Adam Younce

11 Dec 2025

What’s a good New Year’s resolution? Consider pushing Big Tech out of your life. Find alternatives to Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta. Ditch streaming. Delay upgrading. Don’t go cold turkey. It can be gradual and should be intentional. Consider this a year in review (slow) thread.

30 May

This delightfully balanced take has all the charm of being politically moderate in today’s America.

Daniel Jalkut@danielpunkass.punkitup.com

My take on AI is, essentially, everybody who’s against is too against it and everybody who’s for it is too for it.

medium.comBig Tech’s Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for WikipediaTLDR: In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire…

28 May

Sadly I need to rescind my endorsement of the Wikimedia Foundation as a beneficiary of your (as well as my own) charitable giving. Until their leadership changes and union busting ceases, I will refuse to give. medium.com/@jakeorlowit...

Adam Younce@ary.pub

Here’s your periodic reminder that, if you’re gainfully employed in the tech industry, you can afford to donate (the equivalent of a monthly streaming service fee) to the load bearing infrastructure of the Internet/web.

404media.coFBI Couldn’t Get into WaPo Reporter’s iPhone Because It Had Lockdown Mode EnabledLockdown Mode is a sometimes overlooked feature of Apple devices that broadly make them harder to hack. A court record indicates the feature might be effective at stopping third parties unlocking some...

5 Feb

On the one hand, this is good news. On the other hand it has been disseminated so widely that I worry there is a component of deception to it. Perhaps the FBI can’t bypass iOS Lockdown, but who can and why do they want the public to be so aware of Lockdown? www.404media.co/fbi-couldnt-...

5 Feb

To be clear I don’t think 404media is part of a propaganda machine. The wider U.S. media picked this up and ran with it a bit which, these days, ought to raise at least a little bit of suspicion.

23 Jan

Alan Dye is the epitome of a Seagull Manager, and I suspect will fit right in at Meta. macOS/iOS 26 are absolute disasters. Apple management should be embarrassed.

21 Jan

The Anna Karenina principle of technical docs: All good documentation websites are alike; each bad documentation website is terrible in its own way. Presently trying to get what I need out of Arm’s decidedly Lovecraftian abomination of a search engine.

21 Jan

What not to do: skip a static, browsable index and instead opt only for a search engine, because web search is an open problem after all. Next return all the sections from one (related?) document as though they are distinct docs. Finally, never indicate how my search terms relate to your results.

21 Jan

Eventually I will learn to default to Google’s ‘site:’ feature, but I can’t predict when. Unstyled HTML with <ol><li>…</li></ol> remains undefeated when it comes to lists of things you want to search.

15 Jan

With the selective enforcement boundary established by Grok’s continued operation in the app store duopoly the next, sickening step is wearables. An unofficial app for Meta Glasses with Grok-like image-gen would sadly juice sales, and we now know that means it’s virtually guaranteed to happen.

bloomberg.comMeta Seeks to Double Ray-Ban Glasses Output After Surge in DemandMeta Platforms Inc. and EssilorLuxottica SA are discussing potentially doubling production capacity for AI-powered smart glasses by the end of this year, in a bid to capture growing demand and head of...

15 Jan

And I am too jaded by what is happening in tech to dismiss the notion that a version of this disgusting idea might well be the reason behind Meta’s confidence in near-term hardware sales growth. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

theverge.comApple Creator Studio suite is launching to take on AdobeSix apps for less than a monthly Photoshop sub.

14 Jan

Were there ever a time for independent software makers to strike while the iron is hot, it’s now. Apple has given into the madness. Stable, affordable creative tools are increasingly going to be in demand. www.theverge.com/news/861279/...

Where I’m at with frameworks (of any kind): lower level abstractions are better than high level abstractions because fewer people understand the lower level concepts thus there is far less bike shedding which means far less change. Low: C compilers. High: Javascript

It should be noted that no matter what lower level abstraction one chooses to make this argument someone can “well, actually…” it to death. The point is that churn is more of a problem with higher level abstractions and thus they should be avoided wherever possible. Lower is better than higher.

People don’t churn lower level abstractions nearly as much because once they work they build upon them. They naturally resist change in this way. Abstractions at the top churn because the authors aren’t dependent, the framework consumers are.

After trying to cope with how insanely bad Apple’s Liquid Glass UI is for the last few months, I’ve come to appreciate its terribleness on two levels. 1) It is just inherently “pretty demo” ugly, and 2) because it interacts with third party content all the time it’s also “unkept zoo” ugly.

Apple’s OS’s and framework design had formerly done the helpful work of elevating apps and Internet content by surrounding it all with improved usability and contrasting controls. Now it’s dragged down into the mud of the wider software and Internet ecosystem.

Liquid Glass represents the total abdication of (very hard earned!) industry leading design and usability for absolutely no good reason other than the belief that to “sell” software it regularly needs a new coat of paint, and the need for designers to differentiate themselves by changing things.

“Pretty demo” ugly is when a UI is designed primarily for demoing under highly controlled conditions that impress people who are only watching its use. This is the metaphorical camera angles and makeup of user interface design cheating. Executive and marketing appeasement at its worst.

“Unkept zoo” ugly is when the UI incorporates the underlying application content into itself in an attempt to blend in, but because the animals (apps and content) are often not inherently beautiful themselves the blend is a dirty mess.

