Reblogged slightly-gay-pogohammer
im sure someone already made a post about it but i came across a ublock origin add-on that blacklists around 950 AI websites and disables AI overview ☝️ so u can be free from seeing AI in your search
Reblogged puppygirllaika
genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital
Share the knowledge
Okay, here we go! I'm gonna try and put this in order from least to most technical knowledge required. I'm not responsible if you accidentally create SkyNet etc.
Level 1: browser extensions
This one is basically impossible to get wrong, or at least to get wrong badly enough that it causes any problems.
Get Firefox, or a Firefox fork like Waterfox. If you use a fork, make sure it's one that will let you use add-ons. On a PC, pretty much any Firefox fork will take add-ons, but on mobile devices, many don't. Iceraven is one that does.
Get the add-ons uBlock Origin, YouTube Sponsorblock (if you use YouTube), and FBCleaner (if you use Facebook).
uBlock Origin comes with a built-in list of filters to block ads and trackers, but you can add your own filters to block any specific element of a website you don't like. You know those goddamn floating frames on fandom.com sites that block half the screen? Now you can zap 'em.
Sponsorblock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor spots and self-promotion in YouTube videos. Never listen to anyone say "hit like and subscribe" or "Raid Shadow Legends" again.
FBCleaner hides all content from your feed except posts from people, groups, and pages you've actually chosen to follow.
Level 2: leaving enshittified services
The software that's become standard over the years in a lot of fields is steadily selling more of your data, showing you more ads, and pushing you to buy more expensive subscriptions. Time to tell them to get fucked.
Dump Adobe apps for Affinity or Krita. Drop Microsoft for LibreOffice. Change your default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo or Qwant. Use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google or Apple Maps.
Level 3: network-level DNS fuckery
DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the thing that tells your computer where www.website.com is actually located. By hacking your network's DNS you can force it to tell your devices that ad-hosting domains don't exist at all. Some of the steps on this one can get pretty technical, but because you're doing all the difficult stuff on a dedicated device, you can't really fuck up anything that seriously.
Get yourself a Raspberry Pi (a cheap older one like a model 3B will work just fine for this purpose), and follow a guide like this one to get it set up running AdGuard Home. AdGuard, like uBlock, has built-in filter lists, but you can also add your own if there are specific domains you want to block.
Once it's up and running, you'll need to change the DNS settings on your router to point to your AdGuard service. This is different for every router but will always start with logging into the admin panel with a password printed on a little sticker somewhere on the router.
With that done, every time a device on your home network looks for ads.website.com, it'll get back a message that says "sorry, can't find it", so it won't be able to load any ads.
Level 4: Android-specific DNS fuckery
Because AdGuard runs on your home network, it can't block ads on your phone when you're away from home - and what's worse, your phone will sometimes remember the addresses it got when you were out and about, and ads will get past your AdGuard wall even when you're home.
To avoid this, get AdAway for DNS-based ad-blocking directly on your phone. The easy, but less seamless, way of using AdAway is the "local VPN mode", which doesn't require you to do any mucking about with your phone's operating system.
Level 5: automated media piracy
The best way to stop seeing ads on all your streaming services is to stop using streaming services. There are loads of ways to do this, but the best ones involve setting up what's called an "arr stack" (Google that for setup guides) along with nzbget and a usenet account. Most of the time you'll want to set this stuff up on a dedicated device - an old laptop gathering dust in the closet is a great option, or you can grab something used from a charity shop or a local electronics recycler.
The great thing about usenet is that unlike with torrents, you don't have to do any sharing from your computer, so you're in a lot less legal jeopardy - legally speaking, distributing pirated content is waaayyy more serious than accessing it. I pay about £3 a month for a secure, high-bandwidth usenet service.
Once you start getting your own collection of media on your own computer, use the open-source media library manager Jellyfin to browse and play things from basically any device.
Oh, and don't be a dick. Pirate all you want from big corporations, but please pay independent small-time creators for their work.
Level 6: fucking with Android
Android phones are a lot more locked-down than they used to be, but depending on the device you own you can still do a lot of messing around under the hood. Note that if you get something wrong while doing this, there is always the possibility that it will turn your device into a paperweight.
Before you buy a device, check where it sits on the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame. Once you've bought it, check the xda-developer forums for guides on how to unlock it and "root" it (gain admin access) with Magisk.
Once Magisk is installed, you can add modules to do all sorts of cool stuff, including using AdAway in "root mode" which makes it basically invisible.
You can also install YouTube ReVanced, which will do all the ad- and sponsor blocking stuff we took care of in your Windows browser a few paragraphs ago. Be careful: there are a lot of fake sites out there pretending they're associated with the ReVanced project which might be injecting malware into their downloads. This Reddit post has the official instructions and links.
