#privacy by default

[brucie-baby]

"if i loved you less, i might be able to talk about it more" is so fucking bruce it's unreal. the way he always knows what to say as succinctly as he can but the second emotions are involved, coherency is nowhere to be found. he says, "Bad form, we're going over that until you get it right," and he means, "I cannot bear to see you hurt and I need to protect you in the only way I know how; I love you." he says, "Take Robin with you," and he means, "I trust you with something far more important than my life; I love you." he says, "If you want to stay, I won't stop you," and he means "Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me; I love you, I love you, I love you."

[bloggingboutburgers]

hello! has anyone ever told you how gender your little aroace guy is? bc like. thats a gender i wanna eat. just a pocket sized person. the coziness in the pullover is 10/10.

I enjoy your comics, thank you for making them! I hope you are having a great day!

Aww, thank you!! That look is actually based off a nonbinary character design I came up with in 2020 for fun, which in turn, as it turns out, has most likely accidentally been based off how my partner looks in real life... And yeah I can confirm they ARE very gender, and very cosy in sweaters. So I guess that just happened 🙈

PS: hgjfklgdf I'm so goddamn rude but - I hope you're having a great day as well! <3

[knightofleo]

[eossa]

Figma is gradually rolling out AI tools to their userbase. For that purpose, they will also use users content for training the AI model.

According to their website (linked above), they will start using user content for training starting from the 15th of August 2024. For starter (aka the free plan) and professional teams, the training is turned on by default; you have to go into your settings and turn it off.

[voxxcd]

((shh I'm meant to be asleep but just laying here thinking abt how (ofc depends on the dynamic/val) 100% vox could be the abusive one))

[theoutlier876]

For everyone who hasn’t seen it yet, Tumblr is officially selling userdata to train AI on, to prevent this go to your blog settings -> visibility -> prevent third party sharing. This is BLOG SPECIFIC so do it for each, also, because staff is extra scummy, it is not visible on mobile go to a desktop or website if you are on mobile.

[admircot]

the fact that it isnt opt out by default, couldnt they of just scrapped someones post in that time frame from announcement to when the user just MAYBE saw their post about it?

[agapi-kalyptei]

[ne0nwithazero]

Had to take some more self-care measures : ^)

[glassrunner]

in light of twitter exploding i did the Unthinkable and actually made an alt main as replacement, you can follow it here 

my twitter was basically stream of consciousness shitposting and it gets 2000% better if i get drunk, you’ve been warned

[okayto]

Every so often I see a post that says [in America] libraries probably don’t save your borrowing history anymore/they don’t have a way to tell you or anyone else who borrowed what book, and I just want to emphasize that “probably” is a crucial part of that statement. It’s not certain! If you want to find out if your borrowing history is private for any reason, you should check!

Yes, some libraries will not have any way to see what you borrowed in the past. BUT some libraries will. Some libraries may be opt-in to tracking, where you have to enable that setting in your account. Some may be opt-out, where you have to turn it off (my public library is like this). Some may not have anything you can change. Some may only keep records for a certain amount of time (my library workplace shows a patron’s checkouts for only the previous 365 days; individual books also only keep full transaction history for 365, but do show the name of the last person to check it out for several years, even if it doesn’t show on that person’s account history anymore.)

This does NOT mean someone is actively watching your every library interaction.

But if you don’t like the idea of that history existing for any reason, just know that you shouldn’t assume it doesn’t exist, and if it does, you can ask if there is a way to opt out! Library systems in this country are many and varied, so the answers are also likely to vary.

[runawaymarbles]

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

[freakinator]

using yandex now, hopefully it fixes my weirdass double lettering problem

[ranidspace]

Firefox v120!

New copy link without site tracking feature: removes the tracking at the end of urls usually that end with "?=[long ass string of numbers or info on your browser or how you clikced the link]" previously an optional feature of ublock origin to remove it as you go to sites, but now you can also copy links as well

New "Tell websites not to sell or share my data" option in privacy settings. Websites have no obligation to do this, except under GDPR which is most sites. adds a bit to your fingerprintability, however if everyone turns this on it will work better for everyone.