Amazon deserves an extra callout here due to their use of dark patterns. After cancelling Prime to create friction when buying from them, Amazon makes it a one-click process to re-enroll at checkout. So if, like me, you accidentally tap the wrong button you’re back on Prime.

17 Dec 2025

When people cynically claim that being honest is prohibitively expensive remember that there are counter examples.

nilay patel@reckless.bsky.social

We are strict about the background policy because I want our readers to know where information comes from and who is accountable for it, and I have zero interest in pretending we have magical insight into anyone’s thinking. Read more here: www.theverge.com/press-room/2...

This is a choice like diet, exercise, and therapy are choices. I recognize that this recommendation isn’t trivial for most, but: you need to remove all corporations that shim themselves between you and the people in your life. Especially Meta.

Addendum for Meta VR devs: My interest in VR is non-existent and thus I have no advice for you. Go where the people are, I guess. You’re probably already aware of the alternatives and don’t need a push anyway.

Where things get difficult is with social connections, followers, and social expectations. Depending on your generation and personal identity investment in things like Instagram this might be trivial or a crisis. The first step is to realize you can actually walk away.

Many will find this unpalatable, but fundamentally removing Meta as a middleman from your social life is a good, fundamental change. As a culture we are being stunted by smartphones and the Internet. Knowing how to be a human without a phone in your hand is necessary.

Meta (nee, Facebook) might in some ways be both the easiest and most difficult company to cast off. The possible data loss is basically posts and chats, so it depends on how you’ve used it up till now. More difficult to quantity still though, you social connections.

You’ll have photos, posts, and chats on Meta’s services but these can all be downloaded for reposting and/or safe keeping. See: m.facebook.com/help/8361654... & help.instagram.com/181231772500...

Amazon alternative for Alexa: Absolutely Nothing. There is no reasonable alternative to a little computer screen with a microphone and a camera that is always connected to the Internet and just sits around your house waiting for you to talk to it. This is just a bad idea, and shouldn’t be replaced.

bookshop.orgBookshop.org: Buy books online. Support local bookstores.A better way to buy books online. Every purchase financially supports local independent bookstores.

Finally: This deserves its own thread, but Amazon Web Services is pretty difficult for developers to pull away from. Many, myself included, must use it for our jobs. Once again, incremental progress is still progress, so finding ways to spend less on AWS is a step in the right direction.

Amazon alternative for books: Bookshop.org bookshop.org/info/about-us Beside your local bookstores this is a great place to start for books. The business model supports independent book sellers and helps prevent the total collapse of the industry under Amazon hegemony.

kobo.comRakuten KoboOpen up to over 6 million eBooks and audiobooks on award-winning eReaders and the free Rakuten Kobo App. Find Daily Deals, read previews & reviews and get book recommendations.

Amazon alternative for e-readers & ebooks: Rakuten Kobo www.kobo.com It’s an ereader with a touch screen and a stylus, and it all works really well. The various Kobo models have their own store but they also trivially allow side loading ebooks, PDFs, etc. just by plugging into a computer.

Depending on your circumstances shopping on Amazon can be difficult to avoid. One way to reduce how often that happens is to cancel Amazon Prime. Being confronted with shipping costs causes you to naturally reconsider every purchase. Use it when you need it, but create a penalty for doing so.

takeout.google.comSign in - Google Accounts

There are good alternatives to Amazon for the individual consumer, but don’t feel like you must completely remove it from your life in one go. When you can’t find what you need elsewhere, go ahead and order it on Amazon. Be sure to start with an alternative and only fall back when you need to.

Amazon has an overall less firm, direct grip on Internet users (we’ll address AWS) but the hooks into your life it does have are pretty invasive. The three most problematic are probably: shopping on Amazon, reading via Kindle, and leaning on Alexa as a personal assistant.

Your dependence on Google might be a lot deeper than mine, and if that’s true you can at least use Google Takeout to back things up. At a minimum, taking the first step to get your email moved elsewhere is strongly recommended. takeout.google.com

13 Dec 2025

Addendum: It’s worth acknowledging that if, like me, you have a ton of Google Maps bookmarks there isn’t a good alternative. Of all Google’s “moats” this is probably the most difficult to replace. Once again, incrementally moving away is far better than cold turkey.

The other thing to note is that you can host your email address elsewhere, but still use it for a Google Account. This is helpful if you want to use Google Calendar for meeting invitations or otherwise use Google services without letting them host (or index) your email.

fastmail.comEmail and calendar made betterFast, private email hosting for you or your business. More productive, lightning fast, simple and built to save you time.

13 Dec 2025

Finally, while I use Google Chat with some friends I don’t have anything there that would be a problem to lose so I don’t worry about it much. Should Google close my accounts I could fairly easily move on with life.

First, Google Accounts. A long time ago I setup Fastmail for email, with my own domain, and forwarded my old Gmail account there. This solved the issue of losing access to email, which is still one of the more devastating problems if you ever lose your account. www.fastmail.com

First overall impression: Accessibility tweaks make iOS 26 usable, but your choices are “Ugly” and “Usably Ugly”.

Adam Younce@ary.pub

iOS 26 is available and I pre-regret installing what is basically a Dribbble show piece masquerading as a UI design framework. Glad those of you at Apple who have inflicted this upon the world got your bonuses.