Internet - Blog Posts
TFW when people try to remove information from Wikipedia but it just gets put back up with ten extra citations.
The whole #barbenheimer thing is peak crap of the internet. It's just another oddball cringe trend that people got swept up in because it was weird but when you look back at it, probably be more embarrassing than a fond memory.
I watched the Oppenheimer film. I think it was well casted and the story peaked further interest in the real history of events. I heard people cried at the end of Barbie, but I felt like going through Oppenheimer felt way more emotional. Living through atrocities that people put each other through is maddening and frustrating. Especially if you are helpless against it. And I know people will argue history on how at the time of WW2, they were faced with few choices. But that is one message of the film, it's all about the choices people make and how they impact others.
I lived through 9/11 and I knew my choice was not to do any invasion in the Middle East. Knowing the history of those wars seemed pretty clear to me that the war on terror was not going to make any benefit for the community at home. We now have 20 years of history put into that fiasco. Will this be a lesson learned. No because people just want to pretend it didn't happen. We may not have had a bombing event of that scale again but lives still have been lost to war since.
I'll just give it some more time when media looks to monetize that history some more and see those memes make the rounds. Yikes.
This is ridiculous. I get that if I were to reverse the concept, create a new file type called .com or .net it'd still be a problem but I'm not so sure the new domains were necessary to the whole of the internet. It just means I'll probably never click on one of those links. Can we have the first go at removing a TLD? Seems to me more dangerous than valuable.
New Things to Beware on the Internet
On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) -- these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th.
Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment.
Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: ".zip" and ".mov".
This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it's in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop.
What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it.
Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info.
This is what we're seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available.
What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you're on, don't enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters.
I'm seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company's internet, and that's probably wise.
Be cautious out there.
This is the greatest thing ever
INTERVIEW: @nyancrimew on online privacy and operational security
Our interview series about practical tactics to keep yourself and your community safe from the rising tide of fascism continues this week as Josh talks with maia arson crimew (it/she), a hacktivist and past guest on the show. Topics include:
The mechanics of how corporations and governments identify and track you across virtual and real-world spaces
Common ways that your devices give away information without your knowledge and how to disable those features
What encryption is and why it matters, especially when it comes to law enforcement
Tools that you can use to anonymize your usage online
Firefox Extensions I like
UBlock Origin - Adblocking
Chameleon - IP and random agent spoofing
TrackMeNot - Floods web search engines with false queries at a settable interval
Location Guard - Obfuscates precise location
Privacy Possum - Blocks and falsifies information collected by tracking
ClearURLs - Removes tracking elements from URLs
LocalCDN - Prevents third party requests
CanvassBlocker - Prevents fingerprinting
UnPaywall - Circumvents paywalls for research papers
Sci-Hub - Adds a Sci-Hub link to academic papers
ChromeMask - Disguises Firefox as Chrome for Chrome-only websites
FlagFox - Adds a flag next to the URL indicating its origin
It is with the deepest frustrations that I must report Microsoft has pushed out Copilot onto Microsoft Word no matter what your previous settings were. If you have Office because you paid for it/are on a family plan/have a work/school account, you can disable it by going to Options -> click on Copilot -> uncheck 'Enable Copilot'.
(Note, you may not see this option if you haven't updated lately, but Copilot will still pop up. Updating should give you this option. I will kill Microsoft with my bare hands.)
In addition, Google has forced a roll-out of it's Gemini AI on all American accounts of users over 18 (these settings are turned off by default for EU, Japan, Switzerland, and UK, but it doesn't hurt to check).
To remove this garbage, you must go to Manage Workspace smart feature settings for all your Gmail/Drive/Chat and turn them off. Go to Settings -> See all settings -> find under "Genera" the "Google Workspace smart features" -> turn smart feature setting off for both Google Workspace and all other Google products and hit save. (If you turned off the smart settings in your Gmail, it never hurts to open Drive and double-check that they're set to off there too.)
Quick Edit: I found the easiest way to get to the Smart Feature settings following the instructions above was to do it through Drive. Try that route first.
Now is the time to consider switching to Libre Office if you haven't already.
here's the story. i know expressvpn has been recommended in some 🏴☠️ how-to posts but it is not trustworthy. the parent company, kape technologies, not only used to distribute malate but has ties to multiple state surveillance agencies. and be careful where you look for info about good vpns, because kape technologies owns a bunch of "vpn review" sites too
It is with the deepest frustrations that I must report Microsoft has pushed out Copilot onto Microsoft Word no matter what your previous settings were. If you have Office because you paid for it/are on a family plan/have a work/school account, you can disable it by going to Options -> click on Copilot -> uncheck 'Enable Copilot'.
(Note, you may not see this option if you haven't updated lately, but Copilot will still pop up. Updating should give you this option. I will kill Microsoft with my bare hands.)
In addition, Google has forced a roll-out of it's Gemini AI on all American accounts of users over 18 (these settings are turned off by default for EU, Japan, Switzerland, and UK, but it doesn't hurt to check).
