shitty MS Paint 3 minutes doodle, nto entirely accurate: When you have your pinky hooked on the “bottom” edge of the phone for the extra security so it doesn’t slide out of your hand that easily, you’re wreaking damage on your hand, since the pinky is extremely askew from it’s resting position. You might have noticed that when you hold your phone like that for long time it begins to hurt, like when you are gripping a pen too tightly for example.
Green lines – the fingers are going their natural way. Red line – the pinky is way off, that’s bad.
I got one of the ring things that folds out and I find it quite nice (altho I placed it a little high on phone, I ought to move it down)
also I put on a bunch of grippy stickers. really improves the experience imo
Tags:
#I had the opposite reaction to theclockworkjules #”oh god do I do this??” #”oh god I probably do this” #”oh no” #(”at least I don’t hold my phone as much as a lot of people do (because I mostly use my laptop instead) #so maybe hopefully it won’t hurt me too much?”) #next day: *holding my phone* #*looks down* #”…oh” #”apparently I do *not* do this” #”phew” #PSA #injury cw #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #(…that tag is officially outdated now that I have a 2020-model smartphone‚ but fuck it)
This is your annual warning that *there will be no warning* when fire season is about to start. Nobody’s going to post “Hey everyone, remember, fire season starts next Friday!”. The state will just catch fire. You will wake up and the sky will be orange. It could be tomorrow, it could be July, it could be August, we could get incredibly lucky and skip it altogether. If you hope to buy an indoor air purifier before fire season, if you want to ensure everyone in your home has a P100 for going outside, if you want to stockpile water and you haven’t already, the time to do it is today.
Tags:
#101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #yes this #I would recommend those things (especially the latter two) even if you’re *not* in a wildfire zone but yeah #(I have not managed to convince anyone else in my family to get a P100 and our water containers are not as sturdy as I would like) #(but other than that) #((I keep an eye on the Reliance website: I hope the Rhino containers come back in stock soon)) #(((also this post has gotten 22k notes in 2 days and it’s always weird to see that happen to a mutual))) #fire #PSA
I know nothing about it but seriously any password manager is better than no password manager.
But okay here’s what you want to look for in a password manager:
Portability – you log in to accounts across devices, you want your password manager (PWM for the rest of this post) to work across devices and sync across devices. For most people you’re going to want a PWM with an app, but some people like to store a password vault on various devices so they aren’t reliant on internet connection to access passwords.
Security – A PWM should never store your passwords in plaintext, they should always be encrypted. Pretty much all decent PWMs use 256 bit AES encryption which I know sounds like gibberish but basically it means your passwords are locked up with really hard math and if you’re comparing options do a ctrl+f on each PWM’s feature page for “256″ to make sure it uses the proper encryption standard.
Usability – Some PWMs are a pain in the ass. You should try out a couple that seem like good options and figure out which one feels most usable for you. This may mean that you want a PWM with an app, or one with a browser extension that works in your browser; it may mean that you want a PWM with a very simple user interface. You may find that the paid features of a PWM make it more usable for you than the free version. The thing is that you have to USE it. Whatever PWM you are most likely to use based on the interface and features is the one you should install.
Port-ability – There’s always the possibility that your PWM will have an update and the update will make it unusable for you; maybe you’ll hate the layout, maybe it’ll add steps that make using it inefficient. You may need to bail on your first choice, which is why you should make sure that whatever PWM you choose makes it easy to transfer your credentials from one PWM to another. Look up how-tos and tutorials on “how to move my passwords from bitwarden to apple password manager” or “how to import passwords into firefox password manager.” Any reasonable PWM will allow you to easily export your credentials; if they don’t let you export with a simple process, don’t install it.
Features to look for:
Password Generator – a tool that will create passwords of varying complexity for you. If your PWM won’t generate complex passwords for you but will only store passwords you’ve created I would recommend looking for a different manager.
Password Checker – a tool that ensures the password you have selected isn’t on any lists of compromised credentials.
