Hope for the best, plan for the worst

Flags of Greenland and Denmark

Recent events in Venezuela trigger reasonable fears about Greenland’s sovereignty. Should it be compromised, Europe’s relationship with the US would be fundamentally different from what they have been during the XXth century. De-USfying my personal tech has now become a priority, with moving my data out of Google (email with family custom domain), Apple (iCloud drive, photos, OS dependency), Adobe (Lightroom) and having a computing setup fully working offline.

Here’s my strategy:

  • Ensure that my data is out of reach of US-controlled companies,
  • Avoid vendor lock-in, wherever it is located,
  • Devices are secondary. As an Apple fanboy in a household heavily invested in the brand, we’ll keep the devices for now – as well as the Windows gaming desktop, but I setup a Linux laptop as a contingency. Same for Unifi networking.

The execution so far:

  • Email address: moved most subscriptions to SimpleLogin.io (part of Proton subscription) – 155 migrated so far.
  • GMail: plan to move domain to Proton (by the time the move to SimpleLogin is finished, the domain address will only be used by friends and family and for invitations).
  • iCloud drive: slowly moving to Proton Drive.
  • Lightroom: 20k pictures exported to iCloud Photos, to be exported together once I have a traget setup (30k to go).
  • Evernote: exported 10k+ notes to ENEX and html files. Will probably leave them in a folder and search files if need be. Now using StandardNotes (part of Proton but separate subscription).
  • Microsoft: cancelled the Office and M365 Business subscription, using ONLYOFFICE or LibreOffice.
  • Linux setup: replaced maxOS with Linux Mint on a Late 2013 MacBook Pro 15″. Setup with Vivaldi (Icelandic fork of Chromium), Proton VPN, Proton Pass, StandardNotes and LibreOffice.

Sticking points:

  • iCloud Photos: the Photos app, with its memories (incl Apple TV screensaver) is really good. Once pruned down to a reasonable number, I’ll export them to a TBD target setup.
  • YouTube: there is no alternative but I consistently download interesting videos I might want to refer to later (currently with Transcoder and Downie on Apple devices)
  • Proton Drive is not yet available on Linux