To remove this garbage, you must go to Manage Workspace smart feature settings for all your Gmail/Drive/Chat and turn them off. Go to Settings -> See all settings -> find under "Genera" the "Google Workspace smart features" -> turn smart feature setting off for both Google Workspace and all other Google products and hit save. (If you turned off the smart settings in your Gmail, it never hurts to open Drive and double-check that they're set to off there too.)
Quick Edit: I found the easiest way to get to the Smart Feature settings following the instructions above was to do it through Drive. Try that route first.
Now is the time to consider switching to Libre Office if you haven't already.
burning text gif maker
heart locket gif maker
minecraft advancement maker
minecraft logo font text generator w/assorted textures and pride flags
windows error message maker (win1.0-win11)
FromSoftware image macro generator (elden ring Noun Verbed text)
image to 3d effect gif
vaporwave image generator
microsoft wordart maker (REALLY annoying to use on mobile)
you're welcome
I would like to address something that has come up several times since I relaunched my computer recommendation blog two weeks ago. Part of the reason that I started @okay-computer and that I continue to host my computer-buying-guide is that it is part of my job to buy computers every day.
I am extremely conversant with pricing trends and specification norms for computers, because literally I quoted seven different laptops with different specs at different price-points *today* and I will do more of the same on Monday.
Now, I am holding your face in my hands. I am breathing in sync with you. We are communicating. We are on the same page. Listen.
Computer manufacturers don't expect users to store things locally so it is no longer standard to get a terabyte of storage in a regular desktop or laptop. You're lucky if you can find one with a 512gb ssd that doesn't have an obnoxious markup because of it.
If you think that the norm is for computers to come with 1tb of storage as a matter of course, you are seeing things from a narrow perspective that is out of step with most of the hardware out there.
I went from a standard expectation of a 1tb hdd five years ago to expecting to get a computer with a 1tb hdd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd to expecting to get a computer that came with a 256gb ssd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd, to just having the 256gb ssd come standard and and only seeking out more storage if the customer specifically requested it because otherwise they don't want to pay for more storage.
Computer manufacturers consider any storage above 256gb to be a premium feature these days.
Look, here's a search for Lenovo Laptops with 16GB RAM (what I would consider the minimum in today's market) and a Win11 home license (not because I prefer that, but to exclude chromebooks and business machines). Here are the storage options that come up for those specs:
You will see that the majority of the options come with less than a terabyte of storage. You CAN get plenty of options with 1tb, but the point of Okay-Computer is to get computers with reasonable specs in an affordable price range. These days, that mostly means half a terabyte of storage (because I can't bring myself to *recommend* less than that but since most people carry stuff in their personal cloud these days, it's overkill for a lot of people)
All things being equal, 500gb more increases the price of this laptop by $150:
It brings this one up by $130:
This one costs $80 more to go from 256 to 512 and there isn't an option for 1TB.
For the last three decades storage has been getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, to the point that storage was basically a negligible cost when HDDs were still the standard. With the change to SSDs that cost increased significantly and, while it has come down, we have not reached the cheap, large storage as-a-standard on laptops stage; this is partially because storage is now SO cheap that people want to entice you into paying a few dollars a month to use huge amounts of THEIR storage instead of carrying everything you own in your laptop.
You will note that 1tb ssds cost you a lot less than the markup to pay for a 1tb ssd instead of a 500gb ssd
In fact it can be LESS EXPENSIVE to get a 1tb ssd than a 500gb ssd.
This is because computer manufacturers are, generally speaking, kind of shitty and do not care about you.
I stridently recommend getting as much storage as you can on your computer. If you can't get the storage you want up front, I recommend upgrading your storage.
But also: in the current market (December 2024), you should not expect to find desktops or laptops in the low-mid range pricing tier with more than 512gb of storage. Sometimes you'll get lucky, but you shouldn't be expecting it - if you need more storage and you need an inexpensive computer, you need to expect to upgrade that component yourself.
So, if you're looking at a computer I linked and saying "32GB of RAM and an i7 processor but only 500GB of storage? What kind of nonsense is that?" Then I would like to present you with one of the computers I had to quote today:
A three thousand dollar macbook with the most recent apple silicon (the m4 released like three weeks ago) and 48 FUCKING GIGABYTES OF RAM with a 512gb ssd.
You can't even upgrade that SSD! That's an apple that drive isn't going fucking anywhere! (don't buy apple, apple is shit)
The norms have shifted! It sucks, but you have to be aware of these kinds of things if you want to pay a decent price for a computer and know what you're getting into.
stop telling people to uncheck quick fixes in ublock origin
stop telling people to uncheck quick fixes in ublock origin stop telling people to uncheck quick fixes in ublock origin stop telling people to uncheck quick fixes in ublock origin
you ONLY have to update it, disabling it will prevent you from receiving further youtube fixes in the future
this button will update it ^
refseek.com
www.worldcat.org/
link.springer.com
http://bioline.org.br/
repec.org
science.gov
pdfdrive.com
>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.
