#until i can find a text adding website i can access on mobile | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ask-artsy-oncie · 3 years ago

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For Everyone New to Tumblr

So! Your shitty social media website has become even shittier? So much so that you’re running to our beloved little hellsite? Welcome! Despite all the jokes, this is genuinely one of the last good social media websites out there that has a considerable userbase, and it’s probably for the best that its growing and people are beginning to grow used to experiences that aren’t dictated by advertisers and algorithms.

BUT

If you want to be welcomed with open arms from said userbase, you are going to have to learn how to use and navigate Tumblr.

Having been stuck here for almost 11 years, now (the fact that this is a retired Once-ler askblog should be proof enough), I feel like I’ve seen a lot of posts that have touched on many different aspects of Tumblr that new users should be wary of, but none that have put the entirety of new user advice into one big post. I feel a little bit of a lacking in both content and convenience that might make taking all this advice in difficult.

So here I go, making a big long post that new users can have as reference.

I strongly recommend that new users at least start the account-making process on a laptop or desktop computer, as opposed to a mobile phone, for reasons I will get into later, but it’s not a requirement.

(PLEASE NOTE: Table of Contents only functions properly when you view this post on my blog, sorry for the inconvenience!)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MAKING YOUR BLOG

- Editing Your Blog’s Mobile Appearance

- Editing Your Blog’s Desktop Appearance

- Your Blog’s Settings

APP VS MOBILE VS DESKTOP

MAKING POSTS

- Types of Posts

- Content in Posts

- The Tagging System

FINDING OTHER BLOGS

- Following Blogs You Already Know

- Finding New Blogs

INTERACTING WITH OTHER BLOGS

- Reblogs, Comments, and Likes

- Asks, Submissions, and Messaging

- Blocking

YOUR INFLUENCE AS A TUMBLR USER

- You Have None

TUMBLR CULTURE

- Post Circulation

- Miscellaneous Etiquette

- Tumblr-specific Memes

Let’s get started, shall we?

Making Your Blog

So, you’ve just finished making an account (or you’ve been using Tumblr with the bare minimum as a blank blog that only likes posts since creating your account) and you’re met with a screen that looks something like this:

(please note, I will be using the desktop site for the majority of this tutorial)

You have, presented to you, a dashboard full of popular, recommended blogs, with more recommendations offered to you either on the side, or, on mobile, during short breaks in your dashboard. Maybe you’re already following a few people or tags - cool! Right now, we’re not going to focus on the dashboard, there are a few important steps that we’ve neglected in making our Tumblr blog!

To get started, we’ll need to click on this little icon, here:

(on a mobile browser, you’ll instead want to click on this menu icon)

You will get a menu that looks like this - with general options above, and a list of your blogs, below. Right now, what we want to focus on is “Edit Appearance” under your blog, which, for whatever reason, is actually how you access your blog’s settings (whereas “Settings” just takes you to your general account settings)

The page will look something like this - scrolling down will offer you a myriad of options!

Editing Your Blog’s Mobile Appearance

What we can do, here, to get started, is edit the appearance of your blog for mobile devices - this includes mobile browsers and the Tumblr app. This includes changing your icon (which will not change across platforms), adding a header image, blog title, blog color, and description. (Note: If you want to include any HTML-specific content in your description, such as links, images, or special text formatting, please forgo working on your description until we move on to editing the appearance of your blog for desktop sites)

It is highly recommended that you do not use an independent artist’s (including fan-artists’) work for your icon or header image without their permission AND credit. Art theft is a huge issue on social media, and while most sites don’t actually do much to punish you for this, I will tell you, right now, that if an artist recognizes your icon or header image as someone else’s (not your) art, and notices you haven’t credited said artist, they are very likely going to be wary of you, and will possibly block you. To avoid going on a tangent, if this concept confuses you, please feel free to check the #art theft tag on my blog.

Ideas for what to use for your icon and header:

- A screenshot or stock image of your favorite fictional character

- A drawing you did

- A photo of your pet

- A photo you took

I personally like to use backgrounds from shows or games that I like as my header, and my own art as my icon.

Next, you’ll want to click on the “Background” option and select a color that compliments your header and/or icon (your header should probably take priority, though, since it’s pretty permanently attached to your background color when people go to view your blog). The “Accent” option next to it should be a color you can see clearly against your background color.

Once all the visual elements are done, you’ll want to type out a blog title. This can be anything from your online pseudonym, a quote you resonate with, or some shitpost-esque descriptor of yourself. Your description is equally “do whatever you want”. Most people give their online pseudonym or any name they’re comfortable using online, their pronouns, their occupation (most artists or writers will list that they’re artists or writers), their interests, etc. There are many things you can do with your description.

Here’s an example of what I’ve done:

(The header image is from a picture book, and the icon is from a TV show)

Looks a lot more nice and personal than the blank appearance it had, before, huh?

But WHY should I edit my blog’s appearance? Tumblr has had an issue with bot accounts which, buy and large, do not edit their blog appearances. When you, a human being, don’t bother to do this either, many long-time users will assume you are also a bot (and probably block you). Plus, having a custom-looking page is part of the fun of Tumblr! If you’re going to be here for a while, might as well make it a place you actually like the looks of!

Now, the nittier-grittier part of blog customization - editing your blog’s appearance for desktop browsers!

Editing Your Blog’s Desktop Appearance

In order to see how your blog will look outside of the Tumblr dashboard or mobile browsers, You’ll need to go to “[blogURL].tumblr.com”. By default, the desktop version will look very similar to the mobile version - but there’s a lot you can do to make it better for desktop browsers, specifically. This part is a lot more optional than editing your blog’s mobile appearance, but if you like the idea of having your own personal little website of sorts, you should definitely give this a try!

You’ll want to get started by clicking on the little paint palette icon.

If you do not use a laptop or desktop computer, you won’t be able to access this icon, which is why I recommended earlier that you start your blog-making process on a laptop or desktop computer.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll end up with a layout like this:

Look at all those options!! I suggest toying around with all of them in order to figure out what you like best - most features and options are self-explanatory. However, it might be good to go over a checklist of the things most users like to change for this version of their blog:

Theme - Selecting the “Browse Themes” option will allow you to find a number of different layouts you can use for your blog (Free themes can be found under the dropdown menu that says “All Themes” and changing it to “Free Themes”). My personal favorite theme is “Accessible” by eggdesign, as it has an option to use a font that’s easier for dyslexic people to read, and is very customizable.

Background - Can be either a color or an image, but this is what will be displayed behind all your posts. It’s best to use images that were either designed to be tiled, or very large images that will cover the whole screen.

Fonts - Most themes allow you to choose a font for your title, your description, your posts, pretty much any text that will appear on your blog. It’s best to make a short “test post” so that you can properly see what your posts will look like when you’re selecting a font and color for them.

HTML Description - In your blog’s description on this page, you can use HTML coding to make text bold, italic, add a hyperlink, add a picture, pretty much anything you can do with HTML coding. In the old days of tumblr, people used to design little HTML widgets people could copypaste into their blog descriptions, like clocks, or even simple virtual pets! If these still exist, go crazy and add whatever the hell to your blog!

After messing around for no longer than 7 minutes, I’ve got a blog that looks much different on desktop than it does on mobile!

When you’re satisfied, just make sure you save your changes before exiting!

Your Blog’s Settings

Now let’s go back to our blog settings - there are a few more options that have nothing to do with appearance, but will change our Tumblr experience a lot.

“Share Posts You Like” will create a tab on your blog that will allow anyone visiting your blog to scroll through your likes. Most tumblr users prefer to keep the posts they like private (consider the drama that people have caused on Twitter over people liking posts from accounts that a mutual might have beef with, though, most things that people choose to hide on tumblr are more for just having the option of privacy, we like privacy here!). Either way, as you’ll see later in the Interacting With Other Blogs portion of the post, leaving this option switched to “on” is not a viable replacement for reblogging posts.

Similarly, people prefer to keep the accounts they follow private. Again, mostly just for privacy’s sake.

The “Featured Tags” option is something most often used by content creators. It’ll just give anyone viewing your blog a list of suggested tags to search for on your blog, so many creators will list their art/writing/photography/what have you content tag through this feature.

Replies, asks, submissions, and messaging will be discussed further in Interacting With Other Blogs, so until you fully understand these options, I would wait to activate or change them.

Your queue is a set-aside list of posts you’ve either made or reblogged that will not be posted immediately. Instead, they will be posted at a time you chose until the allotted time or post count has been fulfilled, or your queue is empty.

Your timezone will affect the timestamps on your posts and reblogs, so if you care about that, I suggest making sure it’s accurate to where you live.

Your blog’s visibility is another privacy feature. You can choose to make your blog inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t have a Tumblr account (this will also render the desktop appearance of your blog inaccessible to everyone), and/or you can also choose to hide your blog from search results, meaning that any time you use a tag on your post, people will not see that post when they search for a tag on Tumblr’s “Search Tumblr” system.

With all that taken care of, your blog is complete! Congratulations, you’re finally recognized as a real person on Tumblr!

App V.S. Mobile V.S. Desktop

Before we get into using Tumblr, I do want to talk a little about what platform you might be using Tumblr on. You have a few options: the app, using your mobile device’s web browser, or using your laptop or desktop computer’s browser.

The Tumblr app is heavily pushed by Tumblr, itself, and sees a very popular usage, but it’s also known as the most broken, most limited, and most censored method of using Tumblr. Its draw is convenience.

Accessing Tumblr on your mobile browser is pretty much the half-way point between using the app and opening Tumblr on your computer browser. The look is very much built for mobile use and its menu system and new post layout is closer to the Tumblr app’s, but it isn’t as censored and tends to only be affected by bugs that also affect the desktop site. Its search system, as far as I can tell, is also closer to that of the desktop site’s.

Unlike Instagram and Tiktok, Tumblr was designed first as a site to be accessed by desktop users, and then was later adapted to mobile devices - closer to how Twitter is. As such, using Tumblr on your computer’s browser is probably the best way to use it. It doesn’t glitch as often as it does on the app and tends to load faster, too. Additionally, making different kinds of posts is more clear-cut on desktop. Additionally-additionally, most of Tumblr’s annual April Fool’s Day hijinks are designed for desktop, and usually don’t get mobile support.

My recommendation is obviously to use Tumblr on your computer’s browser, but you won’t lose too much using a mobile browser. Just don’t let Tumblr trick you into using the app.

Making Posts

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to delve into actually putting some content on your blog!

Why would you want to do this when you’re just here to look at other people’s content? Well, again, it kind of boils down to you coming off as a human being. Surely you have thoughts you’d like to throw out into the void - opinions on media you like or dislike? Thoughts on how your day went, or something you’re excited for? Maybe you have photos you’d like to share? A place you went to, an animal you saw, or an article of clothing in a store you thought looked nice?

Making your own original posts aren’t nearly as necessary as editing your blog’s appearance, but it’s part of the Tumblr experience and helps makes your blog feel more personal. It can even help you make friends on Tumblr if that’s something you want to do. The anonymity of Tumblr means that you don’t have to worry about your real-life friends and family reading your inner thoughts, or that you can say stupid things as a teenager and won’t have your face tied to it like you would on Tiktok. It’s a free-for-all, here, and things are more fun when you join in!

Types of Posts

On the desktop site, you can begin making a new post by clicking on one of various options listed at the top of your dashboard

These are all different types of posts you can make.

(On mobile, your only option is to select “Create a Post” from the menu, and then embed whatever kind of media you want into a text post)

Text posts - The vast majority of Tumblr posts, as far as I’m aware, are text posts. You can add an optional title to your post, and then fill in the body with text. Additionally, you can embed other media into the body of text posts and utilize HTML coding.

