#tech psa

[myosotisa]

friendly reminder to go into Settings > Dashboard settings > Turn off Endless Scrolling

endless scrolling is a system used by websites and apps to keep your brain trapped in the continuous loop of getting more content because there is no "break" or "pause" point. your brain struggles to make up a place to stop, so you end up just continuing to scroll.

having the page have an "end" that makes you press next to see more posts gives your brain more space to decide "I'm actually done looking at content, thanks." if it wants to.

don't let them manipulate you :) take back the power from the 'addictiveness' of the internet :)

[prismaticstarshch]

Random tech PSA bc I was telling my dad about this earlier: if you have an old device that has a li-ion or LiPo battery or have taken a li-ion/LiPo battery out of a device

Do not just throw it away

Take it to somewhere that can handle e-waste

Please don’t make potentially having to deal with a lithium fire an issue for someone

If you have one and it’s swollen or you’re worried it could catch on fire or explode and aren’t able to immediately take it somewhere:

Get a bucket

Fill it with sand or cat litter

Keep the battery in that until you can figure out what to do with it

Also please for the love of all that is holy do not puncture, smash, or intentionally damage batteries (I’m saying this because there are people out there who are dumb/reckless enough to do this)

[emptyheadgamer]

i feel like we as a digital society have forgotten the important rules of the internet

Don't feed the trolls

Never give out personal information

Anonymity is the best defense

Don't click suspicious links

Don't click popups and ads

Just because it's written doesn't mean it's true

You are responsible for your own experience

There is porn of everything, act accordingly

[thestudentempanada]

As of June 14, 2025, here’s a (probably incomplete) list of student groups raising money and glorifying Tarek Bazrouk, self-described “Jew hater,” who just pled guilty to 3 assault/hate crime charges-

[matsonkey]

found this and couldn't reblog so I'm reposting

image id:

first image: two-part meme of joey from friends. first part is a picture of him smiling at something out of frame, captioned "The hotel's free WiFi is really fast". second part is him staring wide eyed in horror, captioned "Your IP address starts with 172.16.42.x".

second image: lain from the anime "serial experiments lain" sitting in a chair in a dim room, in front of a glowing computer screen, and smiling at the camera. the text boxes in the image say:

Hey, guys. Lain Iwakura here to explain the joke.

You see, when a computer like your laptop or smartphone connects to wifi, the router assigns it a "local IP address" to distinguish it from other machines on the network.

Most routers use IPv4 for this, where an IP address is four numbers separated by periods. The first two or three numbers of your local IP address are usually the same for all machines on the LAN, and the most common schemas for local IP addresses are 192.168.0.x or 10.0.0.x. Those are just common defaults - they can be set to anything in the router's configuration.

The address schema 172.16.42.x is not a common default for a normal router. It is the default for a device called a "WiFi Pineapple", which is a hacking tool primarily intended for "pentesting", i.e. finding exploitable vulnerabilities in a computing or networking system. The WiFi Pineapple acts as a router from the perspective of the computers on the local network, but a malicious actor can use it to passively scan those computers for vulnerabilities, and can even spy on network traffic going through it. Thus, the joke is that the person in the hotel, finding that their local IP address is under 172.16.42.x., realizes to their horror that the hotel's LAN has been pwned by a (likely malicious) rogue access point, possibly causing their computer to be cracked and their sensitive information to be stolen by cybercriminals. In light of this breach, their panic is understandable! Always keep your software up to date and never connect to a suspicious or unsecured wifi network!

/end id

[spookyscaryy]

i am so tired of every public lobby dying by floor 3

[queencalicoanne]

PSA for educators-

You will not be able to teach your students the faults of AI just by repeating talking points about how it's bad.

You are going to have to USE AI in order to understand where the faults are. Yes, that means spending time playing with ChatGPT and Character.AI or whatever other AI happens to be in vogue with the kids. AI is a learning algorithm, which means it is constantly shifting its behavior. Some of its flaws get patched only for new issues to arise. However, once you get to know the machine, it becomes easier and easier to trip it up.

People are more likely to believe AI is faulty and can't be used as a research source after they see it fail repeatedly. And in order to make it fail in front of others, you will have to know how to use it and tease it.

