No, I don’t think this is incredibly likely to happen. But like how some disaster prep agencies model zombie outbreaks to get people thinking about hurricanes and earthquakes, it’s a good thought experiment.
Let’s say out of the blue there’s an executive order that prevents US tech companies from servicing Canadian customers.
How hosed are you? Would you have access to backups of family photos not on Apple or Google? Does your email still work? Can you access your password manager? If you have a domain registered, is it still pointable to your servers?
I ask this because I’m trying to train myself to look for Can/EU alternatives in my tech stack for work and personal life.
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I have been working at cutting the US out of my online stuff, I would like to cut it from my offline digital stuff to.
I have been using pi’s for things for years prior to the boycott but I am using more for more things. I have one that I am setting up as my vpn into my lan, finally getting around to it. I have a pi zero 2 w with the PoE hat that I am going to try and turn into my “smart” home subnet. I have 3 pi 5’s one is solely homeassistant I plan to get away from Siri just have not pulled the plug yet. Another runs my *arr apps and Jellyfin along with being my secondary pihole/DNS provider, the last pi 5 runs things? I know there are things just cannot think of them right now but it also is my primary pihole/DNS server. Sure I could have just got a computer and run those things in containers on a Linux distro but that would involve me getting an x86 processor, or an Apple computer both are no goes for me.
I have a Nextcloud hosted on a Canadian server that I use to replace my iCloud space. I moved my blog from a US host with a .com TLD to HostHero with a .ca TLD, I also got an unlimited email accounts package so that if I need to sign up for something I can give it an unique email address. Each of those unique email addresses forward to specific emails that are on my devices; the amount of spam I get is next to nothing if something starts sending me unwanted emails I can just close the address, which I have done many of times. I have 1Password for my password manager, I would go bitwarden if I did not have habits of messing up something on my LAN frequently.
Because of my 180 something current addresses and my pihole setup Google must hate me, they have no idea of how to sell ads to me. Prior to moving to the boycott I was paying for youtube premium because I got such weird ads so google only saw the spam I was getting in my gmail and what I was watching on YouTube, after the boycott I decided to stop paying and found the app Unwatched that blocks trackers and ads.
I am wanting to get some smart speaker things not made for google or amazon to tie into homeassistant and I am thinking of getting another pi 5 to replace my AppleTV.
i am stuck with FaceTime with family however I am looking at alternative ways to keep it easy for my Grandma.
Go for it, there’s enough open source stuff out there already. I don’t need that proprietary garbage.
I’d actually invite it. Watch Canada go open sauce. The people will win at that rate.
I’ve withdrawn to self-hosted local almost entirely. In 9 months, my google account will be shut down all the way.
Although I’ve lost a little convenience, the shuttering of a ton of other access, accounts, services, etc has been good overall. I can tell you with confidence where my data now lives, and how my information flows around.
There are loose ends; I don’t like smart TV apps, but I have to live with those.
I have better attention span, I read way more. And honestly, I’ve realized that an online life is a lot of management, which I think is a silent mind-killer.
Curious what do you use for search? I have moved to ecosia but it currently gets its stuff from google and bing.
I have to admit i use duck duck go. Might be time to change, though.
As I understand it Ecosia will be moving to the EU search system eventually. I am sure the ads will remain google though. They tell me frequently that my adblodker is not good for them so I am guessing most of the ads are being blocked other than the sponsored pages.
Ive always gone to mouser in past. Whats a good alternative for electronics like resistors and capacitors?
It’s convenience only at this point. I’m 90% FOSS, and a cutoff would just make it easier to cut the optional 10%.
I would support it, I think our government should be doing that.
The rise and fall and rise of RIM. Blackberry, here we go!
I’m just hoping for more job security in Canadian tech… Canadian any industry, really.
It wouldn’t do anything because all those big companies operate completely separate subsidiaries in almost every country on the planet. They would just split off and continue to operate with no changes functionally.
I know for a fact that a lot of our banking IT infrastructure is in the cloud. So that would be a problem right there. I don’t think the government uses any of the big cloud services though. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Also, some of those cloud services have data centers in Canada for various reasons including legal ones. Would they still work? I mean Google and Amazon have offices in Canada and data centers. How would that work in this scenario?
The Canadian banks (and other companies like canadiantire, Air Canada and others) have their own data centers on Canadian soil, and they are connected using fiber leased from Rogers, Telus and BCE. The telecom companies also have their own data centers here as well, both for their own purposes and with rackspace leasing to 3rd parties.
All 3 fiber operators have diverse fiber coast-to- coast in Canada (with one exception where the diversity path passes through Minnesota and Wisconsin, but the other path remains in Canada).
And those fiber companies all have overseas links that launch from Canadian soil.
If the US cut off the connections going south, Canada’s internet wouldn’t become an island.
Infrastructure wise maybe not. That’s just how internet is.
But having worked for the companies that actually support those companies, I can attest that they definitely are on Azure and AWS.
I don’t think the government uses any of the big cloud services though. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Oof you’re very wrong here. The government of Canada spends hundreds of millions of dollars per year on M365 cloud services.
And AWS
Fuck.
Ok, but those have got to be hosted in Canada though. So they have to abide by Canadian law.
It doesn’t actually matter. The US can compel American companies to provide all data even if the data residency is outside of America.
to complement this comment, Microsoft has already acknowledged this in court
https://www.cyberincontext.ca/p/microsoft-admits-us-law-supersedes
And as we all know, Microsoft will definitely stand up to the us government and refuse to hand over customer data to their final regime.
/s?
The only US based services I use are Signal, Bluesky, and YouTube.
Signal. I only E2EE with one person so we can switch to Briar.
I don’t care enough about Bluesky to find an alternative but Mastodon might do.
I watch YouTube with a frontend (PipePipe) so I’ll probably continue using that.
Email is Proton as is password manager and VPN. I don’t use cloud storage.
Edit: corrected my early morning attempts at spelling.
All my music and photos are on my local hardrives
Immich self hosted images, instead of google. Immich is really good. The intiial face recognition naming setup is highly counter intuitive, but once you have labelled your people the facial recognition AI does a good job of grouping images by person. The companion phone app integrates well