Customizable Security – maybe if your desktop and your cellphone are password protected with a short timeout you don’t care how long your vault stays open. Maybe if your desktop screen lock you want your PWM to lock itself after fifteen minutes. Maybe it’s easier for you to log in with a pin than a password, maybe you want to require multifactor authentication for access. Setting your settings the best way for you personally is going to make the whole PWM more usable for you, so make sure you’re comfortable with the options your PWM allows.
Cards and ID – Some PWMs will allow you to securely store credit card info. This is extremely handy and very useful if you do happen to lose your cards. Some will let you upload photos of your ID or your car insurance or other things. This is also very, very handy.
Customizable folders – Look, sometimes you just have to sort things. Your PWM should give you the option to create a folder structure that makes sense to you instead of limiting you to predefined categories.
Off the top of my head that’s all I can think of. I’m sure that the apple password manager is better than nothing so you should absolutely use it if that’s what’s easiest for you.
This is why the 256 bit AES encryption is important! If the password manager is hacked through the company’s servers getting broken into or something like that nobody has your passwords. The company doesn’t even have your passwords.
Choose a good, complex, memorable password for your password manager, don’t share that password with anybody unless it’s a life-or-death situation (literally; I don’t know the password to my spouse’s password safe unless he is going in for surgery) and unless someone is able to crack your password or gains physical access to your desktop while your password vault is unlocked there’s no way to get at the passwords.
You do need to have SOME good security practices in place to ensure safety even with a password manager.
Don’t let people remote in to your computer
have your computer time out after short period
lock your phone and require a password to get back into it
don’t give people you don’t know and trust physical access to your devices
Use complex, unique passwords to log in to your devices and your password manager (I like doing this with song lyrics – “Nggyu,Nglud,Ngraady57″ is a rickroll and a family member’s birth year so it’s complex but easy for me to remember)
But if you’re worried about your passwords getting revealed in a data breach the way personal data gets revealed by like, target and experian and the US government then don’t worry about that. That doesn’t happen if you choose a password manager with appropriate encryption.
Tags:
#PSA #the more you know #(I personally use KeePass (XC and DX variants)) #(I’m very happy with it but it is not for the faint of backup) #(for those use-cases I hear a lot of praise for Bitwarden)
NSFW servers and channels will still be allowed on Android devices and on desktop, but I know a lot of iPhone users who use Discord for kink and sex work and this update will completely cut you off from that on your device.
Tags:
#Discord has been going downhill for some time #god I’m so tired of all this shit #both the NSFW purges and #generally having to keep migrating from one messaging service to another as each one fails and/or turns against its users #(I don’t use iOS but the writing’s on the wall‚ you know?) #(and the bastards at Discord *have* already forced me to give them a phone number‚ which I was *not* comfortable with) #((no they were not fooled by a VoIP)) #we should just fucking email each other #for a more IM-y email interface I’ve been hearing some intriguing things about Delta Chat #mutuals if you want to exchange email addresses hmu #Discord #tag rambles #PSA #disappointed permanent resident of The Future
Short version: it’s like a mask, but better. *Much* better.
Let’s put the headline news up front: if you maintain an airtight seal at all times, a P100 respirator blocks 99.97% of incoming viral particles. [source]
Yeah. 99.97%. That’s a *lot*.
(Specifically, we are going to be talking about what’s called “elastomeric” respirators. These have a base unit made of plastic and silicone, with attachment points on the cheeks for swappable filters.)
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99.97%?! What’s the catch?! There’s gotta be a catch, right?
A few catches, but generally nothing dealbreaking.
The filtered air is very dry: take frequent breaks if you can to go outside (or somewhere else with clean air) and drink some water. I work 4 – 5 hour shifts for 2 – 3 straight days a week with a respirator and no water breaks, and that’s *doable* but dehydrating.
They muffle your voice a bit more than masks do. You’ll have to speak louder and probably be more careful with enunciation than usual, and talking on the phone will be very difficult.
