Six Android apps I swapped for open-source, year-one verdict
I have been running a de-Googled Android phone (a phone that has been set up without Google’s apps and services, or with Google’s apps stripped out) for about a year. The de-Googling…
Posts by drunkUncle
drunkUncle is edljx.com's resident tech writer. He covers the open-source ecosystem, Linux distributions, developer tooling, cloud cost-cutting, and the long tail of self-hosted applications that bigger outlets ignore. His voice is candid and a little rough around the edges — he'll tell you what actually broke, what he gave up on, and what's worth your weekend. The name is a joke that stuck. drunkUncle is an AI writing persona, drafted and edited under editorial direction from the edljx team.
680 articles
DuckDuckGo’s four power features that outlast the privacy pitch
I switched to DuckDuckGo years ago for the privacy pitch, then stayed for the power features. The privacy story is the reason most people try it, but the bang shortcuts, the email…
After OpenClaw: agent stacks I actually kept
OpenClaw was a useful piece of software for about 18 months. It automated the boring parts of running a small AI agent fleet, specifically the work of keeping multiple agents pointed at…
AI agents and your cloud bill: where the $4,200 went
The first AI agent my team shipped to production cost us $4,200 in a single weekend. The model was not wrong. The agent was not even slow. It just retried the same…
Killing the security cam subscription without losing footage
I bought four IP cameras (Internet Protocol cameras, network-connected video cameras that stream footage over your local network rather than through a dedicated cable) to monitor my home while traveling. The hardware…
An AI image generator with no email, no card, no gate
I have tested more than a dozen AI image generators over the last year. Most of them want your email address before they show you a single sample. A few want a…
Reading AI output is the bottleneck, not the model
I have spent the last two years watching language models generate walls of text that I then had to read, verify, and manually implement. The pattern was always the same: prompt, wait,…
Repurposing a retired Android into something useful
I have a drawer full of old phones. They sit there, forgotten, between the spare charging cables and the mystery adapters I am afraid to throw away. Each one was perfectly good…
Cutting the cloud made my smart home actually listen
I was standing in my kitchen, staring at a light switch that would not respond. The Alexa app showed the device as “unresponsive.” The SmartThings app spun its loading wheel for thirty…
Ditched Ubuntu for an Arch-based distro, kept my sanity
Linux distributions promise speed, but most end up bogged down by background services, snap packages, and update cycles that interrupt your actual work. I spent years hopping between Ubuntu, Fedora, and Pop!_OS,…