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There's one thing I absolutely hate about modern technology...
You own nothing.
Here in 2025, almost everything tech-related is subscription-based. Want a tool to help with grammar? Pay for it, again and again. You never actually own it. Want to unlock advanced features in a text editor with a one-time purchase? NOPE. And don’t even get me started on using advanced tools in your own operating system—or trying to remove bloatware. (Yeah, I’m looking at you, Windows.)
The point is: this subscription model that every major tech product relies on now? It’s garbage. It's unnecessary. And honestly, it's really starting to feel like something straight out of 1984!
So, I’ve decided: I’m going all-in on the DIY route for my tech life wherever I can.
Programming is something I love, and this opens up a whole new challenge for me. Take search engines, for example! I can’t stand Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, or any of their designs and inner workings. Since 2021, I’ve been toying with the idea of building my own personal search engine. Something I can tweak, customize, and use exactly the way I want.
That idea of going DIY has been simmering for a while, and now I want to extend it beyond just one area of my life. I want to build everything I reasonably can, from the ground up.
First up is HoneyCrisp, my APPLE-1 emulator. Once that’s wrapped, I’ll be dusting off my search engine project and publishing it on my personal site:
landonjsmith.com :)
Comments
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Bomboz
Great idea.
I really really hate having to pay subscriptions for everything (I had to look up a code just to be able to use office, which was PRE-INSTALLED ON MY COMPUTER)
I wanna study computer ingeneering to be able to do that kind of stuff.
I'm self learning everything so I don't have to sit through classes. lol
The only modern thing I can stand in MacOS. I've loved it since I started using MacOS 9.1 at the age of 9 (Yes, that was in 2017-2018 lol) on my dad's '02 Power Macintosh...and still use Macs to this day.
That's about the only non-DIY thing I'll keep. Unless I get a wild hare up my rear and decide to build a Linux distribution T_T
by Landon Smith; ; Report
if you don't want to build your own distro of linux, generally you can trust them to be more modifiable than commercial operating systems. maybe i'm just a huge nerd, but i super recommend arch linux :p you get a lot of free reign with it!
by hal; ; Report
K-Rose
HomeLab FTW!
Yes! :D
by Landon Smith; ; Report