Photo posts - Kinda close to the way posting on Instagram works, a photo (or series of photos) will appear at the top of the post (and if users click on the photos, they can access a larger version of them), with optional text in the body of the post. The body of photo posts essentially function like the bodies of text posts.

Quote posts - Not used very often anymore, but still have their place if you ever want to share a specific quote, the header of these posts are any given quote, while the body is the quote’s source. Again, the body of quote posts function like the body of text posts, but I really don’t recommend you use this particular post this way unless the source is tied to a video or image (or you’re doing some next-level shitposting)

Link posts - Are also not used as often (most people just embed links into text posts) but tend to get used to share news articles or other situations where a post’s sole purpose is to share a link.

Chat posts - Used for dialogues. The vast majority of “incorrect quote” blogs use chat posts. This will automatically format a post’s body in an ideal way for sharing a script. Chat posts can not have text added to them in reblogs without adding to the original post, itself. This means that someone can reblog from you and add onto the dialogue you write, but the post wouldn’t mark them as the one who added it, nor would it explicitly label your post as edited, which can make some users believe that this was part of what you wrote. Tumblr etiquette usually dictates that it’s rude to add to a chat post.

Audio posts - For sharing MP3 files or Soundcloud links. As far as I know, the use of songs within the copyright system are a messy, gray area. Blogs have been deleted for reuploading large amounts of songs within the copyright system, before. Yet my sideblog full of early 2000′s Eurobeat has survived for many many years. Just be careful, I guess.

Video posts - For sharing video files (preferably MP4s) or links from video hosting sites (YouTube, Vimeo, etc). Like photo posts, the media is at the top of the post, while you have a body that functions like a text post.

Content In Posts

For this section, I will be using a text post as an example, as most other posts have text post qualities in them.

The most you’ll ever usually worry about when making a post is simply typing out the words you want to appear in your post

But you have a number of options for formatting and embedding available to you! Highlighting text will show you various formatting options (bold, italicize, headline, link, strike, list, and blockquote) which will change the way your text looks within your post (or, in the case of linking, functions). On mobile, you will also see options to change the color, font, or size of your text. This can be done on desktop, as well, through HTML coding (to access this, you’ll need to select the settings button and change the editor from “Rich Text” to “HTML”)

Starting a new line of text within a post offers you some additional options before you start typing anything. This will allow you to embed a photo, video, or read more link into the body of your post.

So you could theoretically make a post like this, instead

(this post is formatted very poorly, don’t make posts like this. I’m just trying to show off your options, please put some thought into your post formatting.)

One final note - you do not have to (and should not) censor your words on Tumblr, no matter how controversial. Tumblr has a rather infamous history of censorship and random shadowbanning, but for the most part, you will not lose your blog if you type out words like “kill” or “suicide” or swear words. If you don’t want to use these words, don’t talk about these subjects. If you want to talk about these subjects, use the damn word. Self-censoring prevents people from effectively filtering out words they do not want to see on their dashboard, so you’ll be doing more harm than good if you censor yourself.

Now that you’ve made your post, you’ll probably want to tag it

The Tagging System

Tumblr’s tagging system is... unique. Not in it’s functionality, but more in how it’s used in the context of Tumblr’s culture. This will come up again, but tagging is only used as a method of sorting posts half of the time, here. The other half of the time, it’s used as a sort of “whisper mode” where you can add commentary to your own posts (or other people’s posts) without directly altering the body of the post.

Let’s use another example post:

In this post, the text “Wow, I had a great day, today. I got to walk my dog” is the body, and the only part of the post that people will see if someone chooses to reblog it. The tags “#dogs” and “#my ramblings” serve to categorize the post on my blog, and Tumblr as a whole. If someone were to search “dogs” on Tumblr, they would eventually see this post. Similarly, “#my ramblings” serves to mark this post with a personal tag for my own text posts that I use to organize my blog in this hypothetical.

However, the tags “#i love my dog so much she’s such a little porker” and “#but she is a very good walker” are not tags meant to categorize. They instead exist as an aside where I’m adding text to the original post without actually altering the post, itself. It serves as an afterthought, a different way of talking on this site.

Similarly to how you shouldn’t self-censor in posts, you definitely should not self-censor in tags. Tags are the most common way that people filter content on this site. If someone is sensitive to discussions of death, for example, they will filter out the tags “#death”, “#tw death” (trigger warning death), and “#cw death” (content warning death), and won’t see any posts tagged this way. But if you tag your post as “#tw unalive” or “#d34th″ then the person trying to avoid your post will actually end up seeing it, and probably won’t be to happy about that, best case scenario.

Another thing to note is that characters like commas and quotation marks don’t work properly in tags. Commas separate different tags, so typing one will end the tag you’re currently typing and start a new one. Quotation marks prioritize tags, so anything you have in quotation marks will immediately be brought to the front of the tags portion of the post (not very helpful if you’re typing a string of sentences).

Finally, in order to use the tagging system to find a post on your blog, or on Tumblr, in a way that doesn’t rely on Tumblr’s kinda broken search system, you would need to type “tumblr.com/tagged/[tagname]” for generally searching the website, or “[blogURL].tumblr.com/tagged/[tagname]%20[tagname]” for searching a specific blog, into the URL bar on your browser. (A “%20″ in a URL represents a space in a tag, so if the tag you’re using is more than one word, you’ll have to type a %20 for every space in between words)

Finding Other Blogs

So now you know how to exist as a Tumblr user on your lonesome, but how about existing as a Tumblr user within a larger Tumblr community? Well, you’ll have to find some other blogs to follow.

By default, Tumblr will put posts on your dashboard from popular blogs or blogs that might have aligned with some interests you listed when you signed up (ironically, this dummy account I made ended up getting posts from a blog I co-own on its dash without me following said blog), but part of the appeal of Tumblr is that you don’t have to be forced into an algorithmic feed of content.

In order to achieve that, though, you first have to turn the algorithmic feed options off (in the “Dashboard” tab of your “Settings”, your preferences should look like this):

From there, you can start following people and properly tailoring your dashboard to your liking!

Following Blogs You Already Know

If you already happen to know some users on Tumblr, or have a favorite that had been popping up in that aforementioned algorithmic feed, your best course of action would be to actually follow said user rather than rely on that feed to continue to show you their posts (the algorithmic feed doesn’t show posts in chronological order, anyways, so you’ll more than likely miss out on some of their posts if you don’t follow them). This can be done in a number of ways, and I’ll use the co-owned blog I mentioned earlier as an example:

From your dashboard, you can click the “Follow” button displayed next to the blog’s URL

From Tumblr’s menu, you can go to the “Following” tab and manually type in the URL of the blog you want to follow

Or, from the blog’s page, you can click the “Follow” button found in the top-right of the screen

Finding New Blogs

But maybe you don’t already have a set list of people you plan on following, and are looking for new content? There are another number of ways you can find new people to follow!

As briefly mentioned at the very beginning of this post, your dashboard will not only display posts from people you follow, but also make suggestions on new blogs you can follow. The top portion are people Tumblr thinks that you, personally, will like, while the Radar consists of posts hand-picked by Tumblr, and are usually from artists.

Another way you can find new blogs is by searching tags relevant to your interests and looking for content you like. If a blog consistently has posts you enjoy in a tag, odds are you’ll probably want to follow them!

But if you’re going to be a participating member of a community on Tumblr, you really should know the etiquette of how to interact with other users, rather than jump in blindly.

Interacting With Other Blogs

This is the main subject I see come up over and over again on posts trying to explain how to use this site, and for good reason. Tumblr’s “ecosystem” relies very heavily on user engagement, and, unlike other social media sites, likes alone do not register as engagement. Content creation and online communities are a give-and-take social environment - if you want creators to keep showing you content, you should engage with it to show them that you want to see their content in the first place.

Reblogs, Comments, and Likes

When you find a post on Tumblr that was not made by you, you will find a number of buttons below the tags:

The number is the amount of “notes” a post has, which take the form of comments (the speech bubble), reblogs (the recycle symbol), and likes (the heart). The arrow button allows you to share a post via private messaging or external websites, but this more often than not doesn’t affect the post’s engagement, so we’ll ignore it for now.

The most important button in this case is the reblog button. This allows you to add the post to your blog (which will put it on your followers’ dashboards) while the original poster retains all credit for making the post. This directly gives the original post proper exposure and leads to more people seeing it, which leads to more people reblogging it, and so on. Think of this practice like growing a tree: Every time you reblog a post, a branch keeps growing. If you only like a post and don’t reblog it, the branch stops growing.

You’re never obligated to reblog posts - but you should consider the effect it has on posts. If everyone who saw the original post only gave it likes, then the tree would essentially just be a stump.

It’s also possible to reblog posts more than once, unlike retweeting.

When you reblog a post, you have the option to add something to the body of the post and/or add some tags that will only stay with your specific reblog of that post. Most people tend to use the tags to write additions to the post as a way to not “impose” on future reblogs of said post, but it’s ultimately your choice. If you feel like you can or should add to the body of the post, feel free to!

Another option for commenting on a post without affecting the body of the post is, well, comments (also known as replies). This will keep your comment contained within the notes of a post without you needing to reblog it. A lot of people will both comment and reblog a piece of work in order to show the original poster that they enjoy the piece, and also support the piece, but leave their comments about the piece off their blog.

It’s not uncommon, though, for people to just use the comments to get into arguments with one another without having to reblog a post over and over again, so I guess be prepared to see that.

Finally, both last and least, are likes. It’s not wrong, by any means, to like a post. It’s nice to know that you enjoyed a post enough to pay even a little bit of attention to it. Just know that it doesn’t do much for the person who made the original post. Liking on Tumblr, due to the lack of people using an algorithmic feed, and the fact that nobody cares about checking your blog’s “likes” tab, is essentially like bookmarking a post for yourself (as you can always view your likes in chronological order from the menu at any given time). Liking can even be a way to politely but quietly acknowledge a post. Say a friend of yours posts that they’ve had a bad day. Many Tumblr users would leave a like to let their friend know that they’ve seen their post, and they’re there for them.

It’s always nice to get likes, they just do nothing for engagement.

Sometimes, you might see a coin button at the bottom of a post, this means the original poster set up an option for you to tip them. This is entirely up to your discretion on whether you want to do this, or not, and many people have expressed concern with giving your financial information to Tumblr, citing worries about security issues. Again, this is your choice, just know the risk. Many creators also have links to their Ko-Fi, Paypal, or Patreon, if you’re looking for another option in supporting someone, financially.

Asks, Submissions, and Messaging

But say that you want to interact with another user without engaging with a post they made - you’ll have to send something to them, directly.

In your blog’s settings, we skipped over a few options - replies, asks, submissions and messaging. Replies, or comments, were covered above, but the rest will be covered, now.

Asks are one-time messages you can send to a blog, or others can send to your blog, so long as the recipients askbox is open (which can be toggled in settings).

If the sender has a Tumblr account, is not blocked by the recipient, and does not choose to be anonymous, then the message functions similarly to a text post, where you can embed media into it.

If the recipient allows anonymous messages, and the sender prefers to remain anonymous, and/or is not logged into a Tumblr account, then the message can only be comprised of text.

If the recipient does not allow anonymous messages, then only people with Tumblr accounts that they have not blocked can send asks.

Submissions function very similarly to asks, except anyone can send them, regardless of whether they have an account or not, and they take the form of posts, any posts that the average Tumblr user can make. It is recommended that, unless your blog is themed around submissions, you do not open your submission box, due to people having used it to send malicious links or shock videos.

If you get an ask or submission, you will get a notification above the envelope icon at the top of the screen (or next to the “Inbox” tab in the menu) that will look something like this

To answer an ask, you must simply click the “Answer” button and type out your reply. For whatever reason, there’s currently a glitch where, if you right click while answering an ask, the entire post gets deleted before you can post it, so avoid that. Once you’ve finished typing your reply, you can choose to answer if publicly or privately. You can only answer non-anonymous asks privately, and it will be sent back to the sender’s askbox with your reply.