Firefox is rolling-out Cookie Banner Blocker by default in private windows for users in Germany during the coming weeks. Firefox will now auto-refuse cookies and dismiss annoying cookie banners for supported sites.

you can set "cookiebanners.service.mode" to 2 to automatically refuse cookies and have them stop asking you about it. While it's also an optional feature of ublock origin, this might work better

Firefox has enabled URL Tracking Protection by default in private windows for all users in Germany. Firefox will remove non-essential URL query parameters that are often used to track users across the web.

Not sure how to turn this on in settings (this is also an optional ublock feature, these don't hurt to stack) but once again removes the tracking at the end of urls telling you how the link was shared and how you got there

Firefox cares about your privacy and is making the internet a safer place from corporations. Do your part and download it today

[nyxyaoi]

Important info !!

You don't want AI to scrape your blogs on tumblr ?

Prevent third-party sharing

Visit your blog settings.

In the "Visibility" section, turn on the "Prevent third-party sharing for [your blog name]" switch.

PS: From what I can see, you can ONLY opt out from the APP version. The visibility section was not available to me on the web page of Tumblr!

[leveragehunters]

CoPilot in MS Word

I opened Word yesterday to discover that it now contains CoPilot. It follows you as you type and if you have a personal Microsoft 365 account, you can't turn it off. You will be given 60 AI credits per month and you can't opt out of it.

The only way to banish it is to revert to an earlier version of Office. There is lot of conflicting information and overly complex guides out there, so I thought I'd share the simplest way I found.

How to revert back to an old version of Office that does not have CoPilot

This is fairly simple, thankfully, presuming everything is in the default locations. If not you'll need to adjust the below for where you have things saved.

Click the Windows Button and S to bring up the search box, then type cmd. It will bring up the command prompt as an option. Run it as an administrator.

Paste this into the box at the cursor: cd "\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun"

Hit Enter

Then paste this into the box at the cursor: officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.17726.20160

Hit enter and wait while it downloads and installs.

VERY IMPORTANT. Once it's done, open Word, go to File, Account (bottom left), and you'll see a box on the right that says Microsoft 365 updates. Click the box and change the drop down to Disable Updates.

This will roll you back to build 17726.20160, from July 2024, which does not have CoPilot, and prevent it from being installed.

If you want a different build, you can see them all listed here. You will need to change the 17726.20160 at step 4 to whatever build number you want.

This is not a perfect fix, because while it removes CoPilot, it also stops you receiving security updates and bug fixes.

Switching from Office to LibreOffice

At this point, I'm giving up on Microsoft Office/Word. After trying a few different options, I've switched to LibreOffice.

You can download it here for free: https://www.libreoffice.org/

If you like the look of Word, these tutorials show you how to get that look:

www.howtogeek.com/788591/how-to-make-libreoffice-look-like-microsoft-office/

www.debugpoint.com/libreoffice-like-microsoft-office/

If you've been using Word for awhile, chances are you have a significant custom dictionary. You can add it to LibreOffice following these steps.

First, get your dictionary from Microsoft

Go to Manage your Microsoft 365 account: account.microsoft.com.

One you're logged in, scroll down to Privacy, click it and go to the Privacy dashboard.

Scroll down to Spelling and Text. Click into it and scroll past all the words to download your custom dictionary. It will save it as a CSV file.

Open the file you just downloaded and copy the words.

Open Notepad and paste in the words. Save it as a text file and give it a meaningful name (I went with FromWord).

Next, add it to LibreOffice

Open LibreOffice.

Go to Tools in the menu bar, then Options. It will open a new window.

Find Languages and Locales in the left menu, click it, then click on Writing aids.

You'll see User-defined dictionaries. Click New to the right of the box and give it a meaningful name (mine is FromWord).

Hit Apply, then Okay, then exit LibreOffice.

Open Windows Explorer and go to C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\wordbook and you will see the new dictionary you created. (If you can't see the AppData folder, you will need to show hidden files by ticking the box in the View menu.)

Open it in Notepad by right clicking and choosing 'open with', then pick Notepad from the options.

Open the text file you created at step 5 in 'get your dictionary from Microsoft', copy the words and paste them into your new custom dictionary UNDER the dotted line.

Save and close.

Reopen LibreOffice. Go to Tools, Options, Languages and Locales, Writing aids and make sure the box next to the new dictionary is ticked.

If you use LIbreOffice on multiple machines, you'll need to do this for each machine.

Please note: this worked for me. If it doesn't work for you, check you've followed each step correctly, and try restarting your computer. If it still doesn't work, I can't provide tech support (sorry).