>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.
>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.
>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.
>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.
>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.
>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.
>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!
>Lemmings problem now solved.
>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.
>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.
>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.
>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.
>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.
>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.
VPNs do not make you more secure
here's how they work!
first of all, most of your internet traffic is already encrypted via TLS (Transport Layer Security). Things that aren't encrypted are usually videogames or less important applications.
a VPN encrypts traffic between your computer and the VPN server you're using.
your Internet Service Provider (ISP) sits in the middle of that transaction.
cue the MS paint diagram
Without a VPN:
With a VPN:
the traffic between your VPN server and the rest of the internet is not encrypted any further.
things that VPNs are good for:
bypassing geo-blocking
bypassing website blocks set up by your ISP
obscuring network traffic from your ISP
things that VPNs are not good for:
browsing the internet without having your activity logged. every company that gives internet service logs the activity, it's half of how they make sure they're not being hacked.
hiding information from the government. VPN providers WILL bend to subpoenas, they WILL turn over logs of your network activity.
cybersecurity. VPNs can't save you once the traffic is between them and the final destination. they don't analyze your traffic to detect and stop hackers, they don't add any encryption where it matters.
VPNs are not a shortcut to security. you cannot pay 15 dollars a month to forgo all responsibility for your own digital privacy. do your research, use a password manager, stay safe.
my friends i hope you find this information useful. you have been sold a lie. remember to show extreme skepticism to youtube sponsorships and journalism websites which sing their praises.
sources: i have a certificate iv in cybersecurity
I cannot believe there's absolutely no way to watch free shows and movies anymore, there are too many paid streaming platforms and pirating websites have viruses and ads preventing you from watching it uninterrupted((.)) id rather follow the rules and purchase media moving forward because it is too inconvenient. Seriously, free and no ads or viruses with 1080p streaming is DEAD.
hey here's a website for downloading any video or image from any website.
works w/ youtube, soundcloud, twitch, twitter (gifs and videos), tumblr (video and audio), and most other websites you're probably lookin to download stuff off of.
Never use Surfshark VPN
I just wanted to make this post to warn yall about it, I am not a tech genius but I wanted to get a vpn and surfshark was one I knew about so i subscribed to them because it seemed ok, that was where I fucked up.
fast forward a year and now I am trying to cancel my yearly auto-renewing subscription which costs 70 fuckin bucks, didnt find much use in surfshark as it was too laggy when using its vpn services so i go to billing and try to cancel.
there was no cancel button so that was odd, and you cant turn off auto-renew so i figure ill just get rid of my card info so it cant charge me.
i cant or at least i cant figure out how.
I go to help and find the cancellation area after scrolling past why you should keep the subscription and it tells me to contact their live support to cancel, It requires my name and gmail, I know for a fact my gmail is correct but it says its wrong and that my name is wrong no matter how many ways I enter it and I cant find a possible username anywhere on the site i could use. Its for all practical reasons impossible for me to cancel, not just the fact I cant even talk to customer support, but the people on reddit that do, talk to a bot and then the agents take months to actually turn off the subscription so it charges again and there is no refunds.
dont use surfshark VPN
Hey all, you know how internet searches suck now? When the results are awful, full-of-AI, death-of-the-internet levels of bad?
Start appending date constraints to your searches - "before:2023".
My results have gone from 90% AI bullshit to ~60% usable - which frankly at this point is a huge improvement.
://www.dreamstime.com/ ://www.freepik.com/ ://www.craiyon.com/ ://stock.adobe.com/ ://storybird.ai/ ://www.dinosaur.org/ ://pngtree.com/ ://creator.nightcafe.studio/ ://www.123rf.com/ ://lumenor.ai/ ://neural.love/ ://www.vecteezy.com/ ://openart.ai/ ://www.artpal.com/ ://generativeai.pub/ ://promptbase.com/
Block these sites in your uBlock Origin so you won't see that shit in your searches
hbo max blocks screenshots even when I use the snipping tool AND firefox AND ublock which is a fucking first. i will never understand streaming services blocking the ability to take screenshots thats literally free advertising for your show right there. HOW THE HELL IS SOMEBODY GONNA PIRATE YOUR SHOW THROUGH SCREENSHOTS. JACKASS
girl typing a very specific question into google search bar, scrunching her face as she takes time to make sure she hasn't made any spelling errors, hitting enter, shaking her head as google only presents her with unhelpful websites that don't answer her query at all, moving her cursor back to the search bar and clicking on it so she can carefully write 'reddit' at the end, hitting enter again, sighing with relief as she finds a link to a reddit post asking the exact question she needed answered posted in a subreddit for a very niche topic, finally moving her cursor to click on the link, wondering why she didn't go straight to the subreddit earlier, only to be met with a deleted comment with a reply from the OP stating 'that was very helpful, thanks', sighing with frustration as she moves her cursor back to the search bar so she can copy the link and paste it into the wayback machine,