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2023-05-18
I've made significant progress to get my data off the cloud.
This is an account of the progress I've made to get my data back onto my own hardware and off the cloud(s).
What feels like the biggest step was getting off github. Well, almost.
After delaying it for way too long I finally installed a Gitea docker instance on my selfhosted server. It was honestly much more streamlined than I was expecting it to be. Human error aside, the whole thing was set up in an hour and I was using the migration feature in Gitea to pull my repositories off github.
What I liked is that if you create an account token on github and give that to Gitea, it can pull the whole repository including releases, wiki, β¦ simply everything, including private repositories.
I tip my hat to the people developing Gitea. It is amazing.
Now, what remains on github are some docker images I'm building myself, to use the github actions in order to publish the image to ghcr, docker hub and quay. Gitea cannot β yet β do that, and frankly I'd rather not clog my small selfhosted server with the artefacts required to build docker images.
The only other things on github is one script for the Monome Norns β a fantastically quirky music device β and the raw ingredients to this very website.
Github aside, I've deleted three google accounts I had. One was related to one now empty github instance, plus some minor content on YouTube. Others were related to MMORPGs, mostly EVE online. Deleting the accounts was the final step after moving the connected accounts that used the mail addresses to my βofficialβ one, downloading whatever I had in Google Drive, getting stuff off YouTube, β¦ the works.
Now I have only two Google accounts left: One for EVE Online and one for everything else. I use both accounts only for gmail, everything else is local.
Although it irks me that my official mail is feeding the algorithms and surveilance apparatus, I'm still on the fence about moving off of gmail. Gmail isn't going away, and updating _every single email address_ for over 200 online accounts is a pain in the ass. I don't know, maybe I can get off gmail and use an email proxy like DuckDuckGo email to make _an_ address permanent. But then I'm once again trusting that proxy to never go away _and_ them not using /selling the data flowing through their systems.
It's sad that email encryption has never taken off. That would take care of the trust issues at least.
This next one is a bit of a tangent: I was looking for a FOSS alternative to the Google Authenticator, and I did find andOTP. It does TOTP just was well, gives you access to the underlying secret and allows for encrypted backups. Overall it provides more useful features than Google Authenticator, at a smaller footprint, open source code, β¦ what's not to like.
But then I discovered that Vaultwarden does TOTP as well. I am selfhosting Vaultwarden for all our family passwords, so the data is mine and backups are already in place. Granted, on our phones we still use the official BitWarden app and we're not entirely sure what data is sent home. Vaultwarden is a slimmer, more feature-rich open source alternative implementation of BitWarden, but without a FOSS mobile client as far as I know.
So as a result, both my wife and I don't use Google Authenticator anymore, and we have control over our 2FA secrets.
The only thing I have in Microsofts Cloud β aside from github β is a couple of OneNotes. I haven't found a good replacement for OneNote that I can in good conscience enforce upon my wife so that is what it is, for now. I'm not happy about it, Microsoft is extremely visible on my radar these days. Not only do they make up roughly 25% of all blocked DNS requests in our network, they seem to be in the news every other day, and not in a good way.
Clearly they're struggling. No one _needs_ a new version of Windows, or office. Their line of products is overly mature and they struggle to reinvent themselves. They use their cloud to tie customers to them. That aside, they're extremely intransparent about some telemetry data about their office and Teams products, so much that Germany (or was it the EU?) have ruled that Microsoft Office 365 products cannot be used in compliance with the GDPR. Of course, nothing will get done about it since virtually every company is using Office 365 and Teams.
Years ago, when Trump was elected US president I was half-joking about earth truely becoming the seed for the Caldari State of EVE online. I still feel that's adequate. If you're not familiar with EVE online, it is okay :).
Let me stop myself there before this turns even more into a tirade.
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Vaultwarden - selfhosted password and secrets manager
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