AVOID USING MICROSOFT

This is only the second topic on my privacy page and I can already see that the page is not going to be a logical and orderly progression of ideas, but rather a bunch of responses and reactions to whatever subjects come up.

 

Like the majority of computer users, I had been using Microsoft Windows forever, and only recently stopped, but I don't want to give the impression that Microsoft is the only one to avoid. Apple is full blown spyware as well, as of course is Google.

  

What seems to have really been the final straw is Microsoft's Windows 11. This appalling pile of full on spyware is so bad it has even aggravated non geeks who in the past would have just gone along with whatever crap Microsoft pushed on them.

 

This was my reply to a friend who yesterday asked what sort of computer she should get to replace a Windows 10 PC that was failing. I've had several friends asking similar questions recently, so I thought I'd better do a blog post to try and cover the basics of the current situation

Microsoft have lost the plot. Personally I stopped at Windows 7, and refused to ever use Win 10 to any extent, so I ended up sticking with Win 7 up until 2024, but I was having increasing problems with software that would no longer work on Win 7.

 

So I shifted to using Linux, which took me ages to get used to after 26 years of Microsoft - I prefer it now, but for the first six months I wished I could just go back to Win 7.

Much as I disliked Win 10, that is nothing to my dislike of Win 11, which is badly designed spyware with built in adverts, mainly designed to sell expensive PC's


Microsoft pulled support for Win 10 in October 2025, and have told everyone to get Win 11 which requires an expensive high end computer.


One good thing about that is that there are now thousands of Win 10 PC's going cheap because they won't update to Win 11


They will run fine for at least the next few years, but over time there will be increasing problems with Win 10, like there now is with Win 7.


A good solution is to switch old PC's over to Linux, which runs much better on older PC's because it's better designed software.


The catch is that you will need to learn to use Linux, which for non-geek Windows users is a big change, and to begin with many find difficult. Linux is different to Microsoft.


With Linux literally everything is a choice, while Windows has very little in the way of choices. For example with Windows you can now essentially only choose between switching to Win 11, or continuing to use Win 10.

https://sift666.blogspot.com/p/linux.html

Meanwhile on Linux there are hundreds of different versions (distros) to choose from which initially seems confusing. But it's often less confusing than it first seems.


For an ex Windows user who is not a geek, and just wants a good general purpose operating system, there are two stand out options - Linux Mint or Linux Zorin.

 

 
Both of those are from Ireland which is now a hotbed of computer development 


As with all things Linux, every last detail on these operating systems can be customised, although you can just run them on the default settings as they come if you want, and that will work fine too. They are not like Windows where all the defaults are set to spy on you, and need to be changed.

But essentially I think the best option for Windows 10 users wanting to buy a PC in 2025 is to buy a good used Win 10 PC, and to continue using Win 10 for now, but to be aware that in a few years you will probably have to convert it to Linux, so to start learning to use Linux now and gradually get used to it.

A lot of geeks recommend setting up a dual boot PC, often suggesting a combination of both Win 10 and Linux Mint, but I don't like dual boot set ups myself and prefer to keep Linux & Windows totally separate.

So for the initial learning stage I recommend getting a second computer, any half decent 64 bit laptop with a 500gb solid state drive (SSD) will be fine, and that means you can get used to Linux under no pressure. If anything goes horribly wrong you can just start over again.

 

Hundreds of old laptops and PC's are going cheap on Trade Me - here is a typical example, this is a 17" Dell laptop for $199, which would be ideal for setting up with Linux to learn the ropes.

 

I see no future in Win 11 and think Microsoft's appalling spyware will always be best avoided.

This my own Linux Mint PC - Linux uses different programs so instead of Word for example it runs Writer, but they are very similar. More difficult for me was that instead of Photoshop, Linux runs GIMP (Graphical Image Manipulation Program) and that is more of a difference.

 

DIGITAL PRIVACY PAGE

I've decided to start a new page about digital privacy, because we are now under serious attack and need to find ways to defend ourselves. Here is the first post:

 https://sift666.blogspot.com/p/digital-privacy.html
 

Digital ID's have been a threat on the horizon for years, but recently they have gone from just being a threat to being an actual hard out attack on our freedoms. 

As with the death jabs during the covid hoax, where I said right from the outset, "I will never submit to any death jabs", I will also never submit to any form of digital ID, but clearly that is rapidly going to cause issues, as "they" ramp up the pressure to submit.

Submission is not an option, so we need work arounds. 

 

 

WAYS TO HAVE SOME DIGITAL PRIVACY

 

The subject of digital privacy is huge but we have to start somewhere, even if we have no idea where this is going to lead, or even where is the best place to start.

 

 

1. AVOID USING CELL PHONES 

 

Back in the 90's, cell phones were the hot new fashion, and my friends all got them, so I got one too, but I can honestly say I never liked them, and I refused right from the outset to pay for any sort of monthly account.

 

I've stuck to using pre-pay only for nearly 30 years now, and most years I forget to even do a $10 top up, so my balance gets wiped nearly every year. I very seldom make any calls, and never use data, so I generally spend less than $20 on pre-pay per year.

