Category: Technology

It’s been a couple of weeks since I spent a significant amount of time updating my website, LinkedIn, and other social media profiles. I’m not a regular poster, so I wonder if I should delete these profiles?

The challenge is retaining some level of privacy while also expressing an opinion. There’s already too much information about all of us online. And I’ve done a bunch of things to limit my digital footprint, such as using a VPN, the Firefox browser (I know they aren’t perfect, but it’s a good compromise), and setting up my Windows computer with a local account (I also have a Linux Mint laptop as well), but it doesn’t feel like enough.

Yes, I might have read through the EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense site a couple of times, which has coloured my opinion. Still feels like I could be doing more.

The challenge I have is when people ask me questions about digital footprints, online surveillance, and privacy. I don’t know how to answer because there isn’t an easy answer or one that makes people feel comfortable.

Maybe people shouldn’t be comfortable with this topic. I just feel that scaring people isn’t productive. People need to investigate and learn about the topic, and then get comfortable with the level of exposure.

My last post was two sentences about subscriptions. Seems I was somewhat right: SaaS is the norm and AI / large language models are everywhere.

My opinion on these developments? Technology is a tool, not a solution. You use it to help with your work. It’s still up to you to solve your problem. Nothing can replace critical thinking and problem-solving. Tech is a tool, and if you let it replace too much, you’ll have more problems than you started with.

Do I use AI? Yes, but in very specific ways. For example, I had years of financial data that I knew the contents of, but hadn’t sat down to pull all the analysis I could from it. With a paid subscription, I used the tool to review the data, requesting specific pieces. I also asked for a report detailing how those conclusions were reached. What would have taken me a week only took days.

Days? Yes, days as I had to review everything and see how much of it I could replicate. I needed to understand the conclusions and clearly communicate the information. If I hadn’t spent the time understanding it, the conclusions would be useless.

I also use Grammarly to help write emails. I write way too fast and often miss things like “the,” “to,” and “of.” I avoid using the rephrase tool too often and will re-read a sentence when it highlights something (the number of times I’ve realized the sentence doesn’t actually say what I wanted it to… embarrassing).

Am I using it properly? Who knows, but after using it, I feel like I have a better footing to have an opinion. That opinion is this:

People are treating AI like it’s everything when it’s simply a tool that should be used for certain tasks and not for others. It can’t be creative – it can only do what it’s been told, as much as people would like it to be otherwise. I see it more like when computers were introduced to the workplace. Things will change, missteps will happen, and new norms will be developed.

What will change things the most is when the actual compute time costs are passed on to the consumer. How will that affect AI usage?

Finally, we need to consider whether this is worth all the environmental issues. This is a big one. Right now, I don’t think we need all the infrastructure that’s in the works. We should be more considerate when planning a data centre, and not push it through just because it’s an AI-related project.

Is this the future of everything tech-related? Probably, but hopefully not.

The longer I work, the more I realize that “do-it-yourself” should be replaced with “do-it-with-others” or “do-it-together” because collaboration is better than competition (and collaboration can foster community). Haven’t applied it completely to my work, but I’m starting to see how it can work around the edges.

This short post is more of a way for me to hold myself accountable for following up on this idea (and to update this website a bit more often).

Really brief – learn everything you need to about Linux / GNU operation system and privacy tools. Not everything, but something to start.

Introduction to Linux

Privacy Tools

For years, I just continuously upgraded my Windows operating system, avoiding the poorly developed one. At work, we install and use a Linux distribution (Mint) on most the computers we sell. I’ve dabbled with Ubuntu in the past. For a month or so I was using a Chromebook as my travel machine and now I purchased a used 2010 MacBook Air. So what are my thoughts?

Honestly, while they’re all different if you’re doing basic tasks there’s really no difference. I mean the only thing you know is Microsoft Office then working on a Chromebook or a Linux machine can be challenging because only the web apps are available for those (no desktop support for those OS). Google Docs works on everything so if you’ve made the shift a completely online platform you’ll be find. LibreOffice is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux so it’s easiest to move between them (can’t install external apps on a Chromebook).

So it’s now about the specifications.