Happy belated New Year to those who celebrate!
2025 proved to be a wonky one for me technologically-speaking. Here’s what I wound up dealing with as far as its challenges and changes went:
New email service
I started 2025 by switching to a new email service when I clashed hard with comments of the CEO of my previous, years-long email service provider. And then the service I changed to started revealing some issues, gradually including fundamental ones, which more recently had me finally decide to switch email services again. And then for reasons, again. I wrote about all that hassle a few times recently, including here. I’ve finally, hopefully, settled on a decent service (the… fourth I’ve tried out in this hunt? Fifth?), but more to the point, with this new one, my family and friends and all contacts won’t need to keep updating their email contact info for me after this because I also got a…
New email address
This is all tied in with the above. Because normally when one switches email services, one duly switches their email address accordingly. But — and this was months of working through this exception — one doesn’t have to.
In short, with some effort, there’s a way to stick with one email address regardless of what email service you’re with. It involves getting yourself a domain name (reayjespersen.com is of course a great one but is taken… sorry) and then setting up a static email account connected to that domain name that, but which your email service of choice then handles behind the scenes.
It’s like a restaurant that changes appliances in the kitchen: The restaurant is called the same thing and it’s in the same place it’s always been, but the brand of equipment it operates with has changed.
But while all the above is put simply, it turns out this can be a real pain to actually pull off. At least, such was my experience with it. I’ve heard that others, I assume those far more comfortable with technology and its spinoff esoteric jargon and inner workings, are able to do it pretty quickly and without any hassle. My own days (nearly a week) of stress and confusion with just that part of the process make me jealous all over again of such people.
If you’d normally expect to have heard from me about this email change and haven’t yet, check your inbox, and if it isn’t there, check your spam folder, because I sent out the notice to somewhere close to 200(!) of my contacts last night.
New browser
I’ll get more into this in another post, but for now let’s just say I’m not an AI guy.
The latest example of places AI isn’t needed in but has been jammed into anyway are browsers and search engines. In what’s become typical AI overhype, this is very much in the spirit of “ISN’T THIS GREAT? AI IS HERE NOW, TOO! NOW YOUR SEARCHES WILL BE EVEN SEARCHIER!”
To clarify for my less techy readers: A browser is the software/program you use to get around on the internet. It’s Chrome and it’s Edge and it’s Safari and it’s Firefox, and the like. A search engine is the software that runs within a browser that is what gives you the results you get when you look for something. Search engines include Google (easily still the most popular in the world), Bing, DuckDuckGo, Qwant, and a ton of others.
Firefox has been my browser of choice for upwards of 25 years at this point.
My search engine has changed here and there because I sometimes go down a probably needless rabbit hole of wondering if I’m getting the best results from online searches that I can, or wondering what other options don’t have as many ads, etc. StartPage has been my search engine of choice for the last few years. It gives you Google search results, but before you get them, it strips out all of your traceable personal information from Google’s pervasive/invasive tracking methods (and as I touch on here, there are plenty of those, and it’s gotten worse since that post).
Now here’s the thing: The company that makes and maintains Firefox announced within the last month or so that it’s now embracing AI moving forward. The new CEO doubled down on that, clearly buying into the AI overhype. And this spurred on a large exodus of even longtime Firefox users from using Firefox any more, including yours truly.
While that may seem to be a bit dramatic and needless, stop and consider for a moment what use AI is in something like a browser. Again, a browser is the means by which people interact with the internet. Not the results they get from searching for things (remember, that’s the search engine), it’s just the interface that people use. So what, exactly, is AI being used for in browsers? How does it make the user’s experience any better (better enough to be proudly hyped by the browser companies, at least)? I’ve mulled it over and haven’t come up with anything at all, it’s seemingly just yet another company rolling The New Big Thing (that’s broadly a flop) into its software, because I guess they think more “Why not?” instead of “Why?”
To the credit of one senior developer for Firefox who took the time to explain things more clearly than the new CEO thought was needed, he said that coming Firefox iterations will have an “AI kill switch” that will allow users to completely turn off any and all AI-generated results. The fact that they’re bothering with writing that toggle into the new coding at all tells me that they’re very aware that a significant portion of their user base is abandoning FF over their baking AI into upcoming versions, and they’re hoping to staunch that outward flow. Which makes me wonder, if they know incorporating AI into their program is having this negative an impact, again, why include it at all?
For many of us, though, even that senior developer’s more nuanced explanation is too little, too late. Firefox has been getting dodgy for a while anyway. New updates tend to turn on options that benefit the company rather than leaving them toggled off as users had previously set which isn’t cool and has already been raising some red flags for privacy-focused users. And for many, this Let’s Go All AI nonsense was something of a last straw. I’m not saying I’ll never use Firefox again, but they’re going to have to do a lot of work to gain the trust of their (already very small) user base to bring dissatisfied former users back again.
The added challenge in a new browser for me, however, is that I’d really like to be able to sync the browser of my Windows laptop and my iPhone. Firefox does that really well: Whatever tabs you have up on your computer can be opened on your phone as well, and vice-versa. It’s come in handy a few times, and just makes sense from the perspective of, for instance, bookmarking a website on my laptop or phone and then that same bookmark also being saved on the other device.
The problem is there are very few other browsers that will do that. And fewer still when I remove Chromium-based browsers. I won’t get deep into this, but suffice to say that Chromium is a browser framework that people can build their own distinct browsers on top of, and many have, but Chromium is Google owned and operated, like its Chrome browser. And I’m trying to de-Google my life where I can, so yeah, a lot of otherwise promising syncing browsers that I can have on my laptop and my phone are subsequently off the table.
