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silveradeptHello! Why not start with Liberry, an application in development that aims to be a customizable tracker of the reading you do - and that in its potential graphs, already includes fanfic as a thing that can be tracked. The name makes me twinge ever so slightly, but I can't deny that it's a really good name to use, since it's a familiar pronunciation for a lot of people.
Sparkler Monthly magazine is seeking funds for Year 6. Many of the titles being published in Sparkler look quite interesting and fun to read.
In case you have some obstinate fool who won't believe that is already observably true, here's the data that proves pockets in clothing for women, when they exist, are on average almost half the size of pockets in clothes made for men.
Three-Point Characterization is the idea that audiences and creators both often use shothand in constructing which versions of a character is properly "coorect", and that if your points and the points of a creator or fan diverge, that makes the characterization fail.
A model of gender identity involving two cities and a road that connects them, as well as all the places close and far away from the road where people live all the same.
A show that wants to showcase the smartest university students in the UK finds itself without many women on camera, with at least one strong reason given as women not wanting to endure the social media harassment campaign that is likely to follow from such an appearance.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, A tee shirt design store that aims to turn common sexitst stereotypes on their heads. And images from a phtogoraphy exhibit of women who identify as witches and the tools of their offices.
The narrative force wanting to pigeonhole the mens' rights movement and all of its subsidiaries into a bunch of quirky men desperately wanting to get laid (and then make them into figures of reality teleivision and comedy) blinkers people from realizing the truly intersectional, terrible, toxic reality that they've built and then use to visit violence upon women, because it refuses to tell their stories exactly as they are. If you look at the "great books" canon, one more reason for not teaching only those books is that they tend to valorize the kind of thinking and violent action in the face of loneliness that entites like "redpillers" or "incels" valorize. If you look at the structure underpinning this HuffPo story about someone who went into the incel world and then came back out, you'll notice the majority of the attention is about the person who went in when they were young and developing into themselves, and then came back out when they found a way of being a productive person in the outside society. And that they were, even while there, still holding on to the core reality that engaging in violence against women was a terrible idea, that women were still human beings, and that the majority of his disgust was inward-turning, not outward-facing. In that sense, he's not a typical redpiller, because he never bought the core premise. What I'd like to see is someone who really did go in all the way, bought into the core tenets, and then managed to claw his way back out and leave that community. That would give us much more insight on how the change might be effected in others. And notice that in the redpill world, women aren't the only target, either - it meshes extremely well with other -isms that want to make others lesser and somehow receiving unearned advantage, rather than being put in their correct place. Much like other reactionaries, giving them sympathetic or even neutral coverage in what's considered "the mainstream" is legitimizing them much, much more than they should receive. Several payment processors, despite giving other sites a very hard time for "adult content", still don't seem to find it necessary or helpful to prevent right-wing extremists from raising funds for their rallies or actions, fearing accusations of "discrimination" more than being known as the company that helps the neo-Nazis fundraise.
A police chief that embraced the idea of getting to know the community has found, unsurprisingly, that the rate of police violence is very low.
A comparison of the various unlimiteds of unlimited plans from the four major mobile carriers in the United States. So if you wanted actual unlimited on your unlimited plan, you'll have to pay up for it, and even then it's not actually unlimited.
Co-workers cuddling each other as a team-building exercise, with a morning gripe session to be honest and clear the air first? That sounds suspiciously like a disaster waiting to happen, because cuddling is still an intimate affair, best conducted woth people who you can be quite certain are going to respect the space, follow the rules, and respect the participants. The office environment does not sound like that kind of place, and especially if you have to have a gripe session beforehand to make sure you're not being overtly negative.
Not to mention the ease in which cuddling could become something more than that, and the way it would become very plausibly deniable if it happened during the cuddle session. File the idea in with the person who wants everyone to smile more on public transport without having a clue as to why most of the people there aren't smiling.
