Same. I've downloaded most of the documentation I need to answer day to day questions, and try to limit my use of search engines. Finding most of my answers is faster in the local references I'm familiar. The Internet is my last resort.
I use Dash on my Mac for most of the documentation. It makes searching any of the "docsets" it has indexed fast. I've recently started creating some of my own.
I save references I use a lot, like the HTML spec, as PDFs. MacOS indexes these PDF files, so a search in Finder is usually all I need to bring the correct document.
If I can't find a reference locally, or know it doesn't exist locally, I'll turn to the Internet. Once I find the bit of information I'm looking for I'll either save the website as a PDF, or save the info in Snippetlabs or Bear so I can search for it next time I need it.
I've got a couple recommendations. I currently use Net News Wire and News Explorer on the Mac. News Explorer has excelent YouTube integration. If you're into web apps Feedbin is IMO well worth the price.
I guess it's a matter of opinion because Feedly's interface looks cluttered to me. It's not a bad offender for a webapp but compared to other feed readers its interface is IMO busy.
Also a matter of opinion but app developers IMO shouldn't use their apps to market. I've already got an email app and a Feed reader. If I want to keep up with you I'll subscribe to your mailing list or follow your feed.
I disable auto-update because I get annoyed when apps tell me about new versions (and I have privacy concerns.) I wont consider using an app that doesn't let me disable auto update. I already have a strategy to keep my software up-to-date that works on my schedule.
I recognize I'm sensitive to these things but that doesn't mean they aren't justified or don't make sense. They just don't make sense * to you *.
Tangential: if updates bother you, you might want to give NetGuard a try (not affiliated). FOSS, though the pro version license costs $5 iirc. It is a great way to make apps behave nicely - even Firefox is too chatty (telemetry & co.) for my taste. Since updates are often from a different domain, you can just block them. How it works is that all the traffic on the phone is routed through a local (just an app on your phone!) VPN where it can be logged and filtered. Brilliant idea.
As a bonus, it is also very satisfying watching apps try to connect to various ad networks and spy agencies^W^W Google unsuccessfully.
NetGuard is on-device, can't get much more 'self-hosted' than that.
Can PiHole filter per-app though? I wouldn't have thought so. NG can and it's the main reason I use it.
History trivia: you might think that sending a bunch of deliveries is a modern thing, made possible by the telephone. But no, if you were sufficiently dedicated you could do it back when you had to send letters to order stuff.
In 1809 this [1] happened in London:
> On 27 November, at five o'clock in the morning, a sweep arrived to sweep the chimneys of Mrs Tottenham's house. The maid who answered the door informed him that no sweep had been requested, and that his services were not required. A few moments later another sweep presented himself, then another, and another; twelve in all. After the last of the sweeps had been sent away, a fleet of carts carrying large deliveries of coal began to arrive, followed by a series of cakemakers delivering large wedding cakes, then doctors, lawyers, vicars and priests summoned to minister to someone in the house they had been told was dying. Fishmongers, shoemakers and over a dozen pianos were among the next to appear, along with "six stout men bearing an organ". Dignitaries, including the Governor of the Bank of England, the Duke of York, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Mayor of London, also arrived. The narrow streets soon became severely congested with tradesmen and onlookers. Deliveries and visits continued until the early evening, bringing a large part of London to a standstill.
The person behind that wrote thousands of letters to set that up.
Dying in a car crash is a lot higher probability for most of us, but the question is whether publishing one's address would raise the probability significantly.
I'm not sure it would. And it's hard to think of what else people can do, other than, as you say, subscribe you to a bunch of fetish mailing lists that I'd probably get a kick out of anyway.
The wikipedia article you linked to only has one death, and it was an uninvolved person. In the 2015 Oklahoma swatting incident, the swatting victim shot the police chief, then surrendered. The cop survived and the swatting victim was not charged.[1] My guess is that the police really screwed up and didn't announce themselves before busting down his door.
