Rahjin

lot of people are going to be sent careening three posts down their dash and crashing into a brick wall because of this post

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

reblogging again as a cautionary tale to please PLEASE fucking make a system restore point before you do anything. i consider myself tech savvy and still nearly bricked my computer. and make sure you know how to access safe mode

It’s my birthday tomorrow and I’m pretty certain I’m going to have a migraine from stress (we had a gas leak in the basement. Yes again. It’s fine now. They fixed it.) so if people could go ahead and show me pictures of their pets, cool rocks or really just anything that makes you happy I’d love that 💖

Here, have a variation! I swear Baloo (dark dog) has plenty of brain cells to rub together, but there is a reason I tend to call her 'Gnork the Gremlin' to her face and it's not just the sounds she makes 😅 with some bonus cat-who-suddenly-decided-he's-entitled-to-my-bed after half a decade of being afraid of my room, and our other dog not being allowed to eat whisky cake. Boo.

Also happy birthday, even if only a little, I hope, despite of or in spite of circumstances!

Uh oh! You are now a were-animal! This means you become a human-sized animal hybrid with uncontrollable bloodlust every night!

Spin this wheel to get your species

It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.

It is genuinely baffling to me, in a very kind and positive way, especially coupled with the local news continually going several shades of 'wtf, this thing is a roaring success again and we don't quite get why'. They've already quadrupled their capacity for simultaneous clicks and it's still nowhere near enough and there's just... Bewilderment.

But to come back to point 1- Citizen Science fills a hole in the soul that wanted to go out on adventures and discover things when we were younger, but the study of it was hard or we didn't have the money or our schools were garbage. But you don't have to have a degree to do things like... press a button or download and use an app, or count or transcribe notes.

Anyways- here's some Citizen Science links if the Fish Doorbell makes you feel happy and you yearn for more ways to help scientists do stuff:

Foldit (folding proteins)

Fathomverse (sea animals)

Project Monarch (butterflies)

Bioblitz, an event where citizens identify as many species in an area within a period of time

Species Watch (animal species)

BOINC’s Compute for Science

Zooniverse is a website that hosts information on many citizen science projects

Label trees in aerial photos

Count cells in fossils and modern leaves

Digitize Atmospheric Data

Count penguins

US-based Citizen Science Database

eBird (bird identification)

Merlin (bird identification by sound)

iNaturalist (nature identification)

MapSwipe (collaboration between several Red Cross organizations and Doctors Without Borders, update vital geospatial data)

Smithsonian Archives Transcription Center

Fair enough! I've got to admit, I could've worded it better, most of the bewilderment with regards to this specific thing is that it's a small Dutch project that mostly started with a genuine intention to do good, but a fairly limited scope and thus a fairly limited expectation in how many people would see it and click it, and now we hear there's Canadian dispatch watching this when it's quiet to decompress and the Far East does it and we're still just predisposed to thinking that it's just a small Dutch project and who knows and who cares what happens in the Netherlands, when half the world doesn't seem to remember we exist half the time (well, half of us, they do remember Holland).

I do love the signs that people are willing to make the effort, even if it's relatively small scope.

It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.

It is genuinely baffling to me, in a very kind and positive way, especially coupled with the local news continually going several shades of 'wtf, this thing is a roaring success again and we don't quite get why'. They've already quadrupled their capacity for simultaneous clicks and it's still nowhere near enough and there's just... Bewilderment.

I love how here on tumblr dot website we regularly cast the greatest curse we can muster on each other by pointing our long creepy fingers and intoning "10,000 notes" in a voice that carries the winds of the mountain with it.

I might have made an error here

Not where you grew up. Not where you’ll be living soon. Where you’re living right now.

Plz reblog this one actually I wanna get as big of a sampling of tumblr as possible. Reblog at any and all times of the day so we can reach different time zones.

This has been a PSA.

I’m trying not to reblog posts on this blog but I feel that this is important to post here.

on a related note:

And for the people asking “Well if you don’t support it irl then why would you like it in fiction?!” Because when it’s happening irl real people are suffering and dying and that’s horrible and I’d never want that. But when it’s fiction, when no real people are being hurt or killed, it’s interesting to explore the experience, the effects it may have, and to an extent experience the emotions involved without actually having to experience the horrible thing. You explore scary, dangerous things from a safe distance.

Because it’s how stories work.

Because it’s how stories work.

I have a hypothesis about the "burger"-"chicken sandwich" discourse. I want to see something.

Interesting, I want more data points.

this is fred, the dot.

fred wants to grow into a beautiful tree, but sadly has no branches

reblog to give fred a branch

i will post fred status updates as he grows

look at him go!

he's figuring out how to tree!

35 reblogs, he's growing so good :D

75 reblogs, fred continues to grow

reminder to spread out your branches (ie. dont spam reblogs on one post), he's starting to get a little crowded near the trunk :(

At 1788 Reblogs, Fred is spreading nicely... But We Can Do Better :)

@thebibliosphere

This high school drumline’s incredible performance included only drumstick

Impressive

My thoughts as I watched:

“Heh, that’s cute.”

“Okay, that’s cool.”

“Dude.”

*reblogs*