The 99.97% figure is for *incoming* air. An elastomeric respirator does not, by default, filter outgoing air at all. This is okay for two reasons: one, since you can’t spread a disease you don’t catch, protecting yourself *is* protecting others. Two, for even more protection of others you can tape a layer of cloth over the valve on the bottom of the respirator.
They cost more up-front (about USD$30 for a base unit and USD$11 per pair of filters), but they last for such a long time (more on that later) that in the long run it’s actually very economical.
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So why isn’t everyone using them already?
Mostly because people don’t know about them. Cloth masks were supposed to be a stopgap measure until we had a chance to manufacture more respirators, but word never got out when the respirators had caught up. They do *sometimes* go out of stock still, but they’re very often available now.
Also, the kind of respirators we’re going to be talking about here are aimed at construction workers, which means people looking for “medical” masks tend to overlook them. But a particle is a particle, and there’s no reason you can’t use construction respirators against germs. In fact, in some ways they work even *better* against germs than they do against construction fumes.
(Edit: Okay, yes, also they look funny, but people in 2019 would have told you masks looked funny too.)
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What do I need to know about how to wear them?
First, check the fit. Take off your glasses if you have them, then put the base unit on and adjust the straps until the seal is airtight without being painful. You won’t be able to get an airtight seal if there’s facial hair in the way: you’ll need to at *least* trim it down very far, and probably shave it.
To confirm that the seal is airtight, there are two methods depending on whether the filters are attached right now.
If the filters are *not* attached: cover the attachment points with your palms and try to breathe *in*. If you can’t, the seal is airtight. (Except for the attachment points themselves, of course: *those* are big gaping holes in your seal if they don’t have filters on them. But we’ll be fixing that soon.)
If the filters *are* attached: cover the valve at the bottom with your palm and try to breathe *out*. If you can’t, the seal is airtight.
(You’ll want to confirm the seal every time you put the respirator on.)
Next, take a pair of filters and screw them onto the attachment points. (This is much easier to do if you’re not wearing the respirator while you’re doing it.) Be sure to screw them on very tightly, otherwise they might fall off. (I didn’t screw them on tightly enough my first time, and it was pretty scary when one of them fell off in the middle of a crowded restaurant. But now that I’ve gotten them on correctly, they stay put.)
Now you can wear it. If you have glasses, take them off first, then gently rest them on top of the respirator’s nose once you’ve put it on. Check the seal as above to make sure it’s airtight.
Once a week or after every outing, whichever is less frequent, wipe down the silicone (the part that sticks to your face and forms the seal) with some mild cleaning solution to keep the skin oils from building up. You can also wipe down the outside if you are concerned about fomites, but note that of the two styles of filter (more on that later) you can *only* wipe down the plastic cartridges, *not* the pink cloth circles. Here is the official manufacturer’s guide on cleaning these respirators [link]: note that “quat” is janitorial jargon for the type of cleaning solution that Lysol wipes are dipped in.
(Bonus tip: if you’re having trouble sourcing disinfectant wipes, look for bottles of “quaternary ammonium” *next* to the barren disinfectant-wipe section at the grocery store, put it in a spray bottle diluted to the level stated on the bottle instructions, then heavily spritz a paper towel with it. Voila, a disinfectant wipe!)
According to the CDC [link], the filters last somewhere between a month and a year depending on how much you need to conserve resources and how well you can avoid getting them wet or dirty. The main limiting factor on longevity is that the filters get clogged with fumes and dust from the construction work: if you’re not *doing* construction work or similar fume-heavy activities, they can keep going for ages. If you can still breathe through it and the filter hasn’t been wet, you’re good.
ULine has the water-resistant plastic-cartridge filters, is a very reputable dealer, and sells for a good per-pair price. The only trouble is that they sell 6 pairs at a time: split a pack with a group of 3 people if you can, so that each of you will have one spare set.