Don't worry about environmental impact. There's a lot of nonsense claims about AI using five gallons of water per prompt or other scary sounding numbers which is just not true. Most AIs can be run on the processing power of an average gaming PC, there's already hobbyists who have open source AIs installed directly on their machines and get it to work with their usual processing power.

Educating people is far more important than using a little electricity to gain some knowledge.

[maypop-the-dragon]

PSA: Free Software

Reading this may really save your time, privacy, and money! Reblog or share to spread awareness!

Folks often use software that’s expensive and sometimes even inferior because they don’t know there are alternatives. So to those unfamiliar: basically, free and open-source (FOSS) or "libre" software is free to use and anyone can access the original code to make their own version or work on fixing problems.

That does not mean anyone can randomly add a virus and give it to everyone—any respectable libre project has checks in place to make sure changes to the official version are good! Libre software is typically developed by communities who really care about the quality of the software as a goal in itself.

There are libre alternatives to many well-known programs that do everything an average user needs (find out more under the cut!) for free with no DRM, license keys, or subscriptions.

Using libre software when possible is an easy way to fight against and free yourself from corporate greed while actually being more convenient in many cases! If you need an app to do something, perhaps try searching online for things like:

foss [whatever it is]

libre [whatever it is]

open source [whatever it is]

Feel free to recommend more libre software in the tags, replies, comments, or whatever you freaks like to do!

Some Libre Software I Personally Enjoy…

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is an office suite, much like Microsoft Office. It includes equivalents for apps like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, which can view and edit files created for those apps.

I can't say I've used it much myself yet. I do not personally like using office software except when I have to for school.

OpenShot

OpenShot Video Editor is, as the name suggests, a video editing program. It has industry-standard features like splicing, layering, transitions, and greenscreen.

I've only made one video with it so far, but I'm already very happy with it. I had already paid for a video editor (Cyberlink PowerDirector Pro), but I needed to reinstall it and I didn't remember how. Out of desperation, I searched up "FOSS video editor" and I'm so glad I did. There's no launcher, there's no promotion of other apps and asset packs—it's just a video editor with a normal installer.

GIMP

GNU Image Manipulation Program is an image editor, much like Photoshop. Originally created for Linux but also available for Windows and MacOS, it provides plenty of functionality for editing images. It is a bit unintuitive to learn at first, though.

I've used it to create and modify images for years, including logos, really bad traceover art, and Minecraft textures. It doesn't have certain advanced tech like AI paint-in, but it has served my purposes well and it might just work for yours!

(Be sure to go to Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Colors. I have no idea why that's not enabled by default.)

Audacity

Audacity is an audio editing program. It can record, load, splice, and layer audio files and apply effects to them.

Audacity is another program I've used for a long time. It is not designed to compose music, but it is great for podcasts, simple edits, and loading legacy MS Paint to hear cool noises.

7-Zip

7-Zip is a file manager and archive tool. It supports many archive types including ZIP, RAR, TAR, and its own format, 7Z. It can view and modify the contents of archives, encrypt and decrypt archives, and all that good stuff.

Personally, I use 7-Zip to look inside JAR files for Minecraft reasons. I must admit that its UI is ugly.

Firefox

Firefox is an internet browser, much like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Safari. While browsers are free, many of them include tracking or other anti-consumer practices. For example, Google plans to release an update to Chromium (the base that most browsers are built from these days) that makes ad blockers less effective by removing the APIs they currently rely on.

Aside from fighting monopolies, benefits include: support for animated themes (the one in the picture is Purple Night Theme), good ad blockers forever, an (albeit hidden) compact UI option (available on about:config), and a cute fox icon.

uBlock Origin

As far as I know, uBlock Origin is one of the best ad blockers there is.

I was on a sketchy website with my brother, and he was using Opera GX's ad blocker. Much of the time when he clicked on anything, it would take us to a random sponsored page. I suggested that he try uBlock Origin, and with uBlock Origin, that didn't happen anymore.

Linux

Linux is a kernel, but the term is often used to refer to operating systems (much like Windows or MacOS) built on it. There are many different Linux-based operating systems (or "distros") to choose from, but apps made for Linux usually work on most popular distros. You can also use many normally Windows-only apps on Linux through compatibility layers like WINE.

I don't have all four of these, so the images are from Wikipedia. I tried to show a variety of Linux distros made for different kinds of users.

