I've seen numerous posts in the gopher-verse concerned about or
moving away from US-based hosting and computing services
[0][1][2][3], well founded in my opinion given the current
instability in that country. As a Canadian I also share Visiblink's
concerns around the US government's and Amazon's actions and
rhetoric against Canada, and have been severing connections to our
southern neighbour, not just computing but travel and general
purchases.
I'm ditching the US-based hosting provider I've been using for years
and moving to OVH (even though my VPS is not hosted in the States, I
can no longer justify supporting a US company). I may also transfer
my domains to OVH, but am still looking for a decent registrar with
associated free DNS hosting. Please send suggestions if you know of
any!
With Amazon, I don't have a prime membership, but I still get a few
hard-to-get things there. I typically wait and bundle my purchases
every few months so I still get free shipping. But I'm now on board
with buying elsewhere even if it costs more, finding alternatives,
or doing without.
Google is frustrating, as I need my (Android) phone and a few apps
that can only be installed via the play store for work, so I am
stuck with that for a while longer. Apple would be no different. I
could install something like Lineage OS, but I'm not sure it's worth
the hassle, since I would still be reliant on play services. Still,
I use Google services as little as possible (newpipe is a great
youtube mobile alternative).
I still have friends and family in the States, but I'll only visit
if I absolutely have to. No more vacations in the US, period.
[0]:
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~christina/2025Feb05.txt
[1]:
gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7evisiblink/phlog/20250208
[2]:
gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20250211-moving-domains
[3]:
gopher://redterminal.org/0/phlog/2025-02-12-re_moving_domains.txt