If you are bemoaning the lack of social spaces for people to go and hang out, understand that a large amount of that mingling that you think of as the best thing ever was because there were no other places to hang out where you could be around people that you actually wanted to be around. And realize that a significant amount of that forced interaction created situations that would be rightly decried as men behaving badly toward others. There is a case to be made for having spaces that teens can hang out in, safely, between school hours and when they can go home, though.
While it would be nice to disclose everything you are on a job interview, because employers aren't supposed to discriminate on the basis of those classes, in practice, omitting key things about who you are will likely get you more interviews.
The president of the French Open tennis tournament took offense to Serena Williams wearing a form-fitting suit that was prescribed to help her with blood clots and said the game needed to be respected. Serena Williams responded by wearing a form-fitting suit with a black sparkly tutu and won her match all the same. Presumably, when he talked about "respecting the game", he's in the same department of the people who complain that women making sounds of exertion as they play a physically demanding sport is not in the spirit of tennis. Apparently, they still believe that women's tennis is supposed to be about beauty first and athleticism second. They're so terribly, terribly wrong, but it would probably take having to stand there and return serves for a while before they got it. In addition, the behavior of the chair umpire at the final of the United States Open drew claims of sexism after the chair heavily penalized Serena Williams for outbursts and behavior that would have likely gone unpenalized or much less stringently penalized in the mens' game. The court of popular opinion is divided on whether this was an issue of a black woman being told to shut up and punished when she wouldn't or whether it's a popular tennis player throwing a tantrum and being rightly fined for it, with the divisions mostly following the usual lines when someone makes accusations of sexism - the people that don't believe in it and likely perpeturate it don't see it, and the people who suffer under it constantly and can't avoid it see it perfectly clearly. Implict biases take the most subtle of forms, sometimes, but given that there had already been press about how Sereena needed to "respect the game," it's entirely possible the chair umpire was already predisposed to treat her harshly.
After releasing an advertisement that featured Colin Kaepernick, call centers at Nike took a lot of heat, a lot of abuse, most of it racially-motivated, and a few people calling to say that it was a good move by Nike. For extra terrible, after the pit bosses noticed that the front-line workers were starting to crack under the constant stream of racially-motivated abuse being thrown at them, they decided to buy some food to help keep morale up...and got Papa John's pizza, striking perhaps the most insensitive note they could have found in food choices.
The CEO of the Levi Strauss company said that more CEOs need to take a stand against gun violence, and put company resources to work on gun violence after speaking of the need, to show the company's commitment.
Companies starting to take stands on significant issues has people starting to wonder if this is the lead-in to The Revolution, Brought To You By Nike, a story that bases much of its content on the revolution that was televised in the Phillipines.
Emily Sioma, Miss Michigan for the Miss America pageant, chose to remind the audience looking for eye candy about the very real problems around drinking water still going on in her state. It's not just the corporations that are getting in on the social responsibility act. Soon enough there will be enough voices in all the places so that nobody can hide and pretend their sole job is to make the shareholders profitable.
A day of protest that women can't go completely topless while men can, and all the pictures taken, of course, see tape and other nipple coverings used because it's usually an exposed nipple that's going to make complaints about public indecency. But only on female-looking bodies.
The Dead Pool prvides a soft and gentle landing for Senator John McCain, R-Ariz, at 81 years of age. The Senator can arguably have the Tea Party and the resurgence of Chaotic Stupid conservatism that resulted in the current administrator laid at his feet by giving legitimacy to Sarah Palin. He also has a reputation of actually understanding the real consequences of politics that works as part of his legacy.
Sometimes the ways that our bodies interact with the world have consequences that can be fodder for essays and comedy routines in hindisght, like having a breast fall out and be exposed as you're using your chair on the streets...
An educator took the time to have students mix pigments that matched their own skin color in advance of further art projects, so that none of the students can't put themselves into their art.