The pink-circle filters are *not* water-resistant: try not to stay out in the rain very long or otherwise get them wet, and don’t try to disinfect them (just avoid touching them instead, and wash your hands if you do have to). Also, counterfeits occasionally slip into Amazon’s stocks: try Amazon filters on when you first get them, and if you can still smell anything through them, demand a replacement. You should *not* be able to smell anything through a true P100 filter. Edit: @nuclearspaceheater, who is a more experienced respirator user than I am, reports that many genuine P100 filters *do* let some scent through: I merely happened to have filters with some extra vapor filtration. I’ve seen reviews saying that fakes are suspiciously light, but it’s hard to tell if you don’t already know how much they should weigh, plus that *also* might have been a vapor-vs-nonvapor distinction. It’s possible that the people complaining about counterfeit filters from Amazon are just straight-up mistaken and they’re all fine, but I would still go with ULine for the water resistance if nothing else.
I don’t have links for these on hand. For the base unit, check your hardware and general stores for “3M model 7502 respirators”; for the filters, look for “3M bayonet-style P100 filters” and prefer the plastic cartridges over the pink circles if possible. If you can’t find any of those, try looking into other elastomeric respirators, but I don’t have any experience with other ones so you’d be on your own there. Remember that you should not be able to smell anything through an airtight P100 respirator: if you put the filters on and can still smell stuff, something’s wrong with those filters, go back to the seller and get them to either give you a better set or refund you.Edit: This is not necessarily true and indeed there might not be counterfeits at all: check the edit in the USA section for more details.
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Getting a respirator has been a life-changer for me, and I hope it can help you too. If you found this useful or know someone who would, please let people know.
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Postscript, 2021-09-14: It has been my experience that nuisance-vapour filtration wears out after 3 – 4 months. If you value its psychological benefits (I don’t know about you, but nothing reassures my subconscious about air quality quite like respirator-specific anosmia), or have additional uses in mind for your respirator such that you need nuisance-vapour filtration, I recommend planning to replace your filters about that often.
wait what the- i just posted my- but instead it just posted the ask again??? or- no, the dash is showing an old post, what in the hell…?
is anyone else seeing this:
instead of how it shows on my blog:
? refreshing the dash doesn’t seem to fix it on my end, and idk if this is a problem with how tumblr’s serving the data or if it’s something funky on the client end
I was seeing posts in scrambled order too. Checked in a couple of times over the course of the evening to see if it had sorted itself out yet (it hadn’t), until eventually it occurred to me: “hang on, is Tumblr fucking around with that ~best-stuff-first~ shit again?”
And, yeah, they were. There’s a toggle in the Dashboard section of the settings.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #Tumblr: a User’s Guide #PSA #bluespace
can’t believe paypal continues to be like it is. how is this not considered fraudulent
anyway paypal is fine if you want to send another american us dollars, but you should more or less never accept payment through paypal. you will regret it
paypal is extremely opaque about the fees that it charges. and once they’ve charged a fee, there’s more or less no way to undo it. if you immediately ‘refund’ such a transaction, it actually means you’re giving back the money you received *and* paying the fee paypal charged.
they have two payment options – one of which is free and offers no ‘protection’ and the other of which is not and offers their ‘purchase protection’. you can instruct someone to send via the free option but there’s no guarantee they’re going to listen, or that they’re going to parse the options correctly even if they do, at which point there’s already money down the drain in the form of a fee and it’s just a question of who eats it.
this is what the page to pick looks like (gotta love that mobile first design):
here it says you might be eligible for purchase protection, and the ‘seller’ is going to pay a fee, but it doesn’t really explain what any of that means, or how much it will be.
this is bad, because a lot of people will decide they might as well be protected, right? since it’s free. but the program is relatively picky and a lot of the times people use it it does not actually apply. but it gets worse. let’s say I’m sending $150 by paypal to my business partner:
it says right there BigNuts is going to get $150. he’s not. maybe in paypal’s accounting he gets the full amount and then pays the fee, but in practice he is never going to see the full amount. if Mr. McLug is in the US, he’s going to lose $4.35 on this.
