Libb

Sure but you still have to believe and trust Filen

Obviously, like I must trust anyone involved in the whole process of me using a computer/phone to do anything. From the maker of my device (that it doesn’t contain some spyware out of the factory, I remember an issue like that with Lenovo and another with Sony), to the app I use but also my ISP (that in France is legally required to keep all my online activities for a few years, btw) but also the maker (and the seller) of my keyboard hoping that they too did not add some spyware or keylogger.

As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I moved a lot of my activities offline is me realizing my inability to trust (corporate-owned) digital tools to actually respect my privacy. The simplest solution for me was to remove as much as possible of that tech from my workflow ;)

Depends what you use cloud storage for obviously.

Indeed.

This is not irrelevant if you just don’t want to bother with encrypting them or with having to deal with a locked folder (I think I understand what that would be, but I’m not sure). Filen does encrypt the folder(s) I tell it to encrypt and sync them to its cloud storage. I have nothing to manage once I’ve setup the sync(s) I need. Different solutions for different needs… and different types of users ;)

I use it too, as well as Infomaniak KDrive (not E2EE)

What I don’t understand is people need to hate it publicly and not simply just block it

Probably the same motivation as the need to promote it publicly and not alone bye oneself, wouldn’t you agree?

They want to stay by themselves? That’s fine by me. But then they should also stop exporting their Hollywood and streaming turds (as well as their shit food). That would only be fair. And maybe also stop behaving like if they owned the entire planet?

We have people telling us the earth is flat. Them saying so doesn’t make our good old planet any flatter ;)

I mean one can find excess absolutely anywhere, that doesn’t demonstrate much imho.

If I’m all for discussing and criticizing, the ‘Cancel’ part is most certainly not something I’m interested in or would want to be a part of. Maybe it’s just a poor naming choice?

It’s no secret that we trade our information for access to the Internet.

You tell me. I had this odd idea that I was already paying a monthly sub to access the Web and then, on top of that, corporations suddenly deciding it was their natural right to suck our data without our consent.

That truu, I’ve recently started my privacy journey,

That’s a great decision, imho.

I made the same choice a few years ago. Every little step counts. I will never be an expert or feel that safe using digital tech but I quit using many tools and services I realized I can’t trust at all, which is already something. And it all started by one small first step.

so im slowly switching to alternative to trying to show them to people.

Showing them is a good idea, preaching them to do what you’re doing is probably not that great an idea. Think about it, when was the last time you sincerely changed your mind because someone was forcing you to listen to them or was harassing you. What most probably happened is that you told more or less politely to funk themselves ;)

That article

… is terrifying, imho and it is certainly not the kind of society I want to live in.

There is also a much older story about Amazon deleting the novel 1984 from the kindle of customers having legally purchased it (they were refunded but still that doesn’t change what happened). This kind of events is what started my journey toward a more privacy and ownership-respecting usage of digital tools. That’s also what helped me switch back to analog wherever it was doable (Amazon can’t delete a printed book from my bookshelves).

“You don’t care about privacy? Why not give me your bank login, then”

More seriously, You don’t have to convince people of anything. Sooner than later some huge leak will happen or anythign more intimate that will still impact them, say, like the story of this dad sending a pic of some intimate part of their sick kid’s to their doctor and being flagged by Google AI and being arrested for sharing child porn. And then they will realize why it mattered to protect our privacy.

You should tell us what type of lighting you wanted to achieve and with what gear, so we may tell if you managed to do it.

Like mentioned already, getting the right amount of light in the shadows can be tricky, even more so with reflective subjects, but that’s just a matter of experimentation. You may also want to consider what matters the most to you between shutter speed and noise/sharpness? With that kind of picture, I doubt you need to focus that much on shutter speed, so you may consider lowering lower your ISO and use a much longer exposure (less noise in the image, for the same amount of light). That being said, it looks like you’re on a promising path :)

Silly suggestion: if you can’t hide it, have you tried using the sewing thingy (sorry, I don’t know the English word) that’s visible on the fabric as a legit part of your composition? It could help drive the viewer’s attention exactly where you want them to look.

Any suggestions?

Ignore the nuts, like we all do?

As others have suggested: next door local shops. And then, other online shops.