 

In this day and age, I may well be one of the most clueless people in the world when it comes to cell phones, and for me of all people to start off here talking about phones is completely fruit-loops.

 

But if I had to start with one practical suggestion for achieving some degree of digital privacy, it would be to avoid using cell phones as much as possible.

 

I do have a Samsung phone running Android, not because I think it has any degree of privacy at all, but because I had nearly a full decade of reliability out of my first one, so got another one when it finally met with nasty accident (admittedly I seldom use them). 

 

So I'm not saying to not have a phone at all, because from time to time there is no easy work around, and occasionally a phone is fairly essential. But I am recommending to avoid using phones as much as possible.

 

Eventually I will need to replace my Samsung phone, and then I will look at privacy options like a Brax phone, or some sort of Linux phone if there is a suitable option for me by then, but in the meantime I'll keep on not using my Samsung phone for as long as it still runs.

 

When it comes to phones I'm clueless because I've always done my upmost to avoid using them, but I'm putting them here in first place because I think they are arguably the technology that presents the biggest danger to our privacy and freedom.

 

 

DOES MONERO EVEN STILL WORK?

With all things relating to computer privacy we are in an awkward position that if something is widely used it won't be private, and if something is really private it will be prevented from becoming widely used. 

The crypto Monero is a good example - it was the only properly private cryptocurrency, but this year it has been made near to unusable - no exchanges will trade it, and no wallets will store it - it is still spoken of like it is the best privacy crypto, which it would be if it was usable, but it isn't.

I still have US$45 of Monero that I missed when I was selling my Monero at the start of the year. If I wanted to use it, that would not be easy, so I've written it off - It would require setting up an old wallet to even be able to see it, and any person I might send it to would need to do the same. 

No exchanges will accept Monero now so it can't easily be sold or traded. So the coin is essentially unusable, but nobody is talking about that, and it's still currently trading at US$400 seemingly unaffected by the fact that it's now a completely useless privacy coin. 

The fact that this coin is still supposedly happily trading like it's still usable and nobody is talking about this situation was the final straw that made me lose any remaining faith I had in cryptos. 

The elephant in the room is, who is trading it? and how are they trading it? If I can't trade my $45 of Monero, how are people trading millions of $ of it? Are all these trades of Monero even really happening? Why would anyone pay $400 for a privacy coin that is nearly unusable?

And that is why privacy is a really complex subject - nothing is what it seems! 

USE CASH

  I've been using cash as much as possible for the past 30 years, so it boggles my mind to see how many people are willingly lining up for digital slavery by using electronic payment systems as their main method of payment. 

 WAKE UP!!!!!

 The Threat of Financial Transaction Control by Catherine Austin Fitts

EXISTENTIAL CRISIS

It probably sounds a bit fruit-loops to even seriously be considering the optimum number of blog posts to do each day, but after doing a couple of posts mentioning my 27 year history of blogging, I started contemplating that life defining question again.

For most of the past 27 years I have simply done a blog post whenever I had an urge to say something, and over time on www.frot.co.nz, that generally worked out to an average of around 10 posts each month.

But with this new www.sift.co.nz blog, I set out at the start of 2024 with a definite aim of doing one post every day, even if those posts were only shorties. I liked the idea of forcing myself to post something daily, and wondered how I’d cope with that sort of intense pressure!

 

It has actually worked out fine, because on days when I couldn't be arsed writing much, I have just re-posted something from my old www.frot.co.nz blog, or shared a meme or something else fairly quick and basic. 

 

For the first year (2024) the hits on my new SIFT blog were fairly disappointing, generally numbering only around 100-200 total hits each day, and I thought my 1000+ hits a day times (2017-2019) were well and truly over. But throughout 2025 the hits have actually been slowly increasing, they are now averaging 500+ a day, and are continuing to gradually climb.

 

The only promotion I do these days are a few odd links on my Facebook account, apart from that I can't be bothered striving to get hits, but I must admit to having a look at the hit counter from time to time out of curiosity.

 

In the grand scheme of things I realise 1000 hits a day is bugger all, but it does add up to over a third of a million hits a year (365,000), and I used to manage to convince myself that I was a big-time influencer back in my 1000+ hits glory days.

 

If I'm honest about it, one way or another, I'd like to get back up over half a million hits a year. That was my peak hit-count on www.frot.co.nz back in 2018. Then I'd be a mover and shaker again. 

 

 

Presently the hits vary quite a bit each day, from lows of around 300, to highs of over 1500, and I have no idea why that is. Those quite big daily variations don't seem to be caused by my new posts of the day, there just seem to be inexplicable ebbs and flows in the overall traffic to the entire site.

In 27 years of blogging, the most posts I’ve ever done in one day is four (SIFT yesterday), and the longest I’ve gone without doing a post is 30 days (SIFT July 2025, but I've since filled that month back in). Clearly those are both maniacal and possibly unhealthy extremes which I'm not planning to attempt again.

My current plan, starting December 2025, is to continue aiming to do a post every day, but at the same time to randomly add any extra posts that I feel inclined to. So I might end up doing more than one post each day, or then again I might not, but either way I’m going to be taking an unconstrained walk on the wild side...