cynical absurdist affliction talking but honestly I’m having trouble deciding whether some of these changes would be worth it.

The most concrete impact migrating off of Proton services would have for me is that it would be less expensive to use Fastmail.

I just don’t feel the other reasons as strongly as I ought to. Same with Canonical and IBM products. I’ll avoid GenAI and technofascism as much as I can, but I don’t think I have the spoons to be a purist here. I’m not sure if I should apologize for this. I think my current setup is comparatively pretty ethical.

UPDATE 2 (still kinda rambly)

So Proton got back to me in the support ticket. They can’t give me a refund (bastards).

My Plus subscription expires in March 2027, so I’m going to let it run out and then not renew it.

This is one of a few times I’ve tried migrating off Proton services for ethical reasons. The services themselves are good, and as it is I’m kind of entrenched in them, but there’s always this nagging in the background of my mind that I’m doing a bad thing by using them. Come next March I’ll be glad to finally be done with this hemming and hawing. And at least I’ll have plenty of time to figure out alternatives.

Also, there’s the sunk-cost fallacy. In the past it was somehow easy for me to just say “fuck it” – I think this had to do with negative symptoms of my schizo-affective disorder. Lately I’m finding it much harder to do that with things I’ve spent money on. Sunk-cost can be a fallacy and cognitive bias but I also think a lot of the time it is pretty rational to want to get what you’ve paid for in spite of the product not being up to par. So I think this might actually be a sign of some reduction of negative symptoms. A sign of sanity, if you will.

The complicated thing here is that the products themselves are fine, they work fantastically, but the ethics of the company and its CEO are questionable. The abstraction veil here has made it harder to stop using their services.

However, with the nagging feeling in my mind, the social pressure to migrate, and my tiring of the hemming and hawing, I might just have enough “fuck it” left in me to switch sooner than the subscription expires. The current subscription is already paid for. I ain’t getting that money back regardless.

Honestly I’m starting to question the long-term value of using paid-for services from companies, even from companies that are currently considered ethical. The problem is their ethical status (from my perspective) can literally change over night – and it has, in several cases before.

Email is such a bad communication method, but we’re all entrenched in it in 2026. I can deploy Mail-in-a-Box on a VPS (assuming the VPS provider stays cool) to avoid the anxiety and hassle of switching when the email provider does something stupid. I mean, this is part of the ethos of self-hosting.