2026-11-21 –, Cotton Theatre - Freedom Stage
iCloud, Google Drive, Maps, Email, Photos, Find My Phone, Smart Home, Calendars, Contacts, Notes, Password Managers, Push Notifications - we tell cloud service providers everything about our lives, and hope they don't close our accounts with no recourse to our accumulated information. It is possible to run all of these services yourself, often with comparable or better utility than the major providers offer, and always lower fees - in fact, just the cost of a computer, and the electricity to run it. Wonderful people write brilliant open source, free licenced software. Claim your digital independence.
Cloud use cases:
-Photos
-Contacts
-Calendars
-Notes
-Email
-Password manager
-Find my device
-Smart home (CCTV/NVR, doorbell, plugs, sensors)
-LLMs
-Bitcoin bockchain exploreres, private node, etc
-Data backup (remote, distributed, push, pull - ransomware resistant)
Threats:
-Account lock
-Data leak (insiders, hack, court case, M&A, surveillance)
-Client side scanning
-State censorship
-Account take over
-Bankruptcy
-Profiling
Solutions:
-Your own server, at home
-Separate secrets server
-Backup off site, someone else's home?
-GrapheneOS phone, tablets
-Linux laptop, desktop, workstation
-LineageOS set top box
-OPNSense router
-Remote access via Wireguard Amnezia - a cloaked VPN system
Conclusion:
-All of this is modular
-Build it piece by piece
-With each step gain independence
-With each step gain skills and capability
-With each step remove the initiative for corporations and government to treat you as the product and cattle
-Mark out your territory
-Unilateral action
Chief, Tranquillity Node Ltd since 2018