Jen Hatmaker, member of a Christian church in Austin, Texas, went to Austin Pride and offered "Mom hugs" for any of the attendees who had been shunned by their parents for their identity. I am reasonably confident that a religious belief in loving other people unconditionally manifests itself well in this way. I also very much like the concept of giving parental-type hugs to those who haven't been getting them from their parents. It stands in stark contrast to how a significant number of denominations and churches haven't got the foggiest clue about how they might make their belief systems less painful for the adherents and the potential converts. (Kudos to the pet company named at the end for responding well to the concern and for sending a nice condolence card and flowers upon learning of the death of a pet.)
Finding a hobby that physically grounds a person can be very helpful when life feels like it's sprinting away at high speed. With the requisite caveats about doing something that you can physically do, rather than trying to do something that will cause physical damage without benefit.
A game that declares by fiat that it contains no triggering material. It's even in the name, and if you've got a terrible feeling about that declaration's validity, then you should listen to that feeling.
Questions to ask when the things you remember fondly from your childhood have been visited by the Suck Fairy in the meantime.
Bioluminescence party in the pool!
And a mark of history that we would much rather have stayed obscured: hunger stones, carved with warnings and commiseration from historical droughts, are starting to reappear due to low water levels.
Fragrance and chemicals on "air fresheners" for vehicles can cause severe allergic reactions to passengers, and those cmopanies that make them don't have to fully disclose what they use.
Pictures from inside a city that sprung up through the joining of more than 300 high-rise buildings in an un-architected manner, before it was decomissioned and evacuated by the government in the early 1990s.
A pizza vending machine in Hiroshima, Japan, the first of its kind, with plans to add more around Japan. The variety of foodstuffs on display in the game Dragon Quest XI.
In technology, a new vulnerability discovered in the same framework that Equifax was struck before on has plans for exploitation in the wild. Given how things went with Equifax the last time someone exploited a flaw in their material, perhaps this time they'll move faster to patch than they did before? When telecom companies were confronted with a vulnerability that allowed someone to try and brute-force a PIN, they made adjustments to try and prevent the vulnerability from being further exploited.
It is becoming a regular part of our lives that the businesses that we transact with can be spearphished and have our data, including credit and debit card numbers, stolen. Which can then be turned around into a hack that allows for the unlimited withdrawal of cash from ATMs through the simultaneous use of stolen card numbers and hackers disabling the fraud controls on a bank network or other malicious uses.
Researchers are developing devices to help detect the presence of card skimmers that may have been installed at point of sale terminals, which might help close off, or at least require further evolution and sophisitcation of skimmers to defeat these devices.
The Firefox browser will be blocking trackers and cross-site trackers by default, a move that will hopefully require less data consumption in loading all the ad trackers and will result in a swifter experience on the Internet. We applaud this move, and also link you to a piece called The Bullshit Web which makes the point that developers and content creators and everyone else could choose not to bloat their sites with tracking scripts and autoplay videos and other things designed to intensely frustrate the person on the recieving end and have them install browsers and tools that screen out the bullshit. Things could become much less terrible as an experience, and it wouldn't mandate the installation of several extensions to a browser before the world became viewable again (especially on mobile.) Where does the money come from, they ask? Where it always has, we respond - people choosing to put their money behind something they find valuable, useful, and not terrible. Which means they have to have that money in the first place, and not to get it by nonconsensual data tracking.
Poorly programmed apps that disclose their intents on too wide a beam may have the sensitive data in the broadcast intercepted by malicious apps. Also, various malicious apps are using smartphone computing power to mine cryptocurrency without the smartphone user's consent to do so.
If you have a Samsung phone with a dedicated hardware key to summon their personal idea of Android, Bixby, you may be able to disable the hardware key that activates it. Although you can't remap that key, most likely, unless you have an alternative firmware installed, but then you're not necessarily getyting Bixby. If you've got the Note 9, though, you're up a creek.