To post a submission, you click the “Post” button, but you also have the option to edit that post by clicking on the pencil-shaped button before you post it.

Messages are a private instant messaging option on Tumblr. Only other Tumblr users can message one another, and people may limit who they allow to message them (for example, some people set their blog so only their mutuals can message them). To message someone new, you need to click on the smiley face button (or select the “Messaging” tab in the menu) and select “New Message” before typing in the recipients URL.

Please remember to be respectful when you interact with other users. Like, I know this site is pretty infamous for its vitriol, but, I dunno, the goal with this post is to keep the newcomers from ruining this place, y’know?

Blocking

Okay, so say you come across someone who hasn’t taken the advice above, is just a total dick to you, or maybe has some ice cold takes that you keep seeing in your favorite tags, or maybe you just plain don’t vibe with their content. That’s where blocking comes in.

When you block someone, they cannot message you, interact with your posts, or send you asks off-anon. You also do not see any of their posts on your dashboard or in the tags, but it’s sometimes possible (for whatever reason - likely a glitch) for you to interact with their posts. If your blog is private, then they can no longer see your blog at all.

There are a few ways to block someone. First, if you see one of their posts, say, while browsing a tag, you can click on the dots at the top-right of the post and select “block” (on mobile, this menu also appears at the end of their blog description while viewing their blog).

You can also go to your blog’s settings and type in their URL, manually, next to “Blocked Tumblrs”

Finally, if they send you an ask, you can block them from the dots at the top-right of the ask (Note: blocking anons on Tumblr used to block their IP address from accessing your blog, this feature hasn’t worked in years and blocking anons today is essentially useless. I would recommend turning the anon option off for your askbox)

OR, if they send you a private message, you can block them via the three dots at the top of the messenger window

Stay safe out there!

Your Influence as a Tumblr User

So, I am aware that most of you are coming in from Twitter and Tiktok, where the concept of a social media influencer and brand presence is very normal and common (almost oppressive). You might be wondering, what kind of influence might you have if you become a prominent Tumblr user? Well,

You Have None

Tumblr is a community that is actively and vocally hostile towards the very idea of social media influencers and brands. This site’s userbase has infamously been impossible to advertise to, and even if your non-creative (non art/writing/fan-edit/etc) posts start to get massive attention, it rarely leads to you gaining significant amounts of followers (quite honestly, all it does is get very angry people in your askbox who either willfully misinterpreted your post, or just flat out don’t agree with you). Prominent posters are rarely even known by name unless they’ve earned a degree of infamy (typically by being so weird that a lot of people will avoid them or cringe when they show up on their dash). If you make a popular post, you are “OP” (original poster) and nothing more.

Everyone’s follower amount on this site is private and there is no way to toggle it to be public, and, quite frankly, it doesn’t really matter how many followers you have, to begin with. I’ve seen people who admit to having over 10k followers average around 50 notes on their post. I have over 2k followers and I get lucky if a post I make gets to 20 notes, let alone 50. Posts you don’t want to get popular will get popular, vice versa, and you have no way of controlling anything. There is no “For You Page” that you can tag, the explore tab is underused by the vast majority of people here, everyone tends to stick to just their dashboard and maybe a few tags they like to check. There isn’t even a good “time” to post on Tumblr like there is with Instagram and Twitter.

Tumblr recently released a feature where you can sponsor your post to improve its reach, however the entire process is random and you cannot target any demographic whatsoever. We are random, anonymous hermits here. You cannot beat us, you just have to join us.

Tumblr Culture

To close this post off, I’d like to bring up a few things that you’re very likely to run into in your time, here. Basically, here are things you might want to get used to during your stay on this site.

Post Circulation

As mentioned above, non-creative posts getting popular rarely have positive effects for the original poster. As such, many Tumblr users actually abhor their posts in this category getting popular. This is usually because it floods their activity feed (especially for content creators, it drowns out the attention we get on our creative posts) and sends very angry people who didn’t like our post for whatever reason to our inboxes. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t circulate these kinds of posts, go ahead and do it, we resigned ourselves to this by joining this hellsite, but it will probably happen to you, especially if you’re noticeably the new guy (and use mannerisms specific to other sites).

On a related note, Tumblr is an ecosystem where posts circulate regularly. What I mean by this is, it’s very common for posts from years ago to continue to circulate (be reblogged over and over again) as if it were a tradition. Every Thursday I’ll likely see the Out of Touch Thursday post be reblogged again. And not, like, the video being reposted like it is on Twitter where people just make a new post, but the original post from years ago brought back to my dash through reblogs. Or fat/flat fuck Friday every Friday. This website loves its unofficial holidays, and a lot of people queue old posts to be reblogged on specific days. This is all normal, and you’re going to have to get used to it.

Additionally, posts that used to circulate a lot but were considered annoying or weird (the first ones that come to mind are “Do You Love the Color of the Sky?” for being annoyingly long, or any of the “Werewolf Boyfriend” posts for being weird innuendos) tend to survive as jokes or references in new posts, so they still end up circulating one way or another.

Miscellaneous Etiquette

In line with “annoying”, the majority of long-time users on this site have repeatedly shown annoyance with this newer trend of: liking someone’s tags, reblogging the post, and instead of screenshotting or copying the tags in the reblog, typing “prev tags” or “previous tags” in their reblog. Not only does this out you as a Twitter user (the practice is a rehash of the “LRT” or “last retweet” practice on Twitter because of the discouragement of making quote-retweets, which aren’t a problem on Tumblr), but it’s just not intuitive. Sure, someone could follow the reblog chain to whatever tags you found amusing, but just like making your likes public, people don’t want to do that, and they won’t.

On Tumblr, we don’t hold some kind of claim to tags. It’s nice if you @ the person you copied the tags from, but not really necessary. Just copy or screenshot the tags and put them in the body of the reblog.

Another miscellaneous thing related to interacting with posts: spam liking and reblogging things from people isn’t considered a worry here like it is on Instagram. You won’t get flagged as a bot or anything, feel free to do that as much as you want.

Reblogging your own posts are also considered fine, and most people will tag these reblogs as “#self rb” or “#self reblog” so that people who don’t like seeing them can filter them out.

Additionally, long posts are often tagged as such (#long post) so people don’t have to worry about spending a long time scrolling through one post if they filter the tag.

Asking popular bloggers to reblog your post is generally considered rude, but there are bloggers out there who are open to it, especially if it’s a post regarding an emergency financial situation you may be in. Still, please recognize that no one is obligated to circulate your posts for you, and many times, it isn’t personal (most people simply don’t want to open the floodgates of having all their followers and then some demanding they reblog from them, too).

Tumblr-specific Memes

There’s a lot of humor specific to Tumblr that doesn’t tend to leave this site, but you’re definitely going to find it here after staying long enough.

Gimmick accounts - Vary from accounts dedicated to specific niches of information (eg. suppermariobroth), a variant of the former except there’s a running gag that the blog will not break character on (eg. pictures-of-dogs), bot accounts welcomed by the community (eg. the-haiku-bot), and blogs designed specifically to interact with posts to induce a punchline (eg. post-store). Though some may get annoyed by the latter, these types of blogs are generally accepted as part of Tumblr’s ecosystem.

A type of gimmick account that’s died off in recent years is the askblog, which is where someone will run a blog roleplaying as a specific character and answer asks in-character. These are usually accompanied by art (usually made by the person running the account) and can sometimes end up telling narrative stories through their answers. You’re less likely to run into them nowadays, but you might find them here or there.

Ironic roleplay reblog chains (Open RP) - are instances where someone will, as a joke, prompt people to roleplay with them in completely ridiculous scenarios (or scenarios that start off seemingly serious, but devolve into silliness). One of the more common trends as of late in this category have been wizard battles between random users where they get into disagreements and then begin casting spells at one another. Related to these is the wizard council (usually posts made by user normal-horoscopes) where spells are regularly “approved” or “banned” (this is all for fun and make-believe, and the purpose of banning spells is usually so you can catch someone making an illegal spell in an RP and “report" them to the council for it in an “I’m telling mom!” sort of way).

Tumblr Scandals - Tumblr has had a pretty meme’d on history of scandals and drama that many outside of the site know of, but they still get referenced here a lot in a tongue-and-cheek manner (think “Oh, a Tumblr convention, that sounds like such a good idea! ;)” ). People aren’t big on tone-indicators on this site, so just assume that 90% of posts that propose something overly grand or something that sounds too stupid to be successful are being made in complete sarcasm.

April Fool’s - Every single year, on April 1st (EST), Tumblr staff will add a gimmick to the desktop version of the site for the sake of fun. This year they gave us a button to spawn crab emojis on our screen and we all pressed it thousands of times, until we couldn’t press it anymore because the button was covered in crabs. Sometimes users come up with jokes to play on their own (”Mishapocalypse” refers to everyone spamming a specific picture of Misha Collins (of Supernatural fame) on their followers’ dashboards, many April Fools’ ago). It’s all in good fun, even the more “mean” seeming pranks (many people tried to crash the site this year just to see how staff would handle it. It was unsuccessful and staff congratulated them on their effort) have a pretty amicable tone or conclusion. If you’re on the desktop version of this site for only one day a year, let it be April Fool’s Day.

That’s all I can think of, for now! I know all this information can be pretty overwhelming, I hope that the way I formatted this post at least made things easier to digest. If you have questions, you can always send me an ask! I genuinely do think that, despite how intimidating this site can be, a lot of you are going to enjoy Tumblr as a breath of fresh air from the algorithmic, corporation-infested, ad-ridden world out there. If you keep these basics in mind, I’m sure you’ll be welcomed here.

#tumblr #tumblr basics #twitter #tiktok #I'm going to sponsor this post tbh #I spent all day making it because my arm hurts too much to draw #For Everyone New to Tumblr

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songuserbox · 3 years ago

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how to make a userbox

a long time ago I said a magician never reveals their secrets but considering the fact that I’ve been really bad about making userboxes in the past few years (this blog has existed since 2016 and has almost 4,000 followers) I figured it was time to write a tutorial on how to make your own userboxes.

fun fact - userboxes were originally for Wikipedia accounts.

