Thinking about digital sovereignty

With the US increasing its hostility to the EU under the Trump administration and all the Big Tech companies sitting in Trump's pocket the EU is looking to migrate to alternatives.

I think this is a smart move. The last thing you want as a government and a country is to have all your communication and processes reliant on a potential enemy.

Here are a few examples in the news over the last year:

• European Commission Trials Matrix to Replace Teams
• EU hopes to sever defence data from US tech
• France to ditch US platforms Microsoft Teams, Zoom for ‘sovereign platform’ citing security concerns
• LibreOffice Is Replacing Microsoft 365 in Denmark's Government
• Can Europe regain its digital sovereignty?

As a result I have been thinking of my own digital sovereignty and the tools I use in my personal life as well as my business.

I try to self-host as much as possible using open source tools where possible. At least that way the data never leaves my home. There are still quite a few services I use though that are definitely US Big Tech.

• Gmail: 🇺🇸 USA - I use Gmail for both my personal and business email. I did migrate to Mailbox.org a few years ago but ended moving back to Google due to calendar syncing with my family. I also stayed with Google for my business, so I didn't mess up my Google AdSense account. That's not an issue any more so now is probably a good time to degoogle or at least not have a paid account any more.
• AWS: 🇺🇸 USA - My website is hosted in an S3 bucket. This shouldn't be too difficult to move and would be good not to give money to Amazon even if it is less than $1 a month.
• YouTube: 🇺🇸 USA - There is no getting away from YouTube completely, but I have put all my videos on a self-hosted PeerTube instance and will be reducing the amount of videos I put on YouTube. Especially now that YouTube has demonetised my channel and is going all in on shorts.
• GoToSocial/Mastodon: 🇩🇪 Germany (Hetzner) - I have GoToSocial hosted on my Hetzner box. It is nice and lightweight and just what I needed for my single user instance. You can follow me on Mastodon just search for @[e-mail].
• PeerTube: 🇩🇪 Germany (Hetzner) - I have my PeerTube instance set up on my Hetzner box and I will be posting all my videos on there.
• CloudFlare: 🇺🇸 USA - I have my website and services sitting behind CloudFlare. It is at least free, but I should look for an alternative. The best alternative looks to be Bunny.net which is based in the EU. It isn't free, but I think my usage should be less than $2 a month.
• Namecheap: 🇺🇸 USA - I have my domains registered with Namecheap. Ionos looks like a good EU based option.
• Buttondown: 🇺🇸 USA - I have been looking at alternatives to Buttondown to save money, but it looks like most of them are US based. One option is Brevo but would be around £22/month for my current usage but will be cheaper in the long run.
• Goodreads: 🇺🇸 USA - I use Goodreads to track my reading and books I want to read. I have tried a few alternatives like The StoryGraph and BookWyrm and I haven't really got on with them. I need to migrate though as Goodreads is owned by Amazon. I might self-host BookWyrm or write my own and open source it.
• Kindle Unlimited: 🇺🇸 USA - My wife reads a lot of books that are Kindle Unlimited exclusive including some long-running series. There aren't many books I read on here, but my wife would not be happy if I cancelled it!
• Apple: 🇺🇸 USA - We are an Apple household with Macs, iPhones, iPads and HomePods. I think Apple is better than Google in terms of privacy, and I am never going back to Windows. Ideally I would run Linux on everything but the hardware quality of some of the alternatives just isn't there yet.
• Netflix: 🇺🇸 USA - Netflix is the only video streaming service I subscribe to with everything else running off my JellyFin server. I still buy physical media for the movies that I really like and don't want to disappear.
• Claude Code: 🇺🇸 USA - The only EU alternative I am aware of is Mistral AI but it is only marginally cheaper and apparently not as capable. I am looking forward to open source models catching up and being lightweight enough to run locally on reasonable hardware. I can dream anyway.

If you are looking to move some of your services away from the US Big Tech companies than check out European Alternatives.