Right now I’m trying out Librewolf on the laptop and Orion on the phone. They don’t sync, but I decided I’d rather have the small inconvenience of different privacy-focused browsers than use a Chromium browser.
New search engine
And now AI is also getting into search engines.
StartPage just released a statement a few weeks ago saying they’re going to start using AI as well. At least that case makes a little more sense than a browser using AI — a search engine could, for instance, learn what an individual user wants based on what search is asked for vs what they click on, and gradually give them more of what they demonstrably want from their searches — but it still just sits badly with me (and many others) who just want AI out of evermore aspects of our lives.
So now I’m looking at alternative search engines, as well.
I was lucky enough to happen into a free three-month trial of Kagi, which is a search engine that users pay for. That concept will sit oddly with most people who are used to the likes of Google searches having always been free, but I’ll remind you that Google has long since become more advertising company than anything else, and that it’s data that the company collects on everything its users do that it bundles and sells to advertisers who then target you with ads everywhere they can.
Kagi doesn’t do that. They offer a service (search engine results) that they ask you for a nominal fee to access, in order to operate. In exchange, you get quality results — it’s early days yet, but the results I get from Kagi definitely seem better than any other search engine I’ve used — with no tracking or data collection or ads. I was dubious about the idea at first, but honestly it’s been pretty nice. Assuming this trial continues to go well, I’ll probably pay to keep using it.
Having said that, I just discover that Kagi is (drumroll, please) now using AI as well. Although I understand users can completely turn it off if they wish.
This does get into something of a circular debate with myself, though: If I’m trying to avoid using companies that (particularly needlessly) use AI in the first place, why switch search engines away from one, only to another that uses AI as well? Let alone pay for it on top of that?
Although as of this writing, I haven’t heard that StartPage users have an option to toggle off AI, which would be a big strike against them as anything I’d choose to use.
Anyway, for now let’s put a pin in the search engine aspect and move on.
New computer(-ish)
If you’re reading this blog post on a computer, it’s almost certainly running either Windows or MacOS. Those have been the dominant computer operating systems for decades. For all practical purposes, there wasn’t really any other option for, at least in the world of technology, a very long time.
But there’s a third option that was quietly offered a few decades ago and is gaining more and more attention lately: Linux.
Without getting too into the weeds about it, Linux is an operating system that’s free to download and use (PSST! A chunk of what you pay for when you buy a new Windows computer is the licence for it to run a copy of Windows) and is run by a large group of like-minded software developers who keep updating and upgrading the coding to release newer versions of what have become a number of different main “distros” (distributions) that focus on different interactive aspects to give users different experiences.
Want an interface like Windows because that’s what you’re most comfortable with? There’s a distro for that.
Want an interface that’s more geared toward gaming because that’s what you use your computer for a lot? There’s a distro for that.
The list goes on and on.
For a while now, you’ve been able to take a computer to a tech store like Best Buy, etc., and have them put Linux on a computer you bring to them or buy. But behind Linux is a very DIY ideology. And in that spirit, the vast bulk of Linux users are people who have put Linux onto their computers themselves.
This used to be a far more tech-heavy process, so it was pretty daunting to the bulk of us not tech-savvy enough to parse what had to be done how and where and why. These days, most major distros have pretty user-friendly installation processes and user forums for questions and issues. It’s not unlike updating to a new version of Windows. All of which is intended to make Linux as a whole easier for more and more people to use.
Last year I got to a point where I have a newer, snappier laptop as an everyday driver, because my old one was chugging along a bit too much with what I needed it to do. But what to do with the old one? Why, it finally gave me a prime candidate for installing Linux on.
What that does, as many, many articles and videos will explain, is breathes new life into older computers. Linux is a much lighter, more nimble operating system than Windows, so it doesn’t require the same horsepower or newness of hardware to operate on. Owners of older, outdated computers have found that Linux makes those computers completely usable again, which extends the computers’ life plus, critically on an environmental angle, keeps rare material in the earth and keeps the older computers out of landfill longer.
And as more users turn to Linux — this latest debacle, where Windows 11 couldn’t be installed on most machines running Windows 10, and so hey, users, guess you’ve gotta go buy yourselves a newer computer if you want to keep running Windows, has pushed a lot of people to explore new options, and Linux is getting a lot more attention as a result — more programs are making sure they have a Linux option as well as just Windows and MacOS. Supply is starting to catch up to increasing demand. Which will help draw even more users to Linux, which increases demand for programs to work on it, and the cycle continues.
I wasn’t quite able to get a distro loaded onto the old laptop, but a quick check online got fast replies concluding it may not even have been my fault but could have been a couple of issues that caused it. One and all encouraged me to try again. Kind of a refreshing change from Microsoft giving me a ticking clock for how long before my operating system software won’t be updated or protected any more.
And by the way, that updating/protecting deadline includes the newer laptop that I’m writing on now. Microsoft did extend the life of Windows 10 by a full year, until October 2026, but we’re told that’ll be the really real end of support for it. So it seems to me I’ve got about ten months left to get Linux going on the other laptop and see if I like it enough to soon put it on this laptop as well. Some of the most tech-savvy friends I’ve ever had left Windows for Linux ages ago and have never looked back.
Maybe it’s time more of us do the same.