but it gets worse if he’s international, as the fee gets jacked up – he’s going to lose $6.60 plus some change in whatever currency it’s going into. and the messaging gets much more confusing!
paypal still pretends there’s no fee for a goods & services transaction, but if you send via the lower cost option, it shows you the currency conversion charge up front.
if you’re sending $1000, the currency conversion charge is $5. if you’re sending goods and services, it’s $44 but to the sender it looks like $0.
so paypal is basically conning people into creating these fees in exchange for what is often a nonexistent guarantee. ok, what else?
well, paypal tries to bill itself as a ‘safe’ way to receive money over the internet, but it’s not actually better than anything else. it’s still part of the financial system.
if someone pays you via paypal, you still need to do all the work of verifying that they’re a real person and not scamming you, because there is no protection. if the payment paypal received gets revoked or marked as fraudulent, guess who’s covering it. you!
this is a pretty common move for scammers, because I guess people trust paypal and think they can actually trust payments they receive by it. but if you want to take money from someone you don’t trust, you basically need to do cash or bitcoin or something like that.
now, payment processors are famous for this sort of shit. and if you’re a merchant, you might write it off as the cost of doing business. the frauds will be amortized to an acceptable cost over your whole volume of transactions.
but if you’re just some person doing a one off transaction, this is much less true. and paypal makes this deliberately more confusing instead of being transparent.
This, and also:
Did you know there’s an arms race going on between [Canadian freelancers who get paid in USD] and Paypal, where Canadians try to withdraw into USD-denominated bank accounts (to avoid Paypal’s terrible exchange rates, and perhaps use the USD directly) and Paypal tries to stop them?
Last I heard, Paypal was winning. (edit: apparently the Canadians have struck back, but the method they’re using these days costs $4/month, so even if you can get it working it’s only worth it for sufficiently high volumes. [link])
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(And God help you if you want to *send* an American money: even if you have the USD lying around because you weren’t allowed to withdraw it at a reasonable exchange rate, a USD$3 flat fee is huge when you’re only dealing with a few dollars at a time.)
Tags:
#adventures in human capitalism #reply via reblog #PSA #our home and cherished land #home of the brave
An intriguing new twist, I think – it appears that if someone comments on a post and their tumblr is marked “contains sensitive content”, the comment doesn’t show up in your activity page. I noticed I wasn’t seeing all the comments to a post and went to the tumblrs of the people I wasn’t seeing, and both of them were marked for sensitive content.
Not sure if this is consistent or a bug or just coincidence or what, but folks may want to be aware it’s apparently going on.
Tags:
#I can kind of see why they’d do that but also #*long sigh* #PSA #Tumblr: a User’s Guide
Tumblr wouldn’t feel like much if it were not for the passionate community filling up our dashboards. You are the reason people turn to Tumblr for a laugh or for a little human connection. You are why Tumblr feels like a home for so many. You care about this place, and you let us know when something doesn’t feel right. Many of you have called on us to further reevaluate how we deal with hate speech, particularly hate speech from Nazis or other white supremacist groups. Today we’re letting you know that we heard you, and we are taking further action.
We’ve listened to your feedback and have reassessed how we can more effectively remove hateful content from Tumblr. In our own research, and from your helpful reports, we found that much of the existing hate speech stemmed from blogs that have actually already been terminated. While their original posts were deleted upon blog termination, the content of those posts still lived on in reblogs. Those reblogs rarely contained the kind of counter-speech that serves to keep hateful rhetoric in check, so we’re changing how we deal with them.
We identified nearly a thousand blogs that were previously suspended for blatantly violating our policies against hate speech. Most of them were Nazi-related blogs. Earlier this week, we began the process of removing all reblogs stemming from the original posts on those previously suspended blogs—that’s approximately 4.47M reblogs being removed from Tumblr.
Moving forward, we will evaluate all blogs suspended for hate speech, and consider mass reblog deletion when appropriate.