THINGS TO NOTE:

text must start with “This user”.

some helpful things to know if you don't already: cntrl + a = select all (helpful for urls), cntrl + c = copy, cntrl + v = paste, cntrl + z = undo

MEMORIZE THIS CODE:

so let’s say you want to make a userbox that says “This user likes trees.” the method is different for pc and mobile, so I’ll start with pc:

the first step is to go to https://www.yerich.net/userbox/. then open a new tab and google “tree png” or “tree transparent” and find an image with a transparent background (tip: I’ve found that truly transparent photos appear white in the background, but if you click on it, become checkered. they are probably not actually transparent if they already have a checkered background or don’t turn checkered after you select it. also, if an icon is hard to find, I recommend https://thenounproject.com/). once you find one you like, right click the image and click “open image in new tab”. that should open up a page with the url for your image. copy that (cntrl + a & cntrl + c) and come back to yerich.net.

in the top bar that is titled “left box”, type in the code i mentioned and paste the url in-between the quotations (cntrl + v). if you did it correctly, the image you selected should appear in the left box.

now go to the bar right under it, titled right box. type “This user likes trees.” this should reflect immediately in the right box of the userbox.

now for colors! there are three ways to do this:

on yerich.net there is a tab that says “select color scheme” that has some presets to choose from.

google “color picker” and use that to find more precise colors, then copy the hex code (starts with a hashtag “#” and is 6 digits long). then you can paste it wherever you want: border color, left box color, right box color, or left (info) text. this method is better for getting custom colors, especially ones that match the image. (some hex codes to memorize: #fff - white, #000 - black, #ff000 - red, #ccc - light grey)

instead of hex codes, you can also use HTML colors. for example, if instead of #ffffff you just wrote "white" it would do the same thing. here's a full list of accepted color names.

your userbox is done! now all you have to do is take a picture of it and crop it. zoom up as far as possible to your userbox. in your search bar along your taskbar, search “sn”. this should come up with “snipping tool”. open that, select new (make sure that under mode, rectangular snip is selected), then carefully put your cursor at any corner, making sure the crosshairs align with the border of your userbox. then drag to the opposite end, also making sure it’s not too close or too far (this is hard and takes me a few tries sometimes, but chances are better the more you zoom up on your userbox). once you’ve taken your screenshot, save it as whatever you want, wherever it will be most accessible to you, and voila!

the only difference with mobile is:

when you’re looking for a picture, you may be able to hold down the photo you want to bring up a selection which might include “open image in new tab”. if not, try clicking the image until it takes you to a page where there is nothing but the image. copying and pasting the image doesn’t work, nor does pasting the url of the website it’s from, so it’s a little more complicated. if you really want, you can upload the image you want to something like imgur and then copy that url.

on the website, images and hex codes don't immediately update when pasted. how i fix this is deleting punctuation and adding it again, or deleting the last number of a hex code and adding it again. this refreshes the userbox.

cropping is also way more refined – I recommend flipping it sideways for better precision, and flipping it right side up when done.

also userbox resolution is a lot better on mobile. pc can look more pixelated.

but yeah! hope this was useful ~

#userbox #how to make a userbox #userboxes

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coldasyou · 5 years ago

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How to gif without photoshop

Hello! By popular demand (of like 4 people) I am going to write out a tutorial of how I make gifs when I’m on my personal laptop and don’t have access to photoshop. There is another method I use with a different software that is a bit more complicated and if people are interested, I will make a tutorial of that method as well. I’ll do my best to keep this concise, so let’s get started.

Warning that this is VERY text and image heavy because I know how frustrating it can be when a tutorial feels like it’s skipping steps and I want this to be as clear as possible. Also please read this on desktop, tumblr mobile kills the quality of gifs inside text posts.

This is the video I will be giffing and here is the gif I will be making!

What you need:

A video to gif

For the best results, I recommend a video that is either 720p or 1080p (basically the higher the quality, the better). Videos with good lighting and bright colors also turn out the best. Unfortunately for me, I gif the TV show Prodigal Son a lot and that show has neither of those things, which is why my gif example is from that show; if you can make a scene with zero lighting or vibrancy look even somewhat decent, you can make anything else look good.

A video downloader or screen recorder

This is the video downloader I use and this is the screen recorder but basically any youtube video download website or screen recorder program works. Keep in mind that ezgif has a pretty low upload limit for videos, so if you want to gif something longer than like ~4 minutes, cut the video down to the specific parts you want first on a website like this one.

ezgif

A very straight forward website that anyone can access. You don’t need to download anything, it’s all online.

Bonus: Online Image Editor (not required, but I use this website to add text to gifs)

1. Making the gif:

Once you have a video downloaded, you go to ezgif.com and go to the section video to gif. Click choose a file, scroll to your downloaded video, and hit upload video. Your screen should look like this now.

There are two ways to pull out the sections of the video you want to gif. You can either write in the start and end time in the little sections (you have to convert them to seconds: for example, if my gif started at 1:16 and ended at 1:20, it would be 76 seconds and 80 seconds respectively). Or you can do the method that I feel is easier, where you go to the section you want it to start on, hit pause, and hit the blue button that says “use current position” then let the video play until it hits your stopping point, hit pause again, and click on the second “use current position” button.

Once you have the start and end time recorded, scroll down to the next part of the screen with the size options. For size, select “540xAUTO (for Tumblr)” since tumblr gif sizes start at 540p and go down the more gifs are in a row. For frame rate, try to do either 20 or 25; the higher the frame rate, the smoother the gif will look. If you are trying to gif something in 540p that is longer, you might need to chose 10 to keep it under 5mb, which is the tumblr gif size limit. For method, leave it on FFMPEG. Then hit, convert to gif.

your gif will now look something like this!

Now, this gif is currently 5.7mb, which is above the size limit for tumblr (5mb or above gifs will still play if I recall, but the quality will be really bad when you post them). If I was planning on keeping the gif this size, I would go back and change the frame rate to either 20 or 10 to get the size down. However, I am going to resize the gif to 268p, so I don’t need to worry about it being to big.

Using the correct gif size for tumblr is one of the easiest ways to make sure the gif looks good! For gifs that take up a whole row, the size should be 540p wide. For two gifs in one row, the size is 268p each. For three gifs in one row, the sizes are 177p, 178p, and 177p in that order. Here is a visual of it.

The next step would normally be resizing the gif, but Prodigal Son youtube videos come with a black banner on the top and bottom that I need to crop out. You will see a menu full of options under your gif, and you want to click on “crop.”

Cropping is pretty straight forward; you just move the little box over the part you want cropped, then hit the “crop image” button. Make sure width stays 540p!

Your gif now looks like this

Next, you look at the options under your gif again, and go to “resize.”

Again, resizing is pretty straight forward. I just put in 268 into the “width” section and leave the “height” section blank since the site will automatically resize the height. You can ignore the other menu options.

Your gif now looks like this

Next step is optional, but I usually do it. Once again, you go to the menu of options under your gif and select “speed.”

Speed is also super straight forward. I almost always reduce the speed of my gifs somewhere from 90% to 80% no matter what, just because I think it makes it look smoother. For gifs that are of short scenes that go really fast, I will reduce it to anywhere from 70% to 50%. You can try different speeds to test out what you think looks best. For this gif, I’m going to put it at 80%.

Here’s what we have so far. Congrats, you have made a gif!

Now for the fun part!

2. Coloring the gif

Go to the “effects” option, in the menu under your gif. You will see a LOT of options, but the panels I’m going to focus on are “colorize”, “brightness and contrast” and “color presets”. This section is going to vary a lot depending on what specific video you are giffing so remember to be flexible and try lots of different options out! It took me a while to get to a place where I can just eye a scene and know what settings to use. It’s super easy to go back and tweak a setting if the gif doesn’t look like how you want it the first time, but it’s a lot of trial and error.

The main option I focus on in the “colorize” section, is “saturation.” This is what will make all the color in your gif pop out. The saturation I use varies a ton; for scenes that already are colorful/bright, I usually keep it around 120 to 150, since you don’t want it to be over saturated. If I’m making an edit that is supposed to look toned down or more grey/neutral tones, I’ll decreases the saturation in the range of like 90-40. For a show like Prodigal Son, where there is basically zero color vibrancy, I tend to go full out with saturation, usually in the 150-200 range. For this gif, I have it all the way up to 200.

Next is brightness and contrast. This also varies wildly, but a good rule of thumb is I always try to keep my contrast at least 5 points higher than whatever my brightness is, it just makes the lighting more even. You need to find a good balance; obviously, the darker the scene, the higher you want the brightness and contrast, but if you go too high, the gif with be staticy/grainy. For Prodigal Son, which has horrible lighting, my brightness is anywhere from 10-30 and my contrast is anywhere from 15-35. For this gif, my brightness is on the lower side since the scene is outside in natural light; brightness is 16, contrast is 26.

After you get those settings, I go over to “color presets” section and click on the “tint” option. It will pull up a color chart that looks like this

You ALWAYS want the intensity up to 100. This part is where the most trial and error occurs; there isn’t any one color option that works for every gif. The shade I use most often is light red/pink or light blue/light purple. For scenes that are lacking warm tones (which is almost all of Prodigal Son) I tend to go to the light reds, and for scenes that are lacking cool tones, I go to the light blues. The light reds are best for making characters skin tones look more...like actual skin tones and not totally washed out. To select a color, you just move your mouse around the chart. This is the range of color codes I tend to use.

Again, intensity should be up to 100 (it automatically starts at 50 and I was too lazy to move it while getting screen shots :P).

For this gif, I actually used a new technique I’ve been trying out where I start with a light blue tint to even out the color tones, then once that gif is done, I go back to effects and add a layer of pink to make the colors brighter. Usually, one color works fine, but sometimes it’s hard to find a good balance (the red colors can get too red and the blue sometimes brings out too much of a yellow shade). For now, I have my color tint set at #eeebff.

Ultimately, this is what my effect settings look like and this is what the gif looks like now.

Now, like I said before, I added another layer of tint to this gif. All you have to do is go to the menu under your gif, and click on effects again.

It will take you back to the panel you were just on, expect now your colored gif is on the top and all the settings are blank again. The only setting you need to use now is the tint option; go there, and select a light red shade. I used #fff0f0.

And here is the final gif! To save it, just right click and hit “save image as.”

I know it seems like a long process, but once you get a hang of it, it goes by super fast, especially if all your gifs are coming from the same video.

BONUS: Adding text

If you are trying to gif something with dialogue or you want a quote to put over your gif, you will want to put text over it. ezgif has a “text” option that you can use if you want, but I personally don’t really like their font options, so I use the website Online Image Editor.

This is what it looks like. You can either hit “upload an image” and upload your saved gif, or you can go back to ezgif, right click the gif, hit “copy image url” and paste that url into the “upload from url” option. The web page should now look like this.

It’s pretty straight forward from here; click on the “add text” button and a menu will appear on the left hand with options for the text.

Type whatever you want the caption to be in the “type text here” box. This website has a ton of font options you can play around with, but when I just want to caption a gif, I stick with “Arial Bold Italic.” For a 268p gif, the font size should be 10-12, depending on how much writing you plan to put on each gif (if some gifs are going to have more writing than others, pick a smaller font size so it stays consistent!) When I make a 540p, the font goes up to 14-16. I use white for the color and black for the stroke. I make the strokewith 3 because it makes the caption stand out more. Once all these settings are selected, hit the “preview” button under the text box.

You can now drag your text anywhere you want on the image! The only bad thing about this website is that it doesn’t automatically center text, so you either have to eyeball it, or if you’re picky, like me, open up one of those online ruler applications and use it to measure out the center. For captions, I move the text just slightly above the bottom of the gif.

Finally, you hit apply. Once your gif has the text on it, all you have to do to save it is right click it and hit “save image as.” And here is the finished project!

That got a lot longer than I thought it would, but I hope it was informative! If anything was unclear or if you have further questions, feel free to send me an ask. Thank you for reading.

#gif tutorial #giffing tutorial #giffing #gifmaking #mine #my gifs #long post #I hope this makes sense lol #pls rb if it helped!!!#also if mobile doesn't keep the read more...idek

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namevision04-blog · 4 years ago

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Archive Of All Articles Identified With Java.

Ninja Training For Software Program Testers.

#toc background: #f9f9f9;border: 1px solid #aaa;display: table;margin-bottom: 1em;padding: 1em;width: 350px; .toctitle font-weight: 700;text-align: center;

Content

Qualified Software Program Examination Automation Designer.

Automation Testing Resources.

Examination Automation With Selenium Webdriver.

Leading Tips For Learning Java Programming.

Qualified Software Examination Automation Architect.

How many days will it take to learn Java?

Bottom line -- beyond the most elementary, the math you need will come from the problem domain you're programming in. NONE of that needs to be a barrier to learning Java development. If you can learn Java, you can probably learn more math if you need it -- just don't try to do both at the same time.

Nevertheless this is inhibited, as well as making use of one browser per node is thought about finest technique for optimal efficiency. You can then utilize the TestNG collection to run your tests on several nodes in parallel customarily. The easiest means to use these in a regional Selenium Grid is to build a Docker Compose file within the origin directory of your project. Name the data docker-compose. yml to keep points easy.