Also, try out the modded version of Facebook from APKmoddone, which will block most of the same shit as the FBcleaner add-on from earlier. There's always a possibility that modified apps like this are doing something dodgy, but I've never had any issues with this one personally.
Level 7: fucking with Windows
This one is scary because it can seriously fuck up your shit if something goes wrong, but some really cool people have actually made it very simple to strip all the bloat, ads, and spyware out of Windows. The tool I use is ReviOS. Start reading at https://www.revi.cc/docs. Basically, you'll need to download a tool called AME Wizard and the ReviOS "playbook" that tells AME what to do. Read the documentation before you do any of this.
Level 8: switching to Linux
I'm not going to pretend this is an option for everyone. Half the software I use on a weekly basis isn't available on Linux. But if you can switch? Do it. These days, Ubuntu - one of the most popular flavours of Linux - is built with people switching from Windows in mind, and a lot of things will be pretty intuitive. It also has great documentation and a huge community you can go to for help if you're confused about stuff.
And that, friends, is a comprehensive approach to banishing the demons of capitalism from your home!
Reblogged mandl27
genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital
Share the knowledge
Okay, here we go! I'm gonna try and put this in order from least to most technical knowledge required. I'm not responsible if you accidentally create SkyNet etc.
Level 1: browser extensions
This one is basically impossible to get wrong, or at least to get wrong badly enough that it causes any problems.
Get Firefox, or a Firefox fork like Waterfox. If you use a fork, make sure it's one that will let you use add-ons. On a PC, pretty much any Firefox fork will take add-ons, but on mobile devices, many don't. Iceraven is one that does.
Get the add-ons uBlock Origin, YouTube Sponsorblock (if you use YouTube), and FBCleaner (if you use Facebook).
uBlock Origin comes with a built-in list of filters to block ads and trackers, but you can add your own filters to block any specific element of a website you don't like. You know those goddamn floating frames on fandom.com sites that block half the screen? Now you can zap 'em.
Sponsorblock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor spots and self-promotion in YouTube videos. Never listen to anyone say "hit like and subscribe" or "Raid Shadow Legends" again.
FBCleaner hides all content from your feed except posts from people, groups, and pages you've actually chosen to follow.
Level 2: leaving enshittified services
The software that's become standard over the years in a lot of fields is steadily selling more of your data, showing you more ads, and pushing you to buy more expensive subscriptions. Time to tell them to get fucked.
Dump Adobe apps for Affinity or Krita. Drop Microsoft for LibreOffice. Change your default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo or Qwant. Use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google or Apple Maps.
Level 3: network-level DNS fuckery
DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the thing that tells your computer where www.website.com is actually located. By hacking your network's DNS you can force it to tell your devices that ad-hosting domains don't exist at all. Some of the steps on this one can get pretty technical, but because you're doing all the difficult stuff on a dedicated device, you can't really fuck up anything that seriously.
Get yourself a Raspberry Pi (a cheap older one like a model 3B will work just fine for this purpose), and follow a guide like this one to get it set up running AdGuard Home. AdGuard, like uBlock, has built-in filter lists, but you can also add your own if there are specific domains you want to block.
Once it's up and running, you'll need to change the DNS settings on your router to point to your AdGuard service. This is different for every router but will always start with logging into the admin panel with a password printed on a little sticker somewhere on the router.
With that done, every time a device on your home network looks for ads.website.com, it'll get back a message that says "sorry, can't find it", so it won't be able to load any ads.
Level 4: Android-specific DNS fuckery
Because AdGuard runs on your home network, it can't block ads on your phone when you're away from home - and what's worse, your phone will sometimes remember the addresses it got when you were out and about, and ads will get past your AdGuard wall even when you're home.
To avoid this, get AdAway for DNS-based ad-blocking directly on your phone. The easy, but less seamless, way of using AdAway is the "local VPN mode", which doesn't require you to do any mucking about with your phone's operating system.
Level 5: automated media piracy
The best way to stop seeing ads on all your streaming services is to stop using streaming services. There are loads of ways to do this, but the best ones involve setting up what's called an "arr stack" (Google that for setup guides) along with nzbget and a usenet account. Most of the time you'll want to set this stuff up on a dedicated device - an old laptop gathering dust in the closet is a great option, or you can grab something used from a charity shop or a local electronics recycler.
The great thing about usenet is that unlike with torrents, you don't have to do any sharing from your computer, so you're in a lot less legal jeopardy - legally speaking, distributing pirated content is waaayyy more serious than accessing it. I pay about £3 a month for a secure, high-bandwidth usenet service.
Once you start getting your own collection of media on your own computer, use the open-source media library manager Jellyfin to browse and play things from basically any device.
Oh, and don't be a dick. Pirate all you want from big corporations, but please pay independent small-time creators for their work.