There are other ways that companies and entities are trying to spy on you, though, whether it's by listening to the audible changes in voltage driving a computer screen or intercepting certain radio signals put out by the processor itself to collect encryption keys, or using commands meant for the POTS network to compromise smartphones that can get in if a person plugs into a malicious USB charging port, using a poisoned DNS request to get control of devices on your local network, intercepting and copying the wireless signals used to remotely unlock cars, using the phone as a sonar device to determine unlocking passwords, and other things that may not have been in the toolkit or mindset of the earliest hackers because we hadn't yet invented the devices they would work on.
And sometimes apps have bugs that do things without telling you, like sending your entire gallery of pictures to a contact.
Various keypad codes that can be entereed on smartphones to access different functions of the underlying cell systems.
Cases being fought in the courts now about whether or not files that could be used to create a plastic gun can be restricted test the boundaries of what qualifies as speech. Even if right now, the things produced by those files are unlikely to be usable.
Apple seems to be having a bad streak with defective products and terrible service times. Facebook's algorithms took down a post about Holocaust education for violating community standards, and the Zuck said that those who deny history shouldn't have their material taken off if it's not clear they're doing it in ignorance or malice.
A small reminder that most multinational companies are using their multinational status to avoid taxation and paying revenues where they are due to help the infrastructure that allows them to profit maintain itself. And that the company itself, in its profit chase, is much more inclined to provide bosses with a means of workplace surveillance than to use their powers for good. Or to believe so firmly that their platform is a medium that doesn't have moralities or need to be concerned about them vis-a-vis their overarching goal that it allows all sorts of extremely terrible things to happen using that platform.
The companies that wish to control copyright forever are fighting sustained legal wars against your Internet Service Provider, trying to turn them into agents of those companies compelled to watch for anything that looks like it might be infringement, and then to completely ban access to the Internet for someone on that same absolutely flimsy premise.
Here is a way to request that companies delete or not use your DNA data if you have used a service like 23AndMe to get information on your own DNA.
Alternative Domain Name Server systems that might provide better or different ways of getting your lookups done quick.
A command that can be used on Windows 10 systems to make the Windows Defender program more aggressive with potentially unwanted programs, like the ones that come with various free software installers. Defender gives way to other programs, so get those if they work better, but this is a way of making Defender more protective.
Science, and reading good science, can be tricky, where you can conclude mobile phone radiation is going to cause significant cancer and telecoms are engaged in a conspiracy to muddy the waters and point out that many of the arguments and studies on humans over the long term don't show the cancer hazard, much less the conspiracy. Literacy is one of those things that everyone desperately needs, and yet achieving it, especially in those places where technical knowledge is a pre-requisite, is a work of a lifetime.
Thus, I appreciate a not-very-technical explanation of what the likely improvements to wireless spectrum will be through the adoption of the fifth generation of wireless standards.
And a combination tutorial and review of powerline networking adapters, that use the electrical wiring already in the house to also transmit data signals.
The insistence that laptop computers be more powerful, but also lighter and thinner, has resulted in a situation where there isn't enough space to dissipate the heat generated by processors trying to achieve peak performance.
Data on the various percentages of LEGO bricks produced in certain colors, over time. To be cmopared with a 19th century work that attempts to express shades and tones of color with poetic language and examples of that shade or tone found in the natural world.
Last for tonight, at least your cell phone location data requires a warrant to be obtained by law enforcement.
And also, pictures of cats currently high on catnip, combined with a seven minute video of handling and safely picking up (and putting down) cats. Mostly, the key word for dealing with cats is "squish."
Sparkler Monthly magazine is seeking funds for Year 6. Many of the titles being published in Sparkler look quite interesting and fun to read.
In case you have some obstinate fool who won't believe that is already observably true, here's the data that proves pockets in clothing for women, when they exist, are on average almost half the size of pockets in clothes made for men.
Three-Point Characterization is the idea that audiences and creators both often use shothand in constructing which versions of a character is properly "coorect", and that if your points and the points of a creator or fan diverge, that makes the characterization fail.
A model of gender identity involving two cities and a road that connects them, as well as all the places close and far away from the road where people live all the same.
