Comment by BatteryMountain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BatteryMountain | Hacker News Reader

BatteryMountain

If they go through with this, I will make it my life's mission for the coming months to de-google my personal life and break any dependencies on google at work. Done with this nonsense. Shouldn't take more than a month to remove the tumor.

On my android phone:

My own launcher

My own keyboard

My own sync tool for local net

My own net tools to WoL some devices on my lan.

My own tool to control 3 proxmox servers

My own tool that parses groceries slips

My own tool that keep tracks of my vehicles events/lifecycle/purchases etc.

If they break my launcher/keyboard and my ability to use my phone in my customized way, they will NEVER see me as a client again. None of these apps are in the Play Store, they are signed with my own signing keys, which have never been uploaded to google, in fact, no google account is linked to these apps. These apps are also privacy-oriented (even the keyboard, I ship a 1mb dictionary with and it learns my own words, never transmits anything).

I will not give google my ID , neither Persona or anyone else. I'm very happy to go back to using bank card + chip + pin than use google wallet. Trust me I will walk away. I already move 4 family members off of Windows in the last 2 years, I will get them off google too.

I started de-googling a few weeks ago. I don't really know what I'm doing but it's kind of enjoyable to learn. Graphene OS with F-Droid and I'm most of the way there.

I still use the play store for some apps unfortunately. Also google maps, gmail, google messages (for rcs) and google fi. I'm not sure if theres anything close to the quality of traffic reporting as google maps, so it's hard to give up. The rest I will eventually move away from... Hopefully.

I have a home server with a reverse wireguard proxy for self hosting photos, calendars, etc.

I also have firefox with noscript blocking everything by default, but that's a big pain for an average person. Also it doesn't seem like firefox does a good job of anti-fingerprinting, but I haven't looked too deeply into that.

I even bought a tv that has adb access, and I removed a bunch of bloat, but it doesn't seem possible to remove the google launcher without causing huge system instability. I might just firewall it off.

There are a ton of open source alternatives to google products now, way more than the last time I tried moving away. It's time to leave.

Do yourself a favour: install linux (fedora is okay) on a computer; install android sdk + new android cli, install flutter, install claude code. Then, build a basic app, claude can one-shot it for you. Ask claude to make a release build with a real signing key. Leave phone plugged in and connected via adb while claude is coding - it can use the new cli tooling to drive the phone and do full visual testing (can tap, enter text, take screenshot - all by itself). Tell claude you dislike third-party dependencies and to avoid google service and that it must double check with you before adding permissions to the app. Tell it by default to exclude internet access and to opt-out of android/google backup system.

Then, get building. Build a replacement app for each thing you use that don't have an open source equivalent. I'm at the point where I don't even use apps from f-droid anymore. Only my own code, own signing keys, privacy-first. It is awesome.

If you have an extra pc available, setup proxmox with: a container that acts as a build server (install all your sdk's here), gitea (and wire it up with the build server), an S3 compatible storage container (SeaweedFS) & wire it up with gitea. Let claude set it all up. Give claude ssh access to all of it. Then, when you build an app on your local machine, claude will know how to use your development infrastructure and you can automate all of your building your own softwares.

After that, own email server (stalward - rust based email server), owncloud deployment, full-on wireguard with public exit point (don't depend on third party). Get a couple of clean static ip addresses.

After that, become an isp, get an asn, get ipv4 and ipv6 blocks, play with bgp (make friends with your local isp staff..).

Rabbithole goes deep. Point is, fuck all these slimy techbro's. They need to be technologically eviscerated by hackers & get what they deserve for trying to enter our world by force.

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