Wired earphones

Cash

Old ass pre-connected car.

this is me and i think now that i'm going to keep this thing until i die. lol

RSS feeds instead of algorithms

TUIs and CLIs.

Wired speakers gang.

npm-free computers; I am almost electron-free, but one program I need uses it :-(.

Still using X11. I try Wayland once a year, and it hasn't not sucked yet.

Linux mobile phone, despite much pain and suffering (it's not þere yet)

Wired headphones.

Component hifi with floorstanding speakers.

Older car with cable-driven throttle and clutch.

Rotary-dial landline phone (not even kidding)

Vinyl records.

Home theatre PC.

Component desktop tower PC.

Basic Casio digital watch.

I use more post-enshittification tech. I've replaced most of the apps on my phone with open source versions.

I've never used proprietary software on my Linux computers so there's no enshittification there. But I have stopped using my enshittified android TV in favor of Kodi on Linux.

Vintage audio equipment. It's purpose built without gimmicky features, high quality, high performance, and built to last with discrete components and service manuals. Really it doesn't have to be vintage, but it's usually the old stuff that prioritizes these traits. I usually play local files (mp3/flac) over a bluetooth DAC but vinyl is fun once in a while. The same living room system gets used for movies and whatever else too.

IPod classic 5th gen with a 512gb sd card and higher capacity battery

Gameboy advance with a backlit screen, rechargeable battery and a flash cart

Library card for borrowing cds and dvds to rip

2022 thinkpad running arch

Film camera

And I dont connect my tv to wifi

A CRT is mandatory for videogames! Also many old audio stuff is superior in quality, like old portable CD players or wired headphones, it doesn't surprise me that many people today still want vintage tech.

2000 Corolla. Doesn't connect to anything except the radio. Stopped using the clicker to lock/unlock the doors when the battery in it died ~6 yrs ago. I was giving a ride to my kid and some of her friends, all around 10 y.o., and the friends were deeply confused when the doors stayed locked until I stuck an actual key in one of them. "Why doesn't your car beep?"

The car is a 2014. Not internet connected but still has a black box.

I've been playing local mp3 for decades. Along came streaming but I didn't see a reason to switch.

My laptop is a 2017 T-470 Thinkpad running Fedora44. Old machine, new software.

I use Syncthing and external hard drives instead of cloud storage.

I don't own a TV.

Not a single smart appliance in the house.

None. I usually just buy new tech and then deshittify it 😅

• lynx
• vim
• pen & paper for my notes/scratch pad
• a book (made of paper)
• wired everything
• old washing and drying machines (40 years old+ and still kicking!)

Reticulum.

If computers count then a phone with GrapheneOS and a laptop and a PC with a custom NixOS config.

Alphasmart keyboard to type notes when I’m out and about then transfer it to a VimWiki journal entry when I get home with a single button

iPod video modded with things like USB C and more storage

Retro “inspired” tv. Essentially, my old CRT didn’t survive a move and I replaced it with a replacement iPad 3 screen, a 3D printed body, and an analogue scaler so I can still plug my ps2 into it. It’s not really the same but it was a fun project.

Original gameboy with LSDJ so I can make chiptunes (though at this point, I’ve replaced it with the Dirtywave M8 entirely)

Tech of the non-electric variety:

Inkle loom, rigid heddle loom, and floor loom for various weaving

Spinning yarn on a spinning wheel and drop spindles (also have a 3D printed DIY e-spinner because the spinning wheel is so temperamental)

They're from before my time, but I collect cassette tapes. Other than that, I try to buy digital stuff DRM-free, and use FLOSS over proprietary slopware. I really hate bluetooth for audio because it sounds so bad.

Oh and I have a pocket-watch.

Nothing but everything I do run people still think I'm weird. Self hosted music, vacuum running valetudo speakers connected music assistant and home assistant.

Restored a T3 Palm Pilot to work as a my own little portable minigame thang!

Termux on Android devices

To give an example yesterday walking down the street I had an idea for a prototype (basically every morning my phone would generate an ePub with calendar, map of the area, notes, articles to read, etc) but I didn't use some fancy voice assistant, no I started Termux on my phone, mkdir, echo idea > file, etc.