A show that wants to showcase the smartest university students in the UK finds itself without many women on camera, with at least one strong reason given as women not wanting to endure the social media harassment campaign that is likely to follow from such an appearance.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, A tee shirt design store that aims to turn common sexitst stereotypes on their heads. And images from a phtogoraphy exhibit of women who identify as witches and the tools of their offices.
The narrative force wanting to pigeonhole the mens' rights movement and all of its subsidiaries into a bunch of quirky men desperately wanting to get laid (and then make them into figures of reality teleivision and comedy) blinkers people from realizing the truly intersectional, terrible, toxic reality that they've built and then use to visit violence upon women, because it refuses to tell their stories exactly as they are. If you look at the "great books" canon, one more reason for not teaching only those books is that they tend to valorize the kind of thinking and violent action in the face of loneliness that entites like "redpillers" or "incels" valorize. If you look at the structure underpinning this HuffPo story about someone who went into the incel world and then came back out, you'll notice the majority of the attention is about the person who went in when they were young and developing into themselves, and then came back out when they found a way of being a productive person in the outside society. And that they were, even while there, still holding on to the core reality that engaging in violence against women was a terrible idea, that women were still human beings, and that the majority of his disgust was inward-turning, not outward-facing. In that sense, he's not a typical redpiller, because he never bought the core premise. What I'd like to see is someone who really did go in all the way, bought into the core tenets, and then managed to claw his way back out and leave that community. That would give us much more insight on how the change might be effected in others. And notice that in the redpill world, women aren't the only target, either - it meshes extremely well with other -isms that want to make others lesser and somehow receiving unearned advantage, rather than being put in their correct place. Much like other reactionaries, giving them sympathetic or even neutral coverage in what's considered "the mainstream" is legitimizing them much, much more than they should receive. Several payment processors, despite giving other sites a very hard time for "adult content", still don't seem to find it necessary or helpful to prevent right-wing extremists from raising funds for their rallies or actions, fearing accusations of "discrimination" more than being known as the company that helps the neo-Nazis fundraise.
A police chief that embraced the idea of getting to know the community has found, unsurprisingly, that the rate of police violence is very low.
A comparison of the various unlimiteds of unlimited plans from the four major mobile carriers in the United States. So if you wanted actual unlimited on your unlimited plan, you'll have to pay up for it, and even then it's not actually unlimited.
Co-workers cuddling each other as a team-building exercise, with a morning gripe session to be honest and clear the air first? That sounds suspiciously like a disaster waiting to happen, because cuddling is still an intimate affair, best conducted woth people who you can be quite certain are going to respect the space, follow the rules, and respect the participants. The office environment does not sound like that kind of place, and especially if you have to have a gripe session beforehand to make sure you're not being overtly negative.
Not to mention the ease in which cuddling could become something more than that, and the way it would become very plausibly deniable if it happened during the cuddle session. File the idea in with the person who wants everyone to smile more on public transport without having a clue as to why most of the people there aren't smiling.
If you are bemoaning the lack of social spaces for people to go and hang out, understand that a large amount of that mingling that you think of as the best thing ever was because there were no other places to hang out where you could be around people that you actually wanted to be around. And realize that a significant amount of that forced interaction created situations that would be rightly decried as men behaving badly toward others. There is a case to be made for having spaces that teens can hang out in, safely, between school hours and when they can go home, though.
While it would be nice to disclose everything you are on a job interview, because employers aren't supposed to discriminate on the basis of those classes, in practice, omitting key things about who you are will likely get you more interviews.