Level 6: fucking with Android
Android phones are a lot more locked-down than they used to be, but depending on the device you own you can still do a lot of messing around under the hood. Note that if you get something wrong while doing this, there is always the possibility that it will turn your device into a paperweight.
Before you buy a device, check where it sits on the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame. Once you've bought it, check the xda-developer forums for guides on how to unlock it and "root" it (gain admin access) with Magisk.
Once Magisk is installed, you can add modules to do all sorts of cool stuff, including using AdAway in "root mode" which makes it basically invisible.
You can also install YouTube ReVanced, which will do all the ad- and sponsor blocking stuff we took care of in your Windows browser a few paragraphs ago. Be careful: there are a lot of fake sites out there pretending they're associated with the ReVanced project which might be injecting malware into their downloads. This Reddit post has the official instructions and links.
Also, try out the modded version of Facebook from APKmoddone, which will block most of the same shit as the FBcleaner add-on from earlier. There's always a possibility that modified apps like this are doing something dodgy, but I've never had any issues with this one personally.
Level 7: fucking with Windows
This one is scary because it can seriously fuck up your shit if something goes wrong, but some really cool people have actually made it very simple to strip all the bloat, ads, and spyware out of Windows. The tool I use is ReviOS. Start reading at https://www.revi.cc/docs. Basically, you'll need to download a tool called AME Wizard and the ReviOS "playbook" that tells AME what to do. Read the documentation before you do any of this.
Level 8: switching to Linux
I'm not going to pretend this is an option for everyone. Half the software I use on a weekly basis isn't available on Linux. But if you can switch? Do it. These days, Ubuntu - one of the most popular flavours of Linux - is built with people switching from Windows in mind, and a lot of things will be pretty intuitive. It also has great documentation and a huge community you can go to for help if you're confused about stuff.
And that, friends, is a comprehensive approach to banishing the demons of capitalism from your home!
Reblogged duskdragonxiii
Literal definition of spyware:
Also From Microsoft’s own FAQ: "Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. 🤡
KillKillKillKillKillKillKillKillKillKillKill
There's a way to remove it~
Go into the power shell
then paste in:
reg add HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot /v "TurnOffWindowsCopilot" /t REG_DWORD /f /d 1
like this
Then restart. Also here is how to turn off the awful search suggestions:
incase anyone didnt know there's some great free software to handle disabling windows bloatware without needing to mess with the command line
these are a mandatory part of every windows install for me. been using them for years and it's such a lifesaver
Reblogged kyacchan-comics
agentmothmanaka-dib-deactivated
Reblog to save a wallet 🙏🙏🙏
Plus if you understand Slovak/Czech: kukaj.io
posr idenid
May I offer possibly the best index I've ever found for free media. It's a Library of Alexandria for this kind of thing. The one I linked is for streaming but this site has it all.
Reblogged ff2-soda-pop
I've been seeing a lot of misinformation about the Switch 2 on my dash today and I'm not going to comment about prices or my opinion or anything but I just feel like clarifying a few things so that people have all the CORRECT info to judge whether the console and games are worth buying to them.
1. Game Key Cards- Physical Games are Just Downloads Now!
Yes, Nintendo has announced Game Key Cards, functioning how all PS5 discs do- as a key to unlock a digital download. However I have seen many people claiming all physical games are like this- this is not the case. Only 2 games confirmed for Switch 2 are Key Cards so far: Street Fighter 6 and Bravely Default. So only select games will use this. Not only that, but this also appeared in some form on Switch 1 already- you could buy physical games that contained... Nothing. You'd open your case and find a digital code to download the game. This was most commonly used on large 3rd party games with huge download sizes, or free games with large paid DLC such as Fortnite. So, all in all, this is another form for a rarely used already existing precedent, currently only on 2 3rd party games.
2. You have to pay to use your Nintendo Switch Games on Switch 2
I can see where this has come from as the talk of backwards compatibility and Nintendo Switch 2 Edition games used a lot of terms about a lot of different things. But all in all, you can put any* switch 1 game in your switch 2 and just play it. For free. The paid content is for specific games that feature additional upgrades- whether it be BotW and TotK with making the game run much smoother with its frame rate, or games such as Kirby and the Forgotten Land adding completely new additional content. While every backwards compatible game will take advantage of the Switch 2's higher power, the paid Nintendo Switch 2 Edition games go back in and update the games to natively perform better, which just running a game on a system with higher resolution without changing the code wouldn't do. Also, you don't need to pay to play BotW on Switch 2 without the Switch 2 Edition upgrade, you can play it on Switch 2 without the added frame rate boost.
*Not every game will run on Switch 2, this is true! But they have released the list of what isn't compatible, and the only games fully incompatible are games like Labo, which rely on features of the switch 1 that are not present in Switch 2. And since you can still use the original joycons with switch 2, you can still play most of them! The literally only game you can't play is Labo Vr Kit, because the system itself is a different size and will not fit into the toycon kit.