Java 7 can be mounted on Lion and also Mountain Lion to run applets. Lion and also Hill can have both Java 6 as well as Java 7 set up concurrently.

And also, there will be far better assistance for Docker, parallel testing will be consisted of natively, and it will offer a more insightful UI. Request tracing with Hooks will also aid you to debug your grid. As any type of examination automation engineer understands, waits are important to the security of your test automation framework. They can additionally quicken your test by making any sleeps or pauses redundant as well as get rid of slow network and cross-browser concerns.

Automation Testing Resources.

Nevertheless, as these are commonly utilized to produce screenshots of a single element, it deserves recognizing that there will certainly also be an API command to record a screenshot of a component in Selenium 4. The Selenium Grid will certainly be extra steady as well as easier to set up and also take care of in Selenium 4. Individuals will certainly no longer need to establish as well as start nodes and hubs individually as the grid will work as a mixed node and hub.

To get up as well as running, initially you require to have Docker as well as Docker Compose installed on your device. They will both be set up with the Docker Desktop if you're running Windows 10 or a Mac. Selenium Grid is infamously difficult to establish, unsteady, and also difficult to either release, or version control, on a CI pipeline. A much easier, secure and also maintainable way is to utilize the pre-built Selenium Docker pictures. This is essential to ensuring the continued widespread adoption of their framework within their firm.

Generally, puffed up, bekijk volledige prijzen befall of fashion rapidly. He started at IBM, relocated to EADS, then Fujitsu, and now runs his own company.

Below are some suggestions to make your waits a lot more resistant. To create a stable variation of the Grid for your CI pipeline, it's additionally possible to release your Grid onto Kubernetes or Throng. If they do fall short, this guarantees that any Dockers are rapidly restored or replaced. It's worth keeping in mind that it is feasible to have multiple browsers operating on each node.

Test Automation With Selenium Webdriver.

I utilize TestNG as it's especially developed for Approval Tests, while structures such as JUnit are typically made use of for device testing.

Another wonderful structure that is well worth exploring is Spock as it's easy and extremely expressive to check out.

I would certainly additionally recommend setting a day to do this at the very least yearly, although ideally it would be every six months.

Google's Reality assertion collection is likewise a terrific method to compose legible examinations.

youtube

Check to guarantee that you have the suggested variation of Java installed for your operating system. I composed a book that gets testers began with Java quickly, is simple to adhere to, as well as has instances associated with their work. A driver.switchTo(). parentFrame() method has been added to make structure navigation simpler. WebElement.getSize() and also WebElement.getLocation() are currently replaced with a single method WebElement.getRect().

Apple did not create an Update 38 for the Mac, they maxed out at Update 37. On Windows, the Java runtime might or might not be pre-installed, the choice is left as much as the equipment manufacturer. A Java variation 6 runtime was pre-installed by Apple on OS X Leopard and also Snow Leopard, yet starting with Lion, Apple stopped pre-installing Java. Java 6 can be set up on Lion as well as Mountain Lion, however it will not run applets.

Top Tips For Understanding Java Shows.

You code as soon as, as well as the JVM does all the operate in making certain your awesome new programme runs efficiently on any platform, whether Windows, Mac, Linux or Android mobile. Java is one of the most preferred programming language in operation since it's the only language that functions throughout all computer system systems without needing to be recompiled each. Obtain your group access to 4,000+ leading Udemy programs anytime, anywhere.

Create A Junit Test Course

youtube

Check to make certain that you have the advised version of Java installed on your Windows computer and also identify any kind of variations that run out date and needs to be uninstalled. If Java is presently set up and enabled in your browser, we are unable to verify.

Java voor testers don't have to have experience of doing this as your understanding of the technology will certainly suffice (we'll help you with the remainder up until you depend on speed up). Mentor is our enthusiasm and we make every course so you can go back to square one, knowing nothing about a topic and also come to be a specialist after the program as well as can work with enterprise projects. You will get the best in class assistance from the trainer for any kind of concern you have associated with the training course.

Pointer # 3: Chrome Devtools: Mimicing Network Conditions

Where can I practice Java?

JavaScript can be used to do monotonous things like creating animation in HTML. In short, when it comes to how each programming language is used, Java is typically used for all server-side development, while creating client-side scripts for tasks such as JS validation and interactivity is reserved for.

Toptal handpicks leading Java designers to match your requirements. There's also an innovative side to the role as you will make training course web content as well as contribute suggestions for coding challenges for the students.

How can I learn Java for free?

Learning Java on your own doesn't have to be difficult; there are plenty of resources for independent study and practice. No matter your age or experience level, you will find plenty of websites that will give you hands-on experience and teach you how to program in Java.

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cindylouwho-2 · 5 years ago

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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, late February 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles I came across since the early February report, although some may be older than that. I am a bit behind due to my trip last week and other events, but some things here are a bit time-sensitive so I wanted to release this now.

I am still looking into setting up a new ecommerce business forum where we can discuss this sort of news, as well as any day-to-day issues we face. I need some good suggestions for a cheap or free forum space that has some editing tools, is fairly intuitive for inexperienced members, and is accessible. If you have any suggestions, please reply to this post, email me on my website, or send me a tweet. (I will put out a survey once we narrow this down to some good candidates, but if you have any other comments on what you want from such a forum, please include those too!)

As always, if you see any stories I might be interested in, please let me know!

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

Since we are seeing more shops closed due to Etsy’s customer service level standards, my blog post on ODR now has major revisions explaining what we have learned, and includes some tips for staying out of trouble and if necessary, appealing a suspension. Please circulate the info widely, as many sellers still haven’t heard about this, and some were closed without having any clue this was possible.

Mobile continues to grow while desktop use is slowly shrinking. It should affect how we design web pages. “Mobile visitors also behave differently from their desktop web counterparts, staying on pages for shorter periods of time, for example.” Other interesting takeaways from this SimilarWeb report: “[Facebook] lost 8.6% of [web] traffic over the past year alone” but increased in app sessions.

The price of domains ending in “.com” will almost certainly be going up soon, and will go up most years after that, unless something changes at the last minute. If you are absolutely certain that you will continue to use the same domain name for your website, blog, ecommerce forwarding etc., then you might consider paying a few years in advance to save a few bucks.

Another article explaining how people are selling thrift store and vintage clothing on Instagram, without setting up a checkout/cart anywhere. (The article focusses on teenagers, but does reference other examples.)

ETSY NEWS

Two weeks ago, Etsy Support posted on Twitter that they were no longer monitoring the account, and asked everyone to use the help page maze instead when they need support. Forum thread here.

Another trend report for 2020 from Dayna Isom Johnson [podcast links & transcript] She leads off with tips on how to get featured: “ so it's incredibly important to see a bright representation that really clearly shows your product...Do be original. I'm always trying to find the latest and the greatest that isn’t already on the shelves...Do be inclusive. ... I'm talking about models of all ethnicities, all genders, all body types, all ages.” Etsy chose chartreuse as their colour of the year: “in the last three months, there's been a 12% increase in searches for green already, and a 55% increase in neon green.” The wedding trends part was mostly already covered in a blog post, but she does also answer a few seller questions.

Website user experience (UX) is a big part of getting people to convert, and an outside group ranks Etsy’s as “acceptable”. Many will be unsurprised that search gets a score of “mediocre” and Accounts & Self-Service get a “poor” grade.

The migration to Google Cloud services is complete, so now Etsy can run more experiments more often, including those involving AI. (Although the forum thread was laughing at the idea of bad reviews helping shops, there is actually some research supporting that, so it is a logical thing to test.)

Etsy sellers in the US, UK & Canada who use Instagram can apply to win a trip to Etsy HQ here, until March 1.

Etsy is launching an Etsy U program which just seems a bit sketchy. Forum thread here.

Reverb (owned by Etsy) named a new Chief Technology Officer on Feb. 18.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google does not confirm every large search update, so this one remains a mystery at the moment, since Google refused to give an answer. That means it’s not a core update.

Another video (with subtitles in several languages) from the SEO for Beginners series from Google, on the basics you need for good website SEO.

If you are interested in “searcher intent”, this 500 person survey asks about what people are really looking for, and what they think of the search results the end up with. Overwhelmingly, they say they prefer organic results to ads, and the majority see targeted ads that they can’t figure out the reason/s behind. “Sixty-eight percent responded that Google adding more ads to the search results would make them want to use the search engine less.” Also, a slight majority preferred text results to images, video, & audio. “When asked which factor had the most significant impact on their decision to click a result, 62.9% responded it was the description, followed by 24.2% who said the brand name, and 13% who said title.” That means that the first part of your Etsy listing description, or the coded meta description on a page on your website, has the most influence on people clicking on your link once they see it.

I usually strongly suggest that people setting up their own websites make sure they do some SEO work & keyword research for their category/shop section pages, and it turns out that there is new research showing I am correct. “Specifically, e-commerce category pages – which include parent category, subcategory and product grid pages with faceted navigation – ranked for 19% more keywords on average than product detail pages ranked for. The additional keywords they ranked for drove an estimated 413% more traffic, based on the keywords’ search demand and the pages’ ranking position. With optimization, those ranking category pages also showed the potential to drive 32% more traffic.”

Semi-advanced: explaining the (seemingly endless) debate on whether subdomains or subdirectories are better for SEO.

SEO study - do you really need to use H1 tags on a page? Maybe not, although some screen readers recognize them as the page title so they help with accessibility. (Etsy & many other marketplaces don’t let you make this coding choice, so don’t worry about it there.)

Confused about how to apply all of these SEO tips I post here to your Shopify site? Good news! Here’s a list of what is most important for Shopify SEO. Note the attention to setting up your category pages, which is something I completely agree with. (it’s by Ahrefs so of course it pushes their tools; you don’t need to pay for that.)

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Some businesses say social media doesn’t work, but maybe they aren’t doing it right. See if you are making one or more of these three mistakes. “Understanding who your target audience is - what they want, what they need, where you fit in, etc. - is critical to maximizing your social media marketing performance.”

Email marketing also works better if you do it right, so here are 5 things you might be doing wrong. And if you like a quick read, here’s an infographic on the psychology of email marketing.

8 ideas for getting more interactions on Facebook (detailed infographic).

More fourth quarter reports continue: Pinterest’s 4th quarter revenue was up 46% but they lost $1.36 billion, and they are introducing a verified merchant program. “Almost all (97%) of the top searches on Pinterest are unbranded, according to the company, giving merchants a chance to stand out.”

Want to tap into that Pinterest traffic? You should because “90% of weekly Pinterest users log in to make buying decisions.” Here are 10 ways to get more attention, followers, and pins.

Like almost all social media, Twitter has an algorithm that mediates what users see (although you can turn it off, or use apps such as Tweetdeck to get around it as a reader). Ranking factors include recency, engagement, media and activity. The article includes a few tips on how to make it work for you, but then slides into promoting its app as the solution - you can just skip that part.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Google search ads get more results than Facebook and Instagram, simply because more people who see them want to buy something. “Less expensive products tend to sell better than more expensive ones on Facebook and Instagram, per the study.”

If you are running ads where you can choose your keywords, don’t forget to examine your organic search results and impressions for new words to advertise. Google Search Console is a great source.

If you found Instagram ads too expensive, check out this post on how the ads are priced, which can help you make decisions on your spend.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Amazon has nearly 40% of the US ecommerce market, according to a report by eMarketer. Etsy is not in the top 10; eBay is 3rd behind Walmart.

Sales on Shopify sites during the Black Friday-Cyber Monday long weekend went up 61% to $3 billion in 2019. They claim that the “direct -to-consumer” approach can be successful for both big & small brands.