The president of the French Open tennis tournament took offense to Serena Williams wearing a form-fitting suit that was prescribed to help her with blood clots and said the game needed to be respected. Serena Williams responded by wearing a form-fitting suit with a black sparkly tutu and won her match all the same. Presumably, when he talked about "respecting the game", he's in the same department of the people who complain that women making sounds of exertion as they play a physically demanding sport is not in the spirit of tennis. Apparently, they still believe that women's tennis is supposed to be about beauty first and athleticism second. They're so terribly, terribly wrong, but it would probably take having to stand there and return serves for a while before they got it. In addition, the behavior of the chair umpire at the final of the United States Open drew claims of sexism after the chair heavily penalized Serena Williams for outbursts and behavior that would have likely gone unpenalized or much less stringently penalized in the mens' game. The court of popular opinion is divided on whether this was an issue of a black woman being told to shut up and punished when she wouldn't or whether it's a popular tennis player throwing a tantrum and being rightly fined for it, with the divisions mostly following the usual lines when someone makes accusations of sexism - the people that don't believe in it and likely perpeturate it don't see it, and the people who suffer under it constantly and can't avoid it see it perfectly clearly. Implict biases take the most subtle of forms, sometimes, but given that there had already been press about how Sereena needed to "respect the game," it's entirely possible the chair umpire was already predisposed to treat her harshly.
After releasing an advertisement that featured Colin Kaepernick, call centers at Nike took a lot of heat, a lot of abuse, most of it racially-motivated, and a few people calling to say that it was a good move by Nike. For extra terrible, after the pit bosses noticed that the front-line workers were starting to crack under the constant stream of racially-motivated abuse being thrown at them, they decided to buy some food to help keep morale up...and got Papa John's pizza, striking perhaps the most insensitive note they could have found in food choices.
The CEO of the Levi Strauss company said that more CEOs need to take a stand against gun violence, and put company resources to work on gun violence after speaking of the need, to show the company's commitment.
Companies starting to take stands on significant issues has people starting to wonder if this is the lead-in to The Revolution, Brought To You By Nike, a story that bases much of its content on the revolution that was televised in the Phillipines.
Emily Sioma, Miss Michigan for the Miss America pageant, chose to remind the audience looking for eye candy about the very real problems around drinking water still going on in her state. It's not just the corporations that are getting in on the social responsibility act. Soon enough there will be enough voices in all the places so that nobody can hide and pretend their sole job is to make the shareholders profitable.
A day of protest that women can't go completely topless while men can, and all the pictures taken, of course, see tape and other nipple coverings used because it's usually an exposed nipple that's going to make complaints about public indecency. But only on female-looking bodies.
The Dead Pool prvides a soft and gentle landing for Senator John McCain, R-Ariz, at 81 years of age. The Senator can arguably have the Tea Party and the resurgence of Chaotic Stupid conservatism that resulted in the current administrator laid at his feet by giving legitimacy to Sarah Palin. He also has a reputation of actually understanding the real consequences of politics that works as part of his legacy.
Sometimes the ways that our bodies interact with the world have consequences that can be fodder for essays and comedy routines in hindisght, like having a breast fall out and be exposed as you're using your chair on the streets...
An educator took the time to have students mix pigments that matched their own skin color in advance of further art projects, so that none of the students can't put themselves into their art.
Jen Hatmaker, member of a Christian church in Austin, Texas, went to Austin Pride and offered "Mom hugs" for any of the attendees who had been shunned by their parents for their identity. I am reasonably confident that a religious belief in loving other people unconditionally manifests itself well in this way. I also very much like the concept of giving parental-type hugs to those who haven't been getting them from their parents. It stands in stark contrast to how a significant number of denominations and churches haven't got the foggiest clue about how they might make their belief systems less painful for the adherents and the potential converts. (Kudos to the pet company named at the end for responding well to the concern and for sending a nice condolence card and flowers upon learning of the death of a pet.)
Finding a hobby that physically grounds a person can be very helpful when life feels like it's sprinting away at high speed. With the requisite caveats about doing something that you can physically do, rather than trying to do something that will cause physical damage without benefit.
A game that declares by fiat that it contains no triggering material. It's even in the name, and if you've got a terrible feeling about that declaration's validity, then you should listen to that feeling.
Questions to ask when the things you remember fondly from your childhood have been visited by the Suck Fairy in the meantime.
Bioluminescence party in the pool!