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❤️ Picks of the Week #

📝 Article - Why Write Online? - The internet needs more people writing on their websites rather than the walled gardens. Write because you want to share your thoughts or as an online journal. In the age of AI slop we need more written by humans.

📝 Article - On Programming with Agents - I like the fact the Zed is still cautious about the use of AI agents. I think AI and coding is here to stay but using AI unattended will just lead to slop.

📝 Article - AI Usage Policy - Ghostty has the right idea. With AI anyone thinks they can contribute to open source and AI in the hands of the inexperienced tends to waste everyones time.

🛠️ Tool - Whosthere: A LAN discovery tool with a modern TUI, written in Go - This is really nice tool, it managed to find all my devices and label the manufacturer correctly.

📝 Article - Microsoft gave FBI set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops - What is the point of encryption if the encryption keys are stored on a central server!

📝 Article - My experience running LLMs on my PC (2025) - Local LLMs are good for small defined tasks. For large coding tasks you need a lot of VRAM to run anything remotely resembling Claude.

🛠️ Tool - Grid Paper - This is a neat tool for getting grid paper. I often like to do UI mockups on grid paper, so this will be useful.

🛠️ Tool - Handy: A free, open source, and extensible speech-to-text application that works completely offline - Speech to text is one of those areas where AI is genuinely useful. See also the newly released Voxtral Transcribe 2 which apparently does even better.

🛠️ Tool - Bonsplit – Tabs and splits for native macOS apps - This looks good for those building Mac apps.

🛠️ Tool - A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch - I could probably do with this. I tend to sit slouched in my chair far too much.

📝 Article - ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data - When it comes to privacy some say that if you don't have anything to hide then you don't need to worry about privacy. This is clearly not the case when your data is in the wrong hands.

📝 Article - First, make me care - This is a good short article on how to engage readers with your writing. Something (at least at the moment) LLMs can't do.

🛠️ Tool - Mecha Comet – Open Modular Linux Handheld Computer - The teenage me would have loved one of these. (The adult me wants one too).

📝 Article - The future of software engineering is SRE - With more and more people using AI to write software there is bound to be more bugs. Solid reliable software is what people are going to be looking for more.

📝 Article - Making niche solutions is the point - I really want a 3D printer, but I worry it would just be a waste of money. There have been quite a few times over the last few years when I wish I could print something but not enough to justify buying one.

📝 Article - After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand - AI is good when you give it a small defined problem. If you try to vibe code a whole project the code is often a mess and a pain to maintain.

📝 Article - Television is 100 years old today - I thought this was interesting. Just wait until the internet is 100 years old. I probably won't be around for that though!

📝 Article - JuiceSSH – Give me my pro features back - I really hate rug pulls in software. If you are going to put something behind a paywall at least grandfather in your existing users.

📝 Article - Fedora Asahi Remix is now working on Apple M3 - I am writing this article on an M3 MacBook Air. This gives me hope that I can still use this laptop once I am fed up with Apple.

📝 Article - A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks - “It hurts the ego a bit”, sums it up quite nicely. AI coding still needs a heavy human hand to get anything decent from it.

📝 Article - TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues - I am not surprised given the TikTok ownership in the US is now linked to the Trump administration.

📝 Article - Are there any open APIs left? - A lot of services get shut down due to bad actors abusing it. Others are purely just to make money.

📝 Article - Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux - I am glad that Microsoft and Windows is slowly losing its dominance.

📝 Article - Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app - I only have a few paid subscribers on Patreon. I might need to look at rolling my own alternative in addition to Patreon as a good backup option.

📝 Article - UK Government’s ‘AI Skills Hub’ was delivered by PwC for £4.1M - Millions spent on a vibe coded website with just links to other websites, 👏 (sarcastic slow clap).

📝 Article - Please Don't Say Mean Things about the AI I Just Invested a Billion Dollars In - The billionaires really don't like AI being referred to as slop.

🛠️ Tool - OpenClaw — Personal AI Assistant - I would love my own Jarvis, but I am not sure these personal assistants can be trusted. See "Top downloaded skill in ClawHub contains malware” for a good example.

