Linux is amazing. I have a windows VM and it’s awful. Big bloated image, constantly phoning out in parallel streams, automatic connection to cloud and copilot, and 365 ads and similar frequent pop ups
Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?
21–30 of 31 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?
#22Go with one of these: Debian – France, Germany, Switzerland Ubuntu – United Kingdom Linux Mint – Ireland Manjaro – Germany, Austria, France openSUSE – Germany Zorin OS – Ireland elementary OS – Denmark Kali Linux – Switzerland (formerly Germany) Tails – France Endless OS – Portugal You can go Canadian: Gentoo Linux – Canada ParrotOS – Canada (initially developed in Italy, but has contributors in Canada) Redcore Linux…
Thanks for the list. It's really sad for me that Fedora is in the "stay away" section because the Asahi version of it probably would be the best one for my MacBook.
Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?
#23War between the EU and US, however unlikely, probably wouldn't mean all your devices stop working right away. At absolute worst, patches would stop rolling out to EU-owned and operated devices, so you'd still have your hardware, the current version of your OS, your local files, etc.
Back up all of your iCloud(it can be exported). Keep a copy on hand, and keep a copy encrypted in the cloud using something like BackBlaze.
Even though Linux has strong ties to the US, some of the distros aren't wouldn't be completely restricted (I'd wager most of them), and aren't all fully US-based. Keep a copy of Asahi / whatever flavor can run on your Mac handy on a bootable USB stick.
You could grab a cheap android phone as a backup to your current iPhone and flash it with a fork, like Graphene.
The general data protection and backup strategies largely apply and work well for this scenario.
Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?
#24After living since forever in what they call an "outlaw state", I can assure you, Mr OP, that all of your concerns are extremely valid, and, indeed, you don't need an open war to start having REAL problems with your digital life.
Something as simple as a few bans or sanctions are more than enough to stop you, for example, from using your credit cards to pay for everything you take for granted, call it Netflix, iCloud or even a $0.99 app. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
My advice on this? Be a pragmatic fuck. For example:
#1 Switch to open source or at least free alternatives for everything you can. #2 If you see it coming, temporarily suspend your "good citizen" behaviour and pirate what can't be solved with #1. (assume the risks and learn to deal with them). #3 Stay as local - your house local, not your country/union local - as possible, avoid "the cloud" if possible or create your own if it makes sense for you, a homelab or whatever. #4 Stay as anonymous and low profile as you can; even if you support your government in a conflict situation, they can turn on you in a blink, for the right or wrong reasons. #5 Familiarise yourself with things like Tor, VPNs and anything else that can help you bypass censorship and access blocked sites and services. #6 Consider having additional ISPs as failover options, something as different as possible from your main ISP. #7 Buy stuff to protect your electrical equipment: regulators, protectors, UPS and so on.
I'm not saying you have to do it all, take only what makes sense for you, but keep an open mind and consider that permanent peace and stability could be your lifelong situation if you are lucky, but maybe not. Says the guy who had it.
Trust me on this, I have become something of a cheap prepper, and not because of a war, it's far from that in here; just a few disagreements between governments, a few nationwide bans/prohibitions/sanctions, or a little bit of government incompetence/stupidity, are all you need to start having problems with international payments, problems accessing certain websites and services, problems with your Internet access, and even power outages, it doesn't take too much to start having a shitty digital life.
Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?
#25War between the EU and US, however unlikely, probably wouldn't mean all your devices stop working right away. At absolute worst, patches would stop rolling out to EU-owned and operated devices, so you'd still have your hardware, the current version of your OS, your local files, etc. Back up all of your iCloud(it can be exported). Keep a copy on hand, and keep a copy encrypted in the cloud using something like BackBla…
GrapheneOS only targets and is officially supported for Pixel devices. You might want to look at LineageOS as an alternative if you want a cheap device, but GrapheneOS is on a whole different level for security and is highly recommended.
Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?
#26After living since forever in what they call an "outlaw state", I can assure you, Mr OP, that all of your concerns are extremely valid, and, indeed, you don't need an open war to start having REAL problems with your digital life. Something as simple as a few bans or sanctions are more than enough to stop you, for example, from using your credit cards to pay for everything you take for granted, call it Netflix, iCloud…
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Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?
#27After living since forever in what they call an "outlaw state", I can assure you, Mr OP, that all of your concerns are extremely valid, and, indeed, you don't need an open war to start having REAL problems with your digital life. Something as simple as a few bans or sanctions are more than enough to stop you, for example, from using your credit cards to pay for everything you take for granted, call it Netflix, iCloud…
Thank you for your real-life insights and recommendations. I’ll consolidate your points one by one. My main challenge is balancing independence with mobility, especially if my lifestyle changes drastically. For example, relying on a homelab wouldn’t be feasible for me. Instead, I prefer to depend on a single laptop and phone while keeping everything else in the cloud. But I’ll check out all the options, thanks.
Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?
#28i wrote some US alternatives : https://github.com/uscneps/Awesome-European-Tech
Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?
#29I don't believe we are facing a military conflict soon, but it is clear that something fundamental has changed, and even if suddenly the US government does a 180, it's a whooole lot of toothpaste to put back in the tube. Essentially, start freezing US dependencies out of your tech stack and take control: - Run Linux on your machines - Run GrapheneOS on your mobile - Select services from this list: https://european-al…
Thank you. My first two steps will be to switch over my computer from macOS to Asahi Fedora Remix and make myself comfortable with finding alternatives to the iCloud service, maybe an encrypted NextCloud hosted on some non-US server provider. I know that Fedora is also US-based but it's the best Linux distro that's currently available for Macs and as soon as i'm getting used to the OS I'll be able to look for other distros and hardware.
Re: Ask HN: How can I prepare my digital life for geopolitical disruptions?
#30- disable iCloud
- disable any apps that sync via iCloud
- backup phone to local machine and enable encryption (doesn't have to be macOS)
- use something like PGP to re-encrypt the encrypted backup file generated
- store encrypted backup file in a way that provides the durability guarantees you want
Boils down to, don't use iCloud - making the assumption that Germany and the rest of the EU countries aren't far behind the UK in authoritarianism and apple will remove ADP from those regions also.