Consulting outside experts
We wouldn’t make a change like this without considering the impact to your freedom of expression. We do not want to silence those who are providing educational and necessary counter-arguments to hate speech. We reviewed our approach with a variety of outside groups and experts to make sure we have aligned with their recommended best practices.
There’s no silver bullet solution, AI, or algorithm that can perfectly target hate speech. That’s why we have a dedicated Trust & Safety team, and why we have an easy way for you to report any hate speech you do see.
We are, and will always remain, steadfast believers in free speech. Tumblr is a place where you can be yourself and express your opinions. Hate speech is not conducive to that. When hate speech goes unchecked, it eventually silences the voices that add kindness and value to our society. That’s not the kind of Tumblr any of us want.
Thank you for speaking up. Please continue to help us make Tumblr the place you want it to be.
<3
>>Earlier this week, we began the process of removing all reblogs stemming from the original posts on those previously suspended blogs—that’s approximately 4.47M reblogs being removed from Tumblr.<<
So by the sound of it, if you’ve reblogged any debunkings or tangents or possibly even unrelated posts from a blog that *also* posted hate speech (by whatever standards they’re using for that), it’s getting thrown down the memory hole.
Hey guys, I wrote a Tumblr reblog once disagreeing with the idea that deleting an OP blog should delete all of its posts’ reblogs. Do you know what happened to my post? It fucking vanished [link]. It lives on because I personally ensured it.
Now is a good time to remind everyone that tumblr-utils [link] incremental backups do not delete old posts if the original gets deleted, and the Wayback Machine sure as hell does not delete them.
Hey, so, about tumblr-utils:
Last week its API key stopped working: trying to use outdated versions of tumblr-utils will now result in “HTTP Error 401: Unauthorized”. The *current* version of tumblr-utils, if I’m understanding this bug report correctly [link], works but is globally rate-limited: no more than 1,000 blogs per hour and no more than 5,000 blogs per day across all tumblr-utils users.
But there is a workaround: apply for an API key *yourself* [link], then go into the Python code and replace the API key with your own (don’t worry, you don’t need to speak Python: knowledge of plain English is enough to make it obvious which bit is the API key). I just did this and it seems to be working now. Note: you must be logged into a Tumblr account to request an API key.
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(I’m going to put this in a reblog of this thread because it’s one of the most fitting threads available, given that this information really should be on Tumblr specifically (where the people most in need can see it and share it) and I swore I’d never make another Tumblr-hosted OP. (And you can see why!))
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #PSA #amnesia cw
Hey ya’ll! This is the first book of by far my favorite series in existence. I seriously recommend getting the free book on May 4th. This series (The Stormlight Archives) is by far the most epic epic fantasy I have ever laid eyes on. If you like:
Phenomenal, original worldbuilding not based on medieval Europe
An incredible magic system unlike anything you’ve ever seen
Amazing, diverse, awesome characters that will make you laugh and cry for days
Crabs
Tons of fantastic female characters
Giant anime swords that can cut through anything
Character development for days
Probably the best representation of depression and other mental illnesses out there
So much philosophy? All intertwined in the story and when you read the characters coming to realize these things, it’s chilling and beautiful
infinite meme material
No sex scenes
Also, most of Brandon Sanderson’s adult works are part of a vast, interconnected universe with worldhopping characters (though each story can be enjoyed on it’s own without reading the others to understand the behind the scenes stuff) and this huge superplot going on that is this giant mystery you piece together while reading it.
I seriously cannot express how much I love these books, and I hope ya’ll take this great opportunity to check them out.
It’s not based on medieval Europe? I thought the whole rationale behind Shardplate was “knights are cool.” And their feudalism seems pretty Western European too, but I guess that kind of structure could have come from anywhere. Or do you just mean that the characters aren’t white?
Tags:
#PSA #I’ve heard good things about #Cosmere #but haven’t had a chance to read any of it yet myself
Brinens and Things - Tumblr Mirror 