And a mark of history that we would much rather have stayed obscured: hunger stones, carved with warnings and commiseration from historical droughts, are starting to reappear due to low water levels.
Fragrance and chemicals on "air fresheners" for vehicles can cause severe allergic reactions to passengers, and those cmopanies that make them don't have to fully disclose what they use.
Pictures from inside a city that sprung up through the joining of more than 300 high-rise buildings in an un-architected manner, before it was decomissioned and evacuated by the government in the early 1990s.
A pizza vending machine in Hiroshima, Japan, the first of its kind, with plans to add more around Japan. The variety of foodstuffs on display in the game Dragon Quest XI.
In technology, a new vulnerability discovered in the same framework that Equifax was struck before on has plans for exploitation in the wild. Given how things went with Equifax the last time someone exploited a flaw in their material, perhaps this time they'll move faster to patch than they did before? When telecom companies were confronted with a vulnerability that allowed someone to try and brute-force a PIN, they made adjustments to try and prevent the vulnerability from being further exploited.
It is becoming a regular part of our lives that the businesses that we transact with can be spearphished and have our data, including credit and debit card numbers, stolen. Which can then be turned around into a hack that allows for the unlimited withdrawal of cash from ATMs through the simultaneous use of stolen card numbers and hackers disabling the fraud controls on a bank network or other malicious uses.
Researchers are developing devices to help detect the presence of card skimmers that may have been installed at point of sale terminals, which might help close off, or at least require further evolution and sophisitcation of skimmers to defeat these devices.
The Firefox browser will be blocking trackers and cross-site trackers by default, a move that will hopefully require less data consumption in loading all the ad trackers and will result in a swifter experience on the Internet. We applaud this move, and also link you to a piece called The Bullshit Web which makes the point that developers and content creators and everyone else could choose not to bloat their sites with tracking scripts and autoplay videos and other things designed to intensely frustrate the person on the recieving end and have them install browsers and tools that screen out the bullshit. Things could become much less terrible as an experience, and it wouldn't mandate the installation of several extensions to a browser before the world became viewable again (especially on mobile.) Where does the money come from, they ask? Where it always has, we respond - people choosing to put their money behind something they find valuable, useful, and not terrible. Which means they have to have that money in the first place, and not to get it by nonconsensual data tracking.
Poorly programmed apps that disclose their intents on too wide a beam may have the sensitive data in the broadcast intercepted by malicious apps. Also, various malicious apps are using smartphone computing power to mine cryptocurrency without the smartphone user's consent to do so.
If you have a Samsung phone with a dedicated hardware key to summon their personal idea of Android, Bixby, you may be able to disable the hardware key that activates it. Although you can't remap that key, most likely, unless you have an alternative firmware installed, but then you're not necessarily getyting Bixby. If you've got the Note 9, though, you're up a creek.
There are other ways that companies and entities are trying to spy on you, though, whether it's by listening to the audible changes in voltage driving a computer screen or intercepting certain radio signals put out by the processor itself to collect encryption keys, or using commands meant for the POTS network to compromise smartphones that can get in if a person plugs into a malicious USB charging port, using a poisoned DNS request to get control of devices on your local network, intercepting and copying the wireless signals used to remotely unlock cars, using the phone as a sonar device to determine unlocking passwords, and other things that may not have been in the toolkit or mindset of the earliest hackers because we hadn't yet invented the devices they would work on.
And sometimes apps have bugs that do things without telling you, like sending your entire gallery of pictures to a contact.
Various keypad codes that can be entereed on smartphones to access different functions of the underlying cell systems.
Cases being fought in the courts now about whether or not files that could be used to create a plastic gun can be restricted test the boundaries of what qualifies as speech. Even if right now, the things produced by those files are unlikely to be usable.
Apple seems to be having a bad streak with defective products and terrible service times. Facebook's algorithms took down a post about Holocaust education for violating community standards, and the Zuck said that those who deny history shouldn't have their material taken off if it's not clear they're doing it in ignorance or malice.