Japanese authorities are going after Rakuten for the ecommerce company’s push to make its sellers offer free shipping.

eCommerceBytes’ annual Sellers Choice survey placed eBay first out of the online marketplaces that were rate. Note that this is not a scientific survey and largely covers the site’s readership only. Bonanza was the most improved & Etsy showed the worst drop (from 1st to 5th place).

A review of that article last month that says ecommerce sites should have info pages as well as product pages, if only for SEO reasons. The author approves.

The CBC show Marketplace did a large test buying branded items on AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Wish. It turns out that most were fake.

Facebook’s cryptocurrency plans (Libra) finally have a partner: Shopify. The potential benefits include no credit card processing fees.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Younger people (think Gen Z) expect to see gender treated expansively and beyond traditional stereotypes, and they expect this from companies and advertising. “Half of women and four in 10 men in the U.S. now believe that there is a spectrum of gender identities, according to a recent Ipsos poll titled "The Future of Gender is Increasingly Nonbinary." An additional 16% of those surveyed said they know a person who identifies as transgender”

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Google employees are pushing back against the sea change in the company’s culture and values - and some are being fired.

Turns out that the “Peleton Wife” ad might not have hurt them as much as you might think. However, their stock dropped 12% after the fourth quarter report showed a 77% increase in revenue that still managed to be below market predictions. Interesting discussion around going viral in a negative fashion.

#Cindylouwho2newsupdates #seo #search engine optimization #search engine marketing #Etsynews #etsy #social media #Contentmarketing #Content marketing #ecommerce #Smallbiz #Seotips #Customer service #Ppc advertising #onlinemarketing #ecommercetips #EmailMarketing #socialmedianews

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

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#1yrago Oh for fuck's sake, not this fucking bullshit again (cryptography edition)

America, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Australia are in a surveillance alliance called The Five Eyes, through which they share much of their illegally harvested surveillance data.

In a recently released Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption, the Five Eyes powers have demanded, again, that strong cryptography be abolished and replaced with defective cryptography so that they can spy on bad guys.

They defend this by saying "Privacy is not absolute."

But of course, working crypto isn't just how we stay private from governments (though god knows all five of the Five Eyes have, in very recent times, proven themselves to be catastrophically unsuited to collect, analyze and act on all of our private and most intimate conversations). It's how we make sure that no one can break into the data from our voting machines, or push lethal fake firmware updates to our pacemakers, or steal all the money from all of the banks, or steal all of the kompromat on all 22,000,000 US military and government employees and contractors who've sought security clearance.

Also, this is bullshit.

Because it won't work.

Here's the text of my go-to post about why this is so fucking stupid. I just can't be bothered anymore. Jesus fucking christ. Seriously? Are we still fucking talking about this? Seriously? Come on, SERIOUSLY?

It’s impossible to overstate how bonkers the idea of sabotaging cryptography is to people who understand information security. If you want to secure your sensitive data either at rest – on your hard drive, in the cloud, on that phone you left on the train last week and never saw again – or on the wire, when you’re sending it to your doctor or your bank or to your work colleagues, you have to use good cryptography. Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the “good guys” are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption.

There are two reasons why this is so. First, there is the question of whether encryption can be made secure while still maintaining a “master key” for the authorities’ use. As lawyer/computer scientist Jonathan Mayer explained, adding the complexity of master keys to our technology will “introduce unquantifiable security risks”. It’s hard enough getting the security systems that protect our homes, finances, health and privacy to be airtight – making them airtight except when the authorities don’t want them to be is impossible.

What these leaders thinks they're saying is, "We will command all the software creators we can reach to introduce back-doors into their tools for us." There are enormous problems with this: there's no back door that only lets good guys go through it. If your Whatsapp or Google Hangouts has a deliberately introduced flaw in it, then foreign spies, criminals, crooked police (like those who fed sensitive information to the tabloids who were implicated in the hacking scandal -- and like the high-level police who secretly worked for organised crime for years), and criminals will eventually discover this vulnerability. They -- and not just the security services -- will be able to use it to intercept all of our communications. That includes things like the pictures of your kids in your bath that you send to your parents to the trade secrets you send to your co-workers.

But this is just for starters. These officials don't understand technology very well, so they doesn't actually know what they're asking for.

For this proposal to work, they will need to stop Britons, Canadians, Americans, Kiwis and Australians from installing software that comes from software creators who are out of their jurisdiction. The very best in secure communications are already free/open source projects, maintained by thousands of independent programmers around the world. They are widely available, and thanks to things like cryptographic signing, it is possible to download these packages from any server in the world (not just big ones like Github) and verify, with a very high degree of confidence, that the software you've downloaded hasn't been tampered with.

Australia is not alone here. The regime they proposes is already in place in countries like Syria, Russia, and Iran (for the record, none of these countries have had much luck with it). There are two means by which authoritarian governments have attempted to restrict the use of secure technology: by network filtering and by technology mandates.

Australian governments have already shown that they believes they can order the nation's ISPs to block access to certain websites (again, for the record, this hasn't worked very well). The next step is to order Chinese-style filtering using deep packet inspection, to try and distinguish traffic and block forbidden programs. This is a formidable technical challenge. Intrinsic to core Internet protocols like IPv4/6, TCP and UDP is the potential to "tunnel" one protocol inside another. This makes the project of figuring out whether a given packet is on the white-list or the black-list transcendentally hard, especially if you want to minimise the number of "good" sessions you accidentally blackhole.

More ambitious is a mandate over which code operating systems in the 5 Eyes nations are allowed to execute. This is very hard. We do have, in Apple's Ios platform and various games consoles, a regime where a single company uses countermeasures to ensure that only software it has blessed can run on the devices it sells to us. These companies could, indeed, be compelled (by an act of Parliament) to block secure software. Even there, you'd have to contend with the fact that other states are unlikely to follow suit, and that means that anyone who bought her Iphone in Paris or Mexico could come to the 5 Eyes countries with all their secure software intact and send messages "we cannot read."

But there is the problem of more open platforms, like GNU/Linux variants, BSD and other unixes, Mac OS X, and all the non-mobile versions of Windows. All of these operating systems are already designed to allow users to execute any code they want to run. The commercial operators -- Apple and Microsoft -- might conceivably be compelled by Parliament to change their operating systems to block secure software in the future, but that doesn't do anything to stop people from using all the PCs now in existence to run code that the PM wants to ban.

More difficult is the world of free/open operating systems like GNU/Linux and BSD. These operating systems are the gold standard for servers, and widely used on desktop computers (especially by the engineers and administrators who run the nation's IT). There is no legal or technical mechanism by which code that is designed to be modified by its users can co-exist with a rule that says that code must treat its users as adversaries and seek to prevent them from running prohibited code.

This, then, is what the Five Eyes are proposing:

* All 5 Eyes citizens' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept

* Any firms within reach of a 5 Eyes government must be banned from producing secure software

* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked in the 5 Eyes

* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

* Virtually all academic security work in the 5 Eyes must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services

* All packets in and out of 5 Eyes countries, and within those countries, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped

* Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

* Anyone visiting a 5 Eyes country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

* Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons

* Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright

The Five Eyes officials will say that they doesn't want to do any of this. They'll say that they can implement weaker versions of it -- say, only blocking some "notorious" sites that carry secure software. But anything less than the programme above will have no material effect on the ability of criminals to carry on perfectly secret conversations that "we cannot read". If any commodity PC or jailbroken phone can run any of the world's most popular communications applications, then "bad guys" will just use them. Jailbreaking an OS isn't hard. Downloading an app isn't hard. Stopping people from running code they want to run is -- and what's more, it puts the every 5 Eyes nation -- individuals and industry -- in terrible jeopardy.

That’s a technical argument, and it’s a good one, but you don’t have to be a cryptographer to understand the second problem with back doors: the security services are really bad at overseeing their own behaviour.

Once these same people have a back door that gives them access to everything that encryption protects, from the digital locks on your home or office to the information needed to clean out your bank account or read all your email, there will be lots more people who’ll want to subvert the vast cohort that is authorised to use the back door, and the incentives for betraying our trust will be much more lavish than anything a tabloid reporter could afford.

If you want a preview of what a back door looks like, just look at the US Transportation Security Administration’s “master keys” for the locks on our luggage. Since 2003, the TSA has required all locked baggage travelling within, or transiting through, the USA to be equipped with Travelsentry locks, which have been designed to allow anyone with a widely held master key to open them.

What happened after Travelsentry went into effect? Stuff started going missing from bags. Lots and lots of stuff. A CNN investigation into thefts from bags checked in US airports found thousands of incidents of theft committed by TSA workers and baggage handlers. And though “aggressive investigation work” has cut back on theft at some airports, insider thieves are still operating with impunity throughout the country, even managing to smuggle stolen goods off the airfield in airports where all employees are searched on their way in and out of their work areas.

The US system is rigged to create a halo of buck-passing unaccountability. When my family picked up our bags from our Easter holiday in the US, we discovered that the TSA had smashed the locks off my nearly new, unlocked, Travelsentry-approved bag, taping it shut after confirming it had nothing dangerous in it, and leaving it “completely destroyed” in the words of the official BA damage report. British Airways has sensibly declared the damage to be not their problem, as they had nothing to do with destroying the bag. The TSA directed me to a form that generated an illiterate reply from a government subcontractor, sent from a do-not-reply email address, advising that “TSA is not liable for any damage to locks or bags that are required to be opened by force for security purposes” (the same note had an appendix warning me that I should treat this communication as confidential). I’ve yet to have any other communications from the TSA.

Making it possible for the state to open your locks in secret means that anyone who works for the state, or anyone who can bribe or coerce anyone who works for the state, can have the run of your life. Cryptographic locks don’t just protect our mundane communications: cryptography is the reason why thieves can’t impersonate your fob to your car’s keyless ignition system; it’s the reason you can bank online; and it’s the basis for all trust and security in the 21st century.

In her Dimbleby lecture, Martha Lane Fox recalled Aaron Swartz’s words: “It’s not OK not to understand the internet anymore.” That goes double for cryptography: any politician caught spouting off about back doors is unfit for office anywhere but Hogwarts, which is also the only educational institution whose computer science department believes in “golden keys” that only let the right sort of people break your encryption.

https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/illegal-math.html

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cheion-writes · 5 years ago

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Navigating devices and websites

This is a personal depository of links and notes I have taken about accessibility on mobile and web. Note that this is done with the most basic of accessibility software knowledge - I’m just exploring what is available to me now, because big anxiety about the possibility of being blind next time just won’t let me go.

Some blogs websites about blindness:

Blindbites (this specific page shows the Android apps this individual uses)

In sight full life

Blind new world

Overdrive for audiobooks.

Google Assistant

I never realised how useful this actually is!

‘Ok Google’ must be turned on to access it more easily. To turn on ‘Ok Google’. Open Google Assistant and go to ‘explore’. Then, head over to your account, and hit settings. Then, go to ‘Assistant’. Scroll down to ‘Assistant Devices’ and click ‘Phone’. Enable ‘Access with Voice match’

Under ‘Assistant’, you will also find ‘Routines’. This is quite useful in doing certain tasks with voice commands.

Talkback / Voice Assistant (Android)

For some reason, Talkback in Chrome does not work for me. Web searches are not read out, so it’s pretty useless.

I had more luck using it on Firefox. The experience was smoother and cleaner.

Copy and pasting:

Have Talkback speak whatever you want to copy. Open the global context menu with the down then right gesture. (That is, draw an L). Double tap on copy last utterance to clipboard. Go to wherever you want to paste the text that was just copied. For example a text message. Double tap on the edit box as if you were going to type in there with the on screen keyboard. Open the local context menu with the up then right gesture. The first item there is paste. Double tap on that and the text that was just copied will be pasted into the edit box.