For example, here in France, the law make it so books are sold at the exact same price everywhere, be it on Amzn or in one of our local bookshops. I’d rather talk to nice human being than fill a web form, and I’d rather do business with someone that can also do business with me than send money to some billionaire. So, I order at the local shop ;)

I find almost everything I need. It just requires me:

• to go there, or to pass a phone call (it’s nice talking to people or to re-learn to do it… and it’s never too late to start doing it either).
• to plan my purchase, as those small shops aren’t open 24/24 and don’t have a bazillion and a half items in stock and they can’t get it overnight either (which is good too as it helps me distinguish between what I need from what I ‘stupidly’ want to buy)

And for the rare few things I can’t get elsewhere (at the very least I will try to directly contact the seller on Amzn), well, either I will have realized I don’t really need them, or I will find some alternative or, then and only then, I will order it on Amzn which since January had not been that frequent, but that’s just me.

+1

just underlines that Russia and India are scared of their citizens taking their privacy back and perhaps even organizing.

They’re far from being the sole countries scared about citizens safekeeping any semblance of online privacy (hi from France, EU)

Not that I know, but you can buy a thermal camera (or just a BT enabled thermal printer that will work with your phone for cheap (20$ or less, and rolls of thermal papers can be found for cheap too almost anywhere. So it wouldn’t cost much to give it a try.

Some kids are even sold with… markers to color the (crappy) B&W prints; not kidding. It’s kinda cool and children/teens love it as well as silly adults like me ;) It’s real cool to be able to share an instant print that cost peanuts, even if it’s a crappy one

any experience or advice on which is best

Depends a lot what you want to with it, aka where you will ‘walk around’ with your camera ;)

And also it depends a lot how you like to take pictures, and what is your level of expertise.

I’ve quit photography almost completely (I’m sketching now) but was mostly doing street and wildlife. The last camera I ever purchased was an used OM-d 5 MK II (I would have to get it out of the closet to be sure of the exact model, the one that’s weather-sealed but not top of the line from 2015 or 2016) and I could not be happier. It was to the point that I stopped being interested in new gear.

(for context: I have been using almost anything you can think of since the late 70s, from your standard 35mm to large format chambers, from fully automatic cameras to full manual ones with nothing but the sunny 16 (not even a portable light-meter). And I started fiddling with digital starting in the late 90s)

Yeah:

• Lightweight and not bulky. Those two things alone make it a blessing if you carry the camera all day long on the streets, and even more so when hiking in the wilderness.
• Edit: It’s also much less intrusive than a bulky DSLR for street. And a tad less of a thieve magnet than, say, a Leica.
• Image stabilization works great.
• Fully articulated screen is so useful in so many situations.
• Silent (if you want it to be).
• Excellent lenses. Even basic kit lenses are decent (unlike so many other brands kit lenses). I mean they’re not amazing but anyone should be able to use the 14-42 from Olympus or from Panasonic and get decent shots. Which is great considering how cheap they can be found used. Much better lenses will be, well, much better but it’s hard to beat the 14-42 price used (I paid something like 25€ for the first one I got, and got a second one new for free by someone that refused to use nothing but the most expensive lenses to take snapshots (which was more than by me). Not my favorite lens by any means but one I would never hesitate to pick in many common situations.
• Very niche, but this OM camera has a very usable focus stacking mode.
• Did I mention it was so fucking not bulky with great image quality (given enough light)?
• Edit: dirt cheap, used.

BTW, I also own a Lumix GH5 that I mostly use(d) for video. It’s great for that but I prefer the OM for photography.

Meh:

• Poor low light perfs compared to larger sensors. I never cared that much about my images being noisier I cared a lot more about my gear being too bulky and too heavy to easily carry around ;)
• In-lens stabilization doesn’t work between Lumix<>Olympus (depending the type of photos, it will work wonder within each specific brand) but the in camera does work cross-brands.
• Weak battery life. I carried 2 spares on a standard day, to be on the safe side. Still less than the 4 I used to carry with my Fuji X100 and the 6 or 8 I had to carry with the now long forgotten but still beloved Epson RD-1s.
• Menus are a mess. It’s even worse with the Olympus than with the Pana but one gets used to them and since one seldom need to access more than handful of those menus. Plus, all buttons are configurable for quick access to whatever you often use.

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.