A small reminder that most multinational companies are using their multinational status to avoid taxation and paying revenues where they are due to help the infrastructure that allows them to profit maintain itself. And that the company itself, in its profit chase, is much more inclined to provide bosses with a means of workplace surveillance than to use their powers for good. Or to believe so firmly that their platform is a medium that doesn't have moralities or need to be concerned about them vis-a-vis their overarching goal that it allows all sorts of extremely terrible things to happen using that platform.
The companies that wish to control copyright forever are fighting sustained legal wars against your Internet Service Provider, trying to turn them into agents of those companies compelled to watch for anything that looks like it might be infringement, and then to completely ban access to the Internet for someone on that same absolutely flimsy premise.
Here is a way to request that companies delete or not use your DNA data if you have used a service like 23AndMe to get information on your own DNA.
Alternative Domain Name Server systems that might provide better or different ways of getting your lookups done quick.
A command that can be used on Windows 10 systems to make the Windows Defender program more aggressive with potentially unwanted programs, like the ones that come with various free software installers. Defender gives way to other programs, so get those if they work better, but this is a way of making Defender more protective.
Science, and reading good science, can be tricky, where you can conclude mobile phone radiation is going to cause significant cancer and telecoms are engaged in a conspiracy to muddy the waters and point out that many of the arguments and studies on humans over the long term don't show the cancer hazard, much less the conspiracy. Literacy is one of those things that everyone desperately needs, and yet achieving it, especially in those places where technical knowledge is a pre-requisite, is a work of a lifetime.
Thus, I appreciate a not-very-technical explanation of what the likely improvements to wireless spectrum will be through the adoption of the fifth generation of wireless standards.
And a combination tutorial and review of powerline networking adapters, that use the electrical wiring already in the house to also transmit data signals.
The insistence that laptop computers be more powerful, but also lighter and thinner, has resulted in a situation where there isn't enough space to dissipate the heat generated by processors trying to achieve peak performance.
Data on the various percentages of LEGO bricks produced in certain colors, over time. To be cmopared with a 19th century work that attempts to express shades and tones of color with poetic language and examples of that shade or tone found in the natural world.
Last for tonight, at least your cell phone location data requires a warrant to be obtained by law enforcement.
And also, pictures of cats currently high on catnip, combined with a seven minute video of handling and safely picking up (and putting down) cats. Mostly, the key word for dealing with cats is "squish."
no subject
Date: 2018-09-14 09:57 pm (UTC)I liked the photos as well. They give depth and complexity and diversity to a concept that seems to be in danger of being seen only as a White woman thing.
5G sounds like it will be fabulous if you live in a highly dense urban space where antennae can be put down anywhere. What we really need is more of the last mile copper put down outside highly urban areas so that rural broadband is a real thing.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-15 06:27 am (UTC)Phone manufacturers, from what I gather, are going nuts because the antenna's so big they can't figure out where to put it. I've seen some prototypes/maybe an actual phone where it sticks out the top right side with a rubberized cover the same color as the phone bezel; others where it pops up like a camera lens, so the whole internal debate is: "Well, that's fine, but this makes for one ugly/easily breakable/early 2000s looking phone" (and it really does!) "so how can we possibly shove this thing alongside other antennas/radios/fingerprint scanners/etc?".
Combined with the whole mess of where/how routinely the signal will be available and how much carrier prices might go up to deliver it I'd say it's 5 years before the whole 5G system even starts to become as usable/commonplace/invisible to us as 4G/LTE is now. Though hopefully I'm wrong.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-15 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-16 06:11 am (UTC)But it turns out people don't want to talk, they want to text and they want a screen. My too-tiny-to-see phone can't text or have a screen, so there went that.
(If phones have to have a screen I don't necessarily want them smaller; smaller means the hardware requirements are reduced which means a slower, more cramped-looking and harder to use phone, and I'm not missing those days one bit, though it was nice when I could still slip my smartphone in a pocket.)