Here’s my 2024 tech to-do list

After all the chaos that befell the tech sector in 2023—from Elon Musk’s militantly ignorant stewardship of the location previously often known as Twitter to the ongoing debate over whether or not AI poses a grave menace to humanity or simply to people’ jobs—2024 appears set to select up proper the place we left off. 

The AI theatrics aren’t going anyplace, nor are the crypto indictments or the erratic self-driving cars. And with the 2024 election looming, I don’t need to know what kind of misinformation (AI-generated and in any other case) will fill our social feeds. 

These storylines are largely out of my management, however there are issues inside my attain that might enhance my very own interactions with know-how. Right here’s a brief record of my 2024 tech resolutions. 

Deprecate some DM choices

Final week, I attempted including up what number of apps I take advantage of that enable different folks to ship me direct messages. I acquired to eight—the Messages app on my iPad, the Messages app on my Android cellphone, Fb, WhatsApp, Google Voice, Slack, X, and Sign—and thought that was a bit a lot.

Then I spotted I’d unnoticed Instagram and LinkedIn. 

Disabling every of those interruption-generation mechanisms isn’t within the playing cards—aside from Instagram, the place you possibly can set the app to discard message requests from folks you don’t comply with—however I can a minimum of decide to ignoring a few of them. 

(My process is made a bit simpler since I’ve sworn off supporting X after Musk determined to hand a megaphone again to conspiracy liar Alex Jones.) 

Within the meantime, our getting older Toyota Prius stays one of many extra fuel-efficient automobiles ever made—and the substitute system battery we acquired in April after the unique failed after 126,000 miles should easily get us through next year. And that procurement postponement will even unencumber some cash to replace our gas stove with an induction model.

Rebalance our video-services price range

Streaming-TV providers are blissfully freed from the contract phrases and early-termination charges which have plagued conventional pay TV, however the ease of computerized credit-card funds could make it virtually as probably that we preserve paying for them after their utility has declined. 

In the meantime, streaming TV providers have proven themselves no extra proof against programming-cost inflation—as in, the leisure trade appears sure that Different Individuals’s Cash is an infinitely renewable useful resource—than cable and satellite tv for pc operators.

Our streaming budget is already low, since we now have good-enough over-the-air reception to watch the local stations for free with an antenna. However the $40 a month we pay for fundamental Sling TV service, up from $20 5 years in the past, warrants a more in-depth look. 

We don’t watch practically that a lot TV, and our viewing tends to be clustered round explicit occasions, like tennis tournaments (my spouse) and postseason baseball (me). That’s an argument for benefiting from streaming’s flexibility and solely paying for the service throughout these months. 

This is able to provide the additional advantage of reducing down our unwilling underwriting of the disinformation machinery at Fox News.

Choose a Twitter substitute

Whereas I’m completed with X—seeing how little engagement my tweets now get made it straightforward to cease posting there in response to Musk’s increasingly unhinged conduct—I’m not completed researching substitute choices. 

I’ve constructed the most important post-Twitter viewers on Mastodon however have more and more discovered that I get higher engagement on Bluesky and benefit from the conversations extra. I’m a lot much less keen about Meta’s Threads, primarily due to that company’s history of bad-faith behavior toward journalism.

Subsequent yr guarantees to deliver critical shifts for all three Twitter rivals: Bluesky plans to open itself up to public sign-ups, whereas Threads is shifting to help the federated “ActivityPub” protocol behind Mastodon–which can let folks on Mastodon be part of Threads conversations with out having a Meta account or utilizing a single Meta app. I wish to see a transparent winner emerge from these advances, as a result of I actually don’t need to proceed utilizing all three platforms in 2024.

Decide on a Mint substitute

After years of neglect that noticed nothing change at its Mint personal-finance app, Intuit ended 2023 by shocking customers with a much more drastic shift: a plan to shut that service and migrate them over to a distinct personal-finance app primarily based on its Credit score Karma service.

But when I’m going to must export greater than a decade of Mint data and study a brand new app’s interface regardless of the place I’m going subsequent, I’m going to contemplate competing providers. Particularly contemplating how a lot I’ve grown to resent Intuit’s rent-seeking behavior about tax prep. 

Proper now, the main candidate is Simplifi, a $33.48/yr, ad-free service from Quicken—which Intuit spun out in 2016—that occurs to be a past honoree in Fast Company’s Innovation by Design awards.

Thankfully, I’ve a bit of extra time to determine this out, since Intuit has pushed again its Mint shutdown date from January 1 to March 23. 

I’m certain I’ll want each week of that point. As a result of there’s one tech downside that I don’t see easing up in 2024—the way in which too many too-busy apps and providers go away my cognitive load maxed out.