If you want to replace your operating system, I recommend being very careful because you can end up breaking things. Many computer manufacturers don't care about supporting Linux, meaning that things may not work (Nvidia graphic cards notoriously have issues on Linux, for example).

Personally, I tried installing Pop!_OS on a laptop, and the sound output mysteriously doesn't work. I may try switching to Arch Linux, since it is extremely customizable and I might be able to experiment until I find a configuration where the audio works.

Many Linux distros offer "Live USB" functionality, which works as both a demo and an installer. You should thoroughly test your distro on a Live USB session before you actually install it to be absolutely sure that everything works. Even if it seems fine, you should probably look into dual-booting with your existing operating system, just in case you need it for some reason.

Happy computering!

[insomaniacat]

i hate men ahdhdjdjdkfjfbdkgkdhfhjf

[sinners-with-dreams]

TAG DUMP 2.0

Rod's Tags

Normal Tags

; Out Of Ammo (OOC) ; Pocket Pistol (memes) ; Gun Safety (PSA) ; Showin’ Off The Big Guns (Self-Promo) ; Showroom Special (Promo) ; Double-Barrel Dash (Dashboard View) ; Locked & Loaded (IC) ; Head Cannon (headcanon) ; My Magnum Dong (naughty stuff)

Verse-Specific

; Angel With A Shotgun (Rod & Prin) ( @prin-rose's muse) ; Before The Fall (Alive!Rod) ; Dog Swims With BEar (Rod & Harmony) (@chronicparagon's muse) ; Deal With The Doll (servant to @indulgentnine's Velvette) ; Made It To The Top (Overlord!Rod)

-----------------------------------------------------

Upgrade's Tags

[ superior tech (IC) ] [ mechanic memery (memes) ] [ usb stick (headcanon) ] [ system admin (OOC) ] [ defragging dash (dashboard view) ] [ osha compliant (PSA) ] [ presented by upgrade (promo) ] [ the latest in technology (self-promo) ] [ p0rnbot dot EXE (naughty stuff) ] Verse-Specific

TBA

[balketh]

PSA: Update 7-Zip ASAP

If you use 7-Zip, I strongly encourage you update your software if you're on a version older than 24.07 (as of writing the current version is 24.09, so I'd imagine this is like, a majority of users).

Basically, a pretty nasty remote code execution flaw was found that can work just by opening specially crafted files.

The update is perhaps the most painless update experience I've ever had for software. DL'd the exe, ran it, two clicks and I was done.

[benjaminallhope-fulltimemind]

Hey this a warning to everyone be careful of scammer on Steam, seriously don't click on Chinese links got it? Stay safe and make sure to always check stuff.

[mindmxtters]

on a related note I desperately need a pre-meteor au where the team somehow are already friends and get their paws on some prescription-grade gummies and it goes just about as poorly as you can imagine

[sassygreytea]

(( I just want to say that I live! I want to watch the newest arc soon and hopefully get some Charles muse back again cause I love this little fuck face, life has just been throwing hardball after hardball at me so I've hardly had time for myself. ))

[ralfmaximus]

Framework is hiring! You know, the modular laptop people.

And they do remote.

[frankencanon]

fyi, if you originally bought your phone from t-mobile and are now trying to swap over to a different network but it keeps saying "invalid sim card / sim card not supported" and you've exhausted every possible solution, tried literally everything to the point that even customer service is at a loss (restart, clear network data, replace potentially broken sim, airplane mode, etc) and when you ask they say your phone is definitely not network/carrier locked...

i want you to do me a favor: before you drive all the way out to a corporate store for assistance, before you spend hours upon hours on the phone with customer service...

i want you to go through your apps that you never use and look for one with a pink keyhole for an icon; it should be labeled something along the lines of "device unlock".

found it? good. now i want you to click it.

because, apparently, you need to manually unlock it yourself via this one inconspicuous app that you probably never even knew existed.

click "continue" and "permanent unlock" -- the request shouldn't take more than a few minutes to go through and then you'll have to restart your phone, but after that? you should be in the clear.

(all the googling i did and not one site ever mentioned this...)

(i'm still not quite sure why it didn't show up as network locked for customer service, though -- my best guess is that maybe it could only be done manually from the phone itself, thus customer service wouldn't see an option from their end for them to unlock it and so naturally assumed that must've meant that it was already unlocked...maybe? hm.)