Be My Eyes

As in a post I reblogged earlier, this is a mobile app that lets blind users get on video calls with volunteers. It can help with finding things you dropped, looking at expiry dates, choosing clothes colours and more.

Youtube

In the main site, for skipping ads - Hit ‘tab’ until the selection goes to ‘skip ad’. Skipping back a video was kinda difficult.

There are two sites for Accessible Youtube. These two sites filter out ads and make the play, restart, next, etc. button much more accessible with screenreader. The links are as follows: Link one, by cs.unc.edu Link two, by povidi

Spotify

Research and some limited experience shows this is not the most accessible app for the blind. The desktop version was impossible to navigate. On mobile, Talkback and Google Assistant was more helpful, though not all features are as easy to find (like adding songs to a playlist). Nonetheless, there are some links I have found that might help, but I’m uncertain if they work:

Doitblind Guide: This is a guide on the shortcuts to navigate Spotify in JAWS. I’m not sure if the scripts do not work in the updated version, but hartgen offers a link to an older vision of Spotify - as well as the link to the scripts to download.

Shortcuts: I guess these will help me play songs even if screen readers won’t read out what it says?

Other scripts for Jaws software by SnowMan.

These include apps like Sound Forge and Audio Studio. I personally don’t use them (yet?) but just in case, I’m leaving the link here.

#personal #blindness #just in case

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stars-and-branches · 5 years ago

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Fun stuff to do while self-isolating

Websites:

1. Flight Rising - A cute dragon breeding browser game, good for 15-30 minutes of entertainment.

2. Kiss Anime, Kiss Cartoon, Kiss Comics - Free anime, cartoons and comics available for binging. USE AD BLOCK and antivirus when browsing through these websites, otherwise, pop-ups and ads will be unbearable. No links provided because these websites change domains and URLs often.

3. TV Tropes - I can get lost on this website for hours reading about the tropes and plot points my favorite media use. I recommend this especially for writers or people interested in fiction.

4. Bored Button - Randomly sends you to interactive websites, great for relieving a couple of minutes or to laugh at something silly, like a website that allows you to slap Captain Kirk.

5. Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.net - These are the giants of the fanfiction writing community and are home to a vast collection of stories about your favorite characters.

6. Goodreads - This is a good place to go to find book recommendations, make lists of what you want to read, and keep track of reading goals.

Youtube Channels:

1. Jessica Kellgren-Fozard - A 50s aesthetic combined with educational videos about disability. Jessica has a lovely personality and has served as a well-loved voice of the spoonie community.

2. Acoustic Trench - Videos of Acoustic music featuring a golden retriever, what’s not to like?

3. Rare Earth - This channel explores the lesser-known stories of people all around the world.

4. Simone Giertz - She builds robots that don’t work and has a lovely personality!

5. Mike Boyd - He constantly works on learning new skills and uploads his journey on his channel.

6. ElleOfTheMills - Elle Mills makes vlogs about her life. The videos are so high quality that watching them is like watching a movie.

7. Crash Course - They don’t need an introduction but this channel is good to watch while in isolation, both to learn something new and for students to keep up with their studies.

Videogames:

1. Stardew Valley - This is probably one of my favorite games. You get to run a small farm, befriend the townsfolk, and explore the many secrets in the game. Relationships in this game are lgbtq+ friendly! This game is available on most platforms and is relatively inexpensive at $10.

2. Outer Worlds - This game is brought to you by the studio that made Fallout: New Vegas. This game is beautiful and has a complex interesting storyline. All of the companion characters are well written and likable (One of which is an ace lesbian!). This game is available on the PC, Playstation, and X Box. It’s more expensive than the previous game on this list but it more than deserves the triple-A price tag of $59.99

3. Night in the Woods - This game is much more story-based than the other games on this list. The plot is wonderful and grapples with issues of mental illness and young adulthood. The price sits somewhere in the middle of #1 and #2 in this list at $19.99 and is available on PC, Mac, Linux, and Playstation 4.

4. Undertale - This is one of those games that needs no introduction. It’s a quirky pixel RPG with moral choices that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Undertale costs around $10 and is available on the Nintendo Switch, PC, and Playstation 4

5. Runescape - This is one of the oldest MMORPGs out on the market and is free to play. Runescape has an engaging crafting system and a wide variety of fun quests. While it is free to play Runescape suffers from some pay to win elements. This game is available on the PC and is in the early access phases of becoming a mobile app.

6. Albion Online - Albion Online is a large MMORPG with its strengths in its large scale PvP battles, combat system, and crafting system. This game is free to play with an optional subscription.

Mobile Apps:

1. Amino - This is a lesser-known social media app home to thousands of online communities. Fandoms, hobbies, roleplaying, and various other interests dominate the content here.

2. Animal Crossing Pocket Camp - This is a small, cutesy animal crossing game, enough to tide everyone over until new horizons releases on the 20th.

3. The Arcana - A tarot themed dating sim! Lgbtq+ friendly and filled with beautiful art. The characters are well written and the plot is filled with intrigue.

Podcasts:

1. Welcome to Night Vale - I can’t say too much about this one without spoiling it, this podcast is best listened to without knowing what to expect.

2. The Adventure Zone - A D&D podcast hosted by the Mcelroys, full of witty characters and funny moments.

3. Duolingo - Available in Spanish and French these podcasts are perfect for practicing your target language without leaving home.

Activities:

1. Bake

2. Start a project you’ve always wanted to try but haven’t had the time to do.

3. Draw, paint, etc.

4. Start a diy craft

5. Cook

6. Do some spring cleaning!

7. Read

8. Go on social media

9. Binge shows/movies on your streaming service of choice.

10. Start a garden

11. Pick and press flowers

12. Spend time with your pets (if you have any)

13. Call/text loved ones.

14. Color in an adult coloring book.

15. Pick up a new hobby.

16. Journal

Feel free to comment/reblog with more suggestions!

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dawnlacarte1 · 5 years ago

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Small Business Saturday® Customer Spotlight: Destin Vacation Boat Rentals

We always love hearing from Grasshopper customers, especially when they have a great story about how we helped make their lives easier and their business stronger. Such is the case for Destin Vacation Boat Rentals. Read below to learn more about how Grasshopper helped Heather Thomas, owner of Destin Vacation Boat Rentals, streamline her unique business needs.

And don’t forget to enter our Small Business Saturday® sweepstakes to win Grasshopper FREE for a year!

“...our business has more than doubled in just two years... We have also been able to control costs while growing our business by being able to expand without having to rent extra space to house a call center.” - Heather Thomas, Destin Vacation Boat Rentals

Tell us about your business.

We are a husband-and-wife-owned small business working in the watersports industry. Our business, Destin Vacation Boat Rentals is, as you might expect by the name, a boat and watersports equipment rental agency located in Destin, Florida. We specialize in providing Destin-area visitors with boat rentals and tours to one of Florida’s most popular natural attractions: Crab Island.

What sort of issues did you face with your previous phone carrier and what impact did that have on your business?

Working in a seasonal, tourism-driven environment can be challenging. We experience extremely high call volume from March-October, and very low call volume the remainder of the year. Our landline in our office had to be forwarded to one of our mobile phones when we were not physically in the office, and if we were on a line with one customer, we would miss other incoming calls. When we didn’t answer, would-be customers would call our competitors, so we were actually losing business by missing calls. We knew we had to make a change.

What alternatives did you look into to find a solution?

We were looking for a solution that offered the ability to have multiple lines so that calls could roll over to the next available person to prevent losing customers. We experienced severe sticker shock when we contacted our local phone service provider, who wanted us to purchase and install an expensive phone system and then commit to a two-year contract for hundreds of dollars a month, even when we were closed during the off-season and had little need for their system.

We also looked into hiring a virtual call center with virtual employees who would answer our calls for us, but this turned out to be even more expensive than our local phone company, plus we were concerned that they wouldn’t take care of our customers the way we would, or that potential customers wouldn’t be able to get answers from virtual employees that didn’t actually know our business.

How did you find out about Grasshopper?

My husband heard a radio advertisement for Grasshopper and told me about it, so we started doing some research. I was intrigued with the idea of having an entire phone system online, without the expensive equipment. Plus, the price was hard to beat! We must have read the entire Grasshopper website and watched all of the videos. We then called Grasshopper (twice, I think) with lots of questions, and they answered them all and put our fears to rest. We decided to give it a trial run: we got a temporary Grasshopper number and forwarded our landline to that for one month to see how it worked.

How was the trial run and implementation for you?

The temporary number worked great! We were concerned about call quality and other issues that are typically associated with VoIP services, but the calls sounded no different than our regular phone line. The online tutorials were helpful and allowed us to setup our vacation-themed hold music and voicemail fairly quickly even though I’m not very technically-inclined.

After that month, we were sold. We applied to have our business number transferred to Grasshopper and kept our landline forwarded to the temporary number until that happened. I was concerned about downtime during the transfer, but when it actually happened, it was so seamless that I didn’t even notice!

What have been your ultimate results from working with Grasshopper?

Switching to Grasshopper was a huge turning point for our business. We were able to add additional sales agents to answer the phones during our busy season, which led to more bookings, and to increased sales. Increased sales allowed us to add inventory, so the growth cycle continued. In fact, our business has more than doubled in just two years, and we are planning to add even more sales agents next year. We have also been able to control costs while growing our business by being able to expand without having to rent extra space to house a call center (and the expensive equipment that goes with it), since our agents can work from literally anywhere that they have access to a phone.

Do you have any favorite features?

There are a lot of features that we enjoy, and I know we haven’t even taken advantage of every feature available. Grasshopper is extremely customizable, and I think we’ve found what works best for us, but it’s nice to know we have other options available if we want to change things up in the future. For now, our “on hold music” has actually been very popular with our customers. Sometimes we pick up to find customers singing along, so that’s really funny and can be a great ice breaker.

We added voicemail transcription to our plan, and that has been a big time saver because it’s easier to skim text than to play each message individually for us. Plus, having the voicemails emailed to me is a great way to keep tabs on call volume and to make sure calls are being answered by employees who are working remotely.

As a seasonal business, I love that we can adjust our plan at any time. During the summer, we do the largest package available, the Max plan, with 10,000 minutes. Then, in the off-season, we drop down to the Grow plan with 2,000 minutes, so we aren’t paying for a plan that we don’t need when business is slow. This keeps the system affordable for us, and helps us to balance out the couple of months when we exceed our 10,000 minutes.

We also love that we can turn any employee’s phone on or off at any time, from anywhere, with the Grasshopper app, which helps us to manage times of higher call volume so we don’t miss calls.

Do you have any tips you could offer others who are involved in the process or looking for a similar solution?

I can’t imagine running our business without Grasshopper. I was so worried about trying something that seemed a little unconventional, but in hindsight I wish we had tried it sooner. My advice would be to just go for it!

To learn more about Destin Vacation Boat Rentals, visit www.destinvacationboatrentals.com.

Go for it today! Sign up for a free 7-day trial of Grasshopper any day in November and be entered to win a free year of Grasshopper! And don't forget to celebrate Small Business Saturday® on November 30!

from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/Customer Spotlight Destin Vacation Boat/ via IFTTT

#The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs

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ernestsdesign · 6 years ago

Photo

After beginning my website in code, I realised some difficulties with how I would accomplish something similar to my wireframes.

I first decided to look at the issue of social media links, which I decided would be awesome to create myself! For this reason I will create new social media icons before my website goes live. I believe these links will be amazing because they will be capable of having colours which relate to my personal brand.