Again, not saying my opinions about prices or these features or what they're charging for what- this isn't an opinion post!!!! Just clearing up some stuff I've seen on my dash.
Reblogged rotten-dan
Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?
Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (eds.), Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement
Elizabeth Hinton, America On Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s
Colin Kaepernick (ed.), Abolition for the People: The Movement for a Future Without Policing and Prisons
Robin DG Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Victoria Law, "Prisons Make Us Safer" and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography
Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation
Reblogged
notajerusalemcricketd-deactivat
Happy blargle blursday everyone
i hve lost all sense of time
[video description: a still image of a fat tabby cat with a pale hand petting its head. in the bottom left corner, a caption moves in from offscreen, reading "blargle" in a black serif font on an off white rectangle. end description]
audio: a short clip of an angelic choir vocalizing.
save me blargle blursday
Reblogged bobisnotaperson
any computer people wanna explain how the hell this works
it wont let me do shit bc i apparently have 81 gigs of apps clogging my c drive, but my largest app is 0.4gb?????? its not system applications either because system is its own segment of storage. wadda hell are you talking about
guys i installed a program to show me exactly where the data is hidden and i think i found it and youre never gonna believe it
todd howard im fucking coming for you
"thank you random microsoft customer support agent" we all say in unison
Here's your friendly neighborhood trans girl programer to tell you WinDirStat is a free open source alternative and you don't have to sign in to the annoying microsoft app store!
Reblogged cabi-leodrann
I think every computer user needs to read this because holy fucking shit this is fucking horrible.
So Windows has a new feature incoming called Recall where your computer will first, monitor everything you do with screenshots every couple of seconds and "process that" with an AI.
Hey, errrr, fuck no? This isn't merely because AI is really energy intensive to the point that it causes environmental damage. This is because it's basically surveilling what you are doing on your fucking desktop.
This AI is not going to be on your desktop, like all AI, it's going to be done on another server, "in the cloud" to be precise, so all those data and screenshot? They're going to go off to Microsoft. Microsoft are going to be monitoring what you do on your own computer.
Now of course Microsoft are going to be all "oooh, it's okay, we'll keep your data safe". They won't. Let me just remind you that evidence given over from Facebook has been used to prosecute a mother and daughter for an "illegal abortion", Microsoft will likely do the same.
And before someone goes "durrr, nuthin' to fear, nuthin to hide", let me remind you that you can be doing completely legal and righteous acts and still have the police on your arse. Are you an activist? Don't even need to be a hackivist, you can just be very vocal about something concerning and have the fucking police on your arse. They did this with environmental protesters in the UK. The culture war against transgender people looks likely to be heading in a direction wherein people looking for information on transgender people or help transitioning will be tracked down too. You have plenty to hide from the government, including your opinions and ideas.
Again, look into backing up your shit and switching to Linux Mint or Ubuntu to get away from Microsoft doing this shit.
there are multiple options here depending on how comfortable you are digging into your computer's registry. You can either simply disable it surface level through settings or excise it entirely from the system registry
Reblogged jackalopescruff
Reblogged wishfuldorian
anyway yeah DELETE YOUR FUCKING ADVERTISING IDS
Android:
Settings ➡️ Google ➡️ all services ➡️ Ads ➡️ Delete advertising ID
(may differ slightly depending on android version and manufacturer firmware. you can't just search settings for "advertising ID" of course 🔪)
iOS:
Settings ➡️ privacy ➡️ tracking ➡️ toggle "allow apps to request to track" to OFF
and ALSO settings ➡️ privacy ➡️ Apple advertising ➡️ toggle "personalized ads" to OFF
more details about the process here via the EFF
Reblogged chaoticsmol
predstrogen
i have hired this fucking thing to stare at you
im rehiring this fucking thing to stare at you
onmywayoutokay-deactivated20240
Reblogged noellevanious
Game studios learn to optimize your fucking games challenge.
Who the fuck do you think you are? You are a toy. A glorified slinky.
publisher executives will actually tell their studios to have an inflated install size because gamers will assume that Bigger Install Means Better And More Game.
I couldn't find any sources on this, it seems more likely that it's just because optimization costs more than it worth to AAA devs
source: i work in the game industry and coworkers who experience it firsthand have told me this. not to say that optimization costs isn't one factor but. this is certainly another
There's a very good piece of software that compresses games with ***NO DETRIMENT TO PERFORMANCE***
I'd say it's magic but honestly it's just fixing corporate's bullshit junk data
Reblogged mousegard
I'm gonna make a post with all of the 'stick figure violence' adjacent images I have. if anyone knows any similar ones I'm missing PLEASE SEND ME THEM. I have an unhealthy obsession with them.
oh yeah here’s one I made a while back
have some more
Reblogged krisispiss
BRING HIM BACK