#internet data

[internetdataandfilereadersreadup]

INTERNET DATA AND FILE READERS READ UP

[challzworld-blog]

The Mid-Term Holiday Chronicles: A Survival Guide for Kenyan Parents Tomorrow marks the beginning of mid-term holidays in Kenya. That’s right—our beloved young scholars, who were just recently complaining about waking up early for school, are now preparing to turn homes into battlegrounds of noise, endless snack demands, and the never-ending phrase: “Mom, I’m bored!” For parents, this marks the…

[shyflops]

[blackkatdraws2]

[Toon x Mobster] Sir toon and his loyal men.

This comes WAAYY way after Gavriel and Jack's relationship really takes off.

The other members were initially very against Gavriel and Jack's relationship, Gavriel Huffman included. However, Jack is eventually able to earn the respect of the other mobsters after proving himself able to protect both their boss [Gavriel] and the other members of their group, time and time again.

They swore to do him favors and other errands as a compensation for his benevolence. Jack himself didn't mean for this to happen, he just didn't want anyone to get hurt and his kind heart has won the group over in turn.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Fifty per cent of web users are running ad blockers. Zero per cent of app users are running ad blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that’s a felony. (Jay Freeman, the American businessman and engineer, calls this “felony contempt of business-model”.) So when someone in a boardroom says, “Let’s make our ads 20 per cent more obnoxious and get a 2 per cent revenue increase,” no one objects that this might prompt users to google, “How do I block ads?” After all, the answer is, you can’t. Indeed, it’s more likely that someone in that boardroom will say, “Let’s make our ads 100 per cent more obnoxious and get a 10 per cent revenue increase.” (This is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website.) There’s no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn’t install a counter-app that co-ordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold. No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete or, in other words, “IP law”. IP isn’t just short for intellectual property. It’s a euphemism for “a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers”. And “app” is just a euphemism for “a web page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to mod it, to protect the labour, consumer and privacy rights of its user”.

[ahb-writes]

(from The Mitchells vs. the Machines, 2021)

[silvermoon424]

This is your daily reminder to archive your favorite fandom stuff!!!

I've been a voracious archivist/data hoarder ever since I first got access to a computer, and it's paid off more times than I can count. Just the other day I came across a PDF copy of an analysis post for one of my fandoms. The post was made on an old forum and is the most detailed and interesting analysis of a particular story element I've ever seen. Back in like 2012 I saved the post as a PDF, because even then I saved everything I liked.

Anyway, flash forward to 2025 and I decided to see if the URL included in the document was still live. I wasn't very surprised to see that the forum is long dead. However, even the Wayback Machine had no record of this thread. If I hadn't saved a copy of it way back when, I would have never, ever been able to read this analysis again!

The Internet Archive is sadly not infallible, especially when it comes to things like forum threads. You can do your part by manually saving things to the Wayback Machine, but I also recommend keeping your own archives. Aside from just saving pages as PDFs, I highly recommend a browser extension called SingleFile that lets you archive pages as HTML files.

[10001gecs]

one 100 word email written with ai costs roughly one bottle of water to produce. the discussion of whether or not using ai for work is lazy becomes a non issue when you understand there is no ethical way to use it regardless of your intentions or your personal capabilities for the task at hand

with all due respect, this isnt true. *training* generative ai takes a ton of power, but actually using it takes about as much energy as a google search (with image generation being slightly more expensive). we can talk about resource costs when averaged over the amount of work that any model does, but its unhelpful to put a smokescreen over that fact. when you approach it like an issue of scale (i.e. "training ai is bad for the environment, we should think better about where we deploy it/boycott it/otherwise organize abt this) it has power as a movement. but otherwise it becomes a personal choice, moralizing "you personally are harming the environment by using chatgpt" which is not really effective messaging. and that in turn drives the sort of "you are stupid/evil for using ai" rhetoric that i hate. my point is not whether or not using ai is immoral (i mean, i dont think it is, but beyond that). its that the most common arguments against it from ostensible progressives end up just being reactionary

i like this quote a little more- its perfectly fine to have reservations about the current state of gen ai, but its not just going to go away.

[snarkspawn]

I really enjoy playing through tnp again like hi it's been a while

[warmfuzzyanimal]

new icon, directly inspired by my morning walks ^__^ 🌲🌲🌲☁️

[osterby]

So there's a class action lawsuit against google for spying on users who had the "don't track me" toggle turned on.

If you are in the US, had google's tracking "paused", and used a mobile device with that account at any time since 2016, you count. That going to be nearly every American who has ever poked with the privacy settings.

Google sent my email about about this straight to the spam folder. I'm not going to say they did that on purpose, but no matter if it's malicious supression of information or a poorly tuned auto filter, it's, uh, lets say "funny".

So yeah, go check your spam folders, guys.

[frogshunnedshadows]

Circa early 1993 behind the scenes photos from the filming of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[would-you-punt-them]

Websites that demand you give them extremely private information to "verify your age"

[vintage-tigre]

[strawberryteabunny]

my suitcase for a week in Rome 🏛