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Comment by systemtest | Hacker News Reader

Simplification of my digital self. Removed most of my online accounts. Removed all my VPS's. Removed most apps from my phone except core ones. Cancelled a lot of online subscriptions.

In the real world finally moved everything to USB-C. Gave all my old cables away. I have two chargers in my home and a handful of C to C cables. Everything connects to everything now.

Home is now downgraded to a dumb home. Lights work on physical toggles. No hubs or sensors anywhere. Heat and AC is with a dumb panel on the wall.

It feels freeing.

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I did a similar thing a few years back, but rather than simplifying, I focused on getting rid of hacky DIY things that needed maintenance.

I got rid of almost all the customized software in my life, and the few projects I decided to keep, I aggressively modernized, getting rid of thousands of lines of original code and adding many times more tests than I'd ever had before.

It very significantly improved my life and career to not have a second part time job maintaining a note taking app.

How did you replace the customized software you had before?

With off the shelf options, preferring FOSS if possible, I still enjoy using and contributing to open source.

Some of the substitutions wound up being a step down in features, or required rethinking parts of workflows, but the time savings is such a benefit.

Custom notetaking tool with p2p sync-> Google keep

Custom batteries included Linux distro for SD protection, Kiosk browsers, offline docs, creative commons content packs -> a few scripts built into my control server on vanilla RasPi OS

Rsync-> Borg -> Kopia(to avoid fussing with Borg's community NAS package)

Portland, OR's Free Geek is a great place to donate old parts to. Every city should have a similar resource.

It was a lot of micro-USB and some Lightning. CAT5E and lower. HDMI 1.4 and lower. All still useable cables for many people. It went to my local hackerspace.

For me, it’s always having website productivity blockers on all my browsers across all my various devices (and for the most part, not installing news apps on any devices either). Haven’t simplified my digital life, but at least it’s very restricted. Yeah, if even one device doesn’t have one installed, feel like am vulnerable to having hours sucked away.

And actually, still browse the web and watch YouTube, but just on my non-work days.

I have asked ChatGPT recently how to de-optimize my life. It seems I'm not the only one who wants go back to the old ways of doing things :)

I’m pretty sure step one to going back to “the old way” is not to ask ChatGPT

I maintain a list of things I have done here: https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence

I love the design and content. Keep writing Nicolas

The GP not de-optimizing, just simplying life which is always a good thing.

> Removed all my VPS's.

Do you still host things? If so, do you host from home and how?

I had a lot of hobby projects. Some home automation. Some would scrape websites for archival purposes. Maybe a seedbox and an arr-stack. Total monthly cost of a bit over €60 for all of them. Didn't really add anything to my life and the upkeep took about an hour every month, even with auto-updating as much as possible, sometimes things broke or required manual updating (+migration).

None of them were open to the public, I SSH-tunnel into them. All stuff just for myself.

I backed everything up locally and shut them down. They should be auto-removed at the next billing cycle.

Install Graphene OS. That'll help with the app issue.

No mention of tube amplifiers. Fail.

How do you pay taxes?

I use money.

I don't get how this relates to the post you are replying to?

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