📝 Article - A sane but bull case on Clawdbot / OpenClaw - For those looking to see how the above is being used. There is no way I would give AI access to my bank, that is just insane no matter what the author says.

📝 Article - Peerweb: Decentralized website hosting via WebTorrent - This looks interesting, although I am not sure how decentralised it really is.

📝 Article - In praise of –dry-run - I have put dry-run in a few of the CLI tools I have built at work. It is definitely a life saver sometimes.

📝 Article - Code is a liability (not an asset) - This is the main issue with AI generated code. Yes it generates a lot of code, but that isn't necessarily a good thing.

📝 Article - Claude Code: connect to a local model when your quota runs out - The article recommends GLM 4.7 Flash or Qwen3-Coder-Next. I am going to have to give this ago, but I wonder how it compares.

📝 Article - My Changing Media Landscape - I am watching more and more things from my server these days. I would like to cancel Netflix at some point if I can.

📝 Article - Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors - I used to use Notepad++ back when I was on Windows. If you are developing an app that updates make sure to put in hash checks on what is downloaded.

📝 Article - Moltbook: A social network for AI agents - Because this is what we need right now? It is like a Reddit clone for AI to talk to each other: moltbook.

🛠️ Tool - Bunny Database - This looks like an interesting alternative to using AWS, Azure or Google Cloud.

📝 Article - I miss thinking hard - This is why I still limit my AI usage. It is great being able to build fast but the moment you substitute thinking for AI, it is a downward slope.

📝 Article - Write about the future you want - I definitely need to do more of this.

📝 Article - Creating Caddyfiles with Cog - I use Caddy on my home server. It mostly involves copy and pasting a previous definition and changing a couple of things. Cog looks interesting.

📝 Article - CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook - Facts have no place in fascism.

📝 Article - Wait, veronicaexplains.net? - I follow Veronica Explains on PeerTube/YouTube and on Mastodon. It seems the downside of Mastodon is you can get a lot of abuse from strangers depending on who you are and how large your following is.

📝 Article - My AI Adoption Journey - It is interesting to get points from someone who has built a tool I use myself (Ghostty).

📝 Article - LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions - I tend to avoid LinkedIn on a daily basis. I let people follow me, but I will only connect if I have actually met/worked with you before. Despite that most of LinkedIn is people trying to promote what the are building all the time.

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👨‍💻 Latest from me #

I am in the process of redesigning my website. The starting point is making my RSS feeds a bit more restful. I wrote about it here: PeerTube, RSS and website changes. I now have separate RSS feeds for each of the parts of my website. If you have subscribed to my RSS before you are on the "everything" feed. I also have a feed just for this newsletter here: Alex Hyett Newsletter

The last couple of weeks at work have been a bit different. For those that don't know I work at a wallet native billing startup called Credyt. I was in Berlin for 3 days spending some in-person time with the team.

It was fun but very cold:

This week we have been doing a hackathon to see what we could build that makes use of our API. Naturally I chose to build a game that is loosely inspired by the sushi restaurant in "Dave the Diver".

You can play for free at: Coffee Shop Tycoon

Naturally it was built with the help of AI. I would say I spent around 2 days vibe coding it and 3 days fixing all the bugs I found in it and putting in some graphics.

These are the tech specs if you are interested:

• Game Engine: Godot 4.6. I was going to use C# but you can't do browser games in C# yet.
• API: Node.js. The API is used for updating game state and passing on the requests to the Credyt API.
• Database: Postgres. For storing game state.
• Hosting: Hetzner. For now I am just hosting it on own server as it was the quickest option.
• Graphics: AI generated in DrawThings with a mix of Z-Image Turbo and Qwen Image Edit as well as manually cleaning them up in Aseprite .

Cheat Code : As with all good games, this one has a cheat code in case you want to upgrade your coffee shop without playing it.

Clicking on “Open Credyt Dashboard” will take you to the customer portal where you can top up the wallet with the test card 4242424242424242. Enter any details you want for everything else.