I have notes on my wiki on https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/SwappingPartsOfTheRestrictionStack on doing this kind of stuff on more than phones, VR headset, IoT, etc. Typically the heuristic is to still by modern hardware flash an open source firmware or OS then connect it to your tools that are already not enshittified or de-enshittified

• TI-89 calculator. Got mine for college, wouldn't trade it for any other calculator
• Thinkpad X230, quad core modded
• Librebooted HP Z220 desktop in authentic 2001 beige case and 1600x1200 beige monitor
• 90s-era UI via Chicago95 on XFCE
• Early 90s car with intact tape deck
• Personal website in pure CSS/HTML
• Beige speaker-subwoofer set with added mixer for multi-device connectivity
• Cash. Don't worry, I won't waste your time counting out coins; I save them up and deposit into my bank account at the end of each year
• Palm Pilot. Tbh, taking notes on my phone is just as easy, but I'm afraid it doesn't look nearly as respectable in front of the speaker.
• If I need to deeply comprehend literature, I have to read it on paper. My mind defaults to skimming anything on a screen.

The one piece of old tech I don't miss are bulky charging bricks. I use my GaN USB-C charger whenever possible, sometimes with the help of adapters.

• Analog art or crafts (get your crayons out, kids, or put on your smocks because we're painting today). My fave media personally right now are crayons, chalk, or oil pastels for drawing or water-based markers and a brush pen filled with water or watercolors or acrylics + watercolor crayons for painting currently. Like, Crayola markers are really fun to paint with when you go to blend them with a wet brush.

• If going digital, using open alternatives to the Adobe suite, I personally use a combination of RawTherapee and GIMP for editing photos because it works for me so far.

• You can still buy used older digicams that are still respectable even by modern standards, there's plenty of old DSLRs which fit that bill, for example, even going back as far as '07 with the Sony a900 boasting a resolution that is still by all means a very respectable resolution by modern standards at 24.6MP, plus it should be able to work with the entire A-mount range even going back to legacy screw-drive lenses, let alone 'modern' Sony servo-drive A-mount glass.

• You could buy a bunch of CDs and rip them to FLAC, and then transcode those lossless rips to lossy copies as desired, eg. transcoding them to 160-510kbit/s* Opus copies for storage-limited devices.

*Per the HydrogenAudio KB, Opus' transparency bitrate for music is 160-192kbit/s and the codec maxes out at 510kbit/s.

Admittedly a lot of my audio stuff is either wireless or built-in now. Either laptop speakers, or bone conduction headphones since I want to hear what's happening around me when I'm walking on the roadside. Not clear on what you mean by pre-enshittification tech, but here's the stuff people either need explained, or look at me weird for:

• Gentoo linux
• FreeBSD
• Thinkpad T430
• GrapheneOS (this one's weird to me because it feels almost exactly like stock android?)
• A lot of my games are from itch.io for the same reason you listed for GOG, though I do use steam a lot too.
• My files are synced through syncthing between 4 locations, depending on what's getting synced
• The fediverse in general
• Having my own website? This one confuses me because you'd think that'd be a bit more normal because of the SquareSpace ads, but nope. The idea of just... having your own website is weird to people
• The Linux terminal. I occasionally go to the library and write books in a TTY, it's a little funny seeing people react.
• Emacs
• Pick any terminal application. Ranger, w3m, cmus, cava, etc etc.
• I occasionally play MUDs/MUSHes
• Browser games that are text/image based. The ones I'm playing now are all 20+ years old, so well pre-enshittification.
• Honestly I've had people think it's weird that I download my music to play locally, even though it's through a phone app with a relatively modern interface.

We'll be moving into an owned home soon, and I have some plans for tech, and non-tech stuff. Can't wait to see how many comments we get about having awnings in 2026.

Wired speakers. But connected to wiim because I like music discovery. Not that shit though.

Ipod classic is my favorite thing. Also, paper books and cash.

Oldschool offline mp3 player rather than Spottify or other streaming or phone app, to use when running.

Btw, does Youtube (webäpp) switch to their audio-only channels, if they detect focus loss?

Because that's how people use it anxyway – playing the full video of a song/podcast they only listen to. And Youtube has always at least one audio-only channel