blog equipment

it's been more than a year since my last “how i compute post” so here is an update

devices

i have four personal devices. i have many non-personal devices, but i will include discussion of one non-personal device because i feel it does meaningfully impact the way that i compute

the personal devices are:

• personal computer – thinkpad x1 carbon gen 7 running OpenBSD
• personal smartphone – iPhone 16e with no SIM card or phone number
• personal phonecall phone – AGM M9 dumbphone with my actual phone number on a SIM card
• unlimited wifi hotspot from calyx

why do i have this setup?

openbsd on personal laptop:

• because i want a computer that is truly built on the idea of personal computing
• only does things when i tell it to
• is incredibly stable
• does not give in to the webification of desktop software
• is built to be “simple” in the sense that a knowledgable operator can effectively understand and manage the system themself
• is postitioned to oppose LLM contributions to core software, and OS-level age-verification laws (we do not yet know where OpenBSD stands on OS-level age verification, but i'm hopeful)
• X1 carbon is the most portable-but-still-totally-normal-x86 laptop i've ever had

iOS personal smartphone without sim card:

• because living entirely without a smartphone in the US is, in my experience, not feasible in the long term (though it is feasible for decent stretches of time)
• because keeping a SIM card out of your primary mobile device makes it possible to keep it on wifi-only airplane mode forever, eliminating cell-tower tracking as you move through the world with it
• facilitates being offline when you are out and about
• because having signal messenger is a hard requirement for me, and signal requires a real phone for your “primary” client
• because i got burned by an AOSP distro i was using disappearing (calyxos), and don't want to face that again
• because i will not use graphene because i don't trust their leadership
• because i do not believe that AOSP distros will remain viable in the long term and i do not want to navigate phone churn any sooner than necessary
• because i hate apple less than google, and you can trivially create an apple account that is totally disconnected from the rest of your life on first boot of an iphone

dumbphone with sim card:

• facilitates treating your cell-tower connected device like a land line most of the time and rarely bringing it out
• VOIP providers break 2FA — this does not
• facilitates iterating on your personal smartphone setup without having to dis/re-connect your cell number
• this particular phone has 4G, which can be hard to find in dumbphones
• this particular 4G phone does not run kaiOS, which can be hard to find in 4G dumbphones

wifi hotspot from calyx:

• facilitates using your smartphone-without-SIM-card when you're out of reach of wifi, when necessary
• facilitates using your laptop anywhere you want
• but you can skip bringing it if you don't need it (i usually don't have it with me)
• is endlessly useful to have around — never have to deal with broken/censored/expensive hotel/library/cafe/municipal wifi again

relevant non-personal device

my work laptop is a framework 13 running fedora. my “work laptop” is admittedly unusual because my work is a worker-owned cooperative that i'm a worker-owner of. so i have an uncommonly high degree of autonomy on my work device. sometimes, something wil be weird or hard on the openbsd laptop, and i will use the fedora laptop to do it instead. if i didn't have the work laptop, i do think i could still use openbsd exclusively, but i'm not 1000% sure, so i'm adding this caveat.

thoughts

i love this setup and i've been using some version of the laptop + no-sim-smartphone + sim-dumbphone + hotspot setup for one year. i've gone on many trips, and it works great.

currently on my smartphone, the things i use it for are signal messenger, calendar, checking the weather, delta chat messenger, xmpp client (basically a backup in case everything else goes down simultaneously (unlikely)), banking apps, offline wikipedia (kiwix), offline maps (organic maps), work zulip, alarms, receiving on-call alerts, a white noise app, 1password (basically as a redundancy in case my laptop implodes), voip.ms app for work phone, scheduled reminders which only exist on the phone, and a few lists that only exist on the phone.

there is no email on the phone because i want to be slower at email, and never tempted to respond on such a terrible keyboard. i do also use the camera a bit

conclusion

this may not work for everyone but it does work for me. in particular, i think that many people who are already iterating on how to de-emphasize the smartphone in their life, and/or are running custom phone OS's, would benefit from moving their SIM card into a separate dumbphone that basically stays at home