I then noticed that when putting in my background image, it blocked the content and so I researched websites which would help me move content downward so that the font wasnt on top of the main background.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10982465/css-moving-the-text-down-a-few-pixels-but-keeping-the-background-still

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7750715/css-to-push-content-down-page

I looked at some css grid style navigation bars however I couldnt find any that would always be visible within the webpage and thus decided to stay with my original navigation style. In this navigation the user could access all parts of the website at any section or position within the webpage and by changing up the style and colours of this navigation I feel like it will make the website more amazing!

https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-build-an-off-canvas-navigation-with-css-grid--cms-28191

I also learnt that the position of my logo can be made in a specified location and it can also be made static throughout the site to not disappear by setting a fixed position.

https://bytes.com/topic/html-css/answers/510785-how-do-you-position-image

http://www.css3.com/css-z-index/

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/create-logo-positions-css-45446.html

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5587458/how-to-move-an-element-down-a-litte-bit-in-html

I also wanted to change the dimensions of the monogram to allow breathing room for the text which first appears with the background image. After testing, I realised that changing the width % helped in fixing the sizing issue.

https://www.w3schools.com/Css/tryit.asp?filename=trycss_dim_height_width2

I then decided to look at the bakground image which caused a lot of issues as it was way larger than the actual background which meant most of the actual illustration was lost. I fixed this by going into Affinity Designer and making it an A3 document with some pieces cropped off and the dimensions played around with.

I also wanted to add an internal hyperlink onto my monogram which would allow it to put the user back to the start of the webpage. I done this by looking at the following website and playing around with the code to make it operational.

http://hyperlinkcode.com/html-image-hyperlink.php

I then added the appropriate "Thasadith" font by embedding it into the CSS and HTML of my website.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Thasadith

My next goal was set in my sight, I wanted to make my website a bit more accessible and hence I set out to find text that can be responsive relating to the scale of the site!

I inserted a visual mark into the website however found a new difficulty; adding images that are centered on the website. After research on many website I finally found one which worked and tested it on the browser to make sure it is accurate.

https://www.w3schools.com/csS/css_align.asp

https://www.lifewire.com/center-images-with-css-3466389

https://www.w3schools.com/Tags/att_img_align.asp

https://html-online.com/articles/image-align-center/

After a lot of testing I found a big difficulty, when adding certain images into my projects the text had a large gap from below the image and adding bottom and top borders did nothing to solve this. So I tried changing the size of those images to no avail. I tried the "Inspect" action within Google to try get more understanding on why this was happening and still nothing came up that would cause issues. I decided then that re-inserting the images and entire text could help and it did work- until I added those specific images. It was then that I realised how the issue could lie in the actual "page preset" itself in Affinity Designer. And so I changed from A4 layout onto "Web" and conducted the test for my first image, I refreshed the webpage hoping for the best and after scrolling down I realised that it had indeed worked. Then I continued this trend for the rest of the images. In the end this fixed this huge issue which I was very happen in the result of.

I then faced another issue when I wanted to create a colour background as there were large spaces between each section of the webpage even though I checked to make sure all margin, padding and borders were set to 0, with no effect! Being frustrated I took to the internet where I found a trick to fill the colour background however when I tried to do it I seen no effect.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25329260/html-background-color-not-filling-whole-page

I wanted to make my images more interactive and so I went to my github account and read in my blog that the "max-width: 100%;" means that the images will resize to fit the parent container instead of just rendering at its native width and overflowing its containing box however it doesnt seem to be working properly on all the images on my website.

https://github.com/ESmaciej/John-Baskerville/blob/gh-pages/css/style-history6.css

I faced a new issue as my text had enormous spaces, and so this meant that once I added anotehr background colour lower on within the page then it had a huge gap from the initial making it looks really unprofessional and made it not suitable. I tried changing all borders, paddings and margins to 0 to counteract that with no effect.

I wanted to ensure that all content on the webpage is scalable and to ensure this is used the "vw" measurements for all my font ensuring it scales alongside the size of the display dimensions. I however had an issue with my monogram which took up more space than was necessary within the grid layout. This meant that the monogram displayed either went beyond the border of the grid or extended the grid to the point in which it looked ridiculous. I tried changing borders and padding and went into inspector to see what could fix the issue and i noticed that removing the specified "height" of the mongoram fixed the issue a little.

I noticed a small issue, once using my smartphone, the navigation text went onto a new line which made the appeal and accessibility less apparent. I then looked through the reasons of why this may be happening and thus added the "white-space: nowrap;" as this was mentioned in most blogs and answers. I noticed that this didnt really help except for adding some space on the next line of the navigation text, however, I found that reducing padding ensured that in all dimensions the navigation stayed in one line.

https://teamtreehouse.com/community/how-to-put-my-nav-li-in-one-line

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5232310/htmlcss-how-to-force-div-contents-to-stay-in-one-line

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28568711/how-to-make-a-navbar-stay-in-one-line

Another issue I faced was the size of the background colour for my first paragraph below the background image. I made this more appealing by changing the height from 20vh to "auto".

I was frustrated at how much the scale of the background image in accordance to the below paragraph changed once the website was scaled down meaning there was a huge visible space between the two. I tried making the background scaled at 100% however this was already applied. After loads of testing with the height and width %'s I tried adding sizingMethod='scale', which helped (sort of). I then realised that I could change the height from "vh" to "vw" and this, mostly, fixed the issue of scalability and although there was a tiny space between the two when on mobile, it was a huge improvement which I couldnt make any better.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7660931/responsive-web-design-how-to-resize-a-background-image-according-to-browser-w

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Backgrounds_and_Borders/Scaling_background_images

https://www.w3schools.com/csSref/css3_pr_background-size.asp

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15588091/how-to-have-css-background-image-scale-with-window-size-and-device

I then tackled the issue of paragraphs being hugely spaced out within the portfolio section and what I done was reduced the padding of the images and text itself.

https://www.lifewire.com/styling-links-with-css-3466838

#ixd103

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coldasyou · 5 years ago

Text

How to gif without photoshop (second method)

Hello! A couple months ago I made a tutorial on how to gif without photoshop using the website ezgif. I got a really great response for it and received some requests for the other giffing program I use when I don’t have access to photoshop. The program is called instagiffer; this is a software so it needs to be downloaded but I have never had any trouble with my version.

Please reblog if you found this helpful!

This is the video I will be giffing and here is the gif I will be making!

What you need:

Instagiffer

This program has been around since 2013 and I have used it since 2016. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated since 2016 and the download link on the official website is broken. That being said, there are a few other websites that still have a working download, which is what I linked to above.

ezgif

Although we aren’t going to use this website to make the gif, we are going to use it to add more color and brightness to the gif.

A video downloader

This is the video downloader I use but basically any youtube/video download website works. There are two ways to gif on instagiffer; using a video and using the built in screen recorder. I will show you how to use both.

A video to gif

This program is a lot more forgiving about video quality than ezgif is, but for best results 720p or 1080p is still the standard. Scenes with good lighting and bright colors turn out the best, but you can still make good looking gifs from darker or unsaturated scenes if you know what you’re doing.

1. Making a gif with a downloaded video

Step One: Getting the frames

First, you download the video you want to gif. Then you open up instagiffer and click on “load video.” Scroll down until you find the video you want to gif and click on it.

The video will appear on the screen in the right hand side. Go ahead and put “smoothness” up as high as it can go. This increases the frames per second and makes the gif look smoother. It also makes the gif longer, so you may have to bring it down later so it doesn’t go over tumblr’s size limit, but I always start as high as possible then work down.

Next, find the moment in the video you want to gif. You can either use the sliding bar or just type in the start time (you can use hours, minutes, seconds, and millisecond). You also want to put how long the clip you want to gif is. 3 seconds is the default but I usually bump it up to at least 4 (unless I know it’s a really short clip) just because it’s a lot easier to delete frames than add them.

If you do this, you’ll quickly realize your gif has extra frames that appear slightly before and slightly after the moment you want to gif. It’s really easy to get rid of those frames; just click on them until you only see the frames you want in the gif. Use the scroll bar at the bottom of the gif to move around the frames, and use it to make sure the only thing on screen is the clip you want included in the gif.

Step Two: Resize the gif, brighten the gif, change the speed and add captions

Now, it’s time to size, brighten, and color your gif! First look at the “frame size” option. Using the correct gif size for tumblr is one of the easiest ways to make sure the gif looks good. For gifs that take up a whole row, the size should be 540p wide. For two gifs in one row, the size is 268p each. For three gifs in one row, the sizes are 177p, 178p, and 177p in that order. Here is a visual of it. You can see what the width/height of the gif is in the bottom right hand corner of the gif screen. I am making this gif 268p. Get the frame size as close to the width you want as possible; right now, it is 269x151. To get it down to 268 exactly, go up to the top of the program, click on “frame” > “manual crop”. This little box will pop up. Just set the width to 268 and make sure the size is listed as 268 under the gif as well. The height can stay the same.

Keep quality up to 100 obviously. I almost always brighten by 2. Unless you’re giffing something with a huge spot of light, 2 is basically standard. Going up any higher usually makes the gif just look grainy, but if the scene is REALLY badly lit, you can go up to 3. Playback rate is usually -1, just to make the gif look smoother. Unless it’s a super long gif or a super short gif, I don’t mess with it further.

Captions are obviously optional but if you want to add one, click on “click here to add a new caption.” A box will pop up with options of how you want the text to look. I only use this to “caption” gifs (aka add dialogue). The settings I use are 12pt font, calibri, white, bold italic, bottom of gif, outline up to 3. You can also chose what frame you want the caption to start/end on if you want. Since this gif doesn’t have talking, I’m not going to include the caption in the final gif, but I wanted to show how to use this function.

Step Three: Color the gif

There are two parts to this. The first place I color the gif is on instagiffer, and then I use ezgif to add more effects. The second part is totally optional but they have more choices for coloring there.

Click on the “open effects panel”. A window will open showing what the gif currently looks like, along with a variety of filters you can use. Ignore how grainy it looks, it won’t look that way when it’s finished.

First thing is keep “enhance” up to 100. This is basically a sharpening function and without it the gif will get super blurry. There are a ton of filters you can play around with, but the only two I focus on usually are “color fade” and “colorize.” For color fade, I click it on and set it at 10. Obviously, if you’re trying to make a desaturated gifset, you can raise it up for a faded color effect, but I use it more for color balance than desaturation. Next click on colorize, and then color picker.

I almost always pick a light shade of blue, purple or pink; it brings out the color in the gif and tends to keep skin tones from being washed out. This is usually my default:

Then, I bring the “colorize” option down to 90 to increase the effects of shadows.

Last thing to do is click create gif! It’ll take a few seconds, especially for longer gifs, so be patient. ALSO there is a good chance you’re going to get a message saying something to the effect of “this gif is too big for tumblr’s photo limit.” Feel free to ignore that; the software being old means it still has the photo limit as 2gb when now it is 5-6gb so almost any gif you make will be considered “too big.”

Your gif now shows up in a preview tab! It should also show up as a file labeled “insta” on your desktop.

Here is the gif so far.

You can end here if you want. But when using instagiffer, I always go to ezgif to brighten up the colors further.

This part is basically the same as how you would color a gif you made in ezgif (see this tutorial) but I’ll quickly walk through what I do.

Go to ezgif.com/effects. Click chose file and upload your gif. First, you’re going to want to up the saturation, brightness, and contrast. You have to play around with these functions a lot because every scene is different, but in general, I have my saturation up pretty high and my brightness and contrast at at least 8. For a scene as dark and desaturated as this, I put saturation at 200, brightness at 12, and contrast at 16.

Afterwards, you want to go down to “color presets” and select “tint.” In my other tutorial, I recommended tinting with a light red or light blue, but for gifs made on instagiffer, I tend to use a light yellow/gold. I already tinted the gif purple in instagiffer so adding yellow in ezgif tends to balance it out. The shade I used for this gif is #fffcf0.

If the gif ends up looking too yellow, either decrease saturation, or click the “effects” button under the gif and add a layer of light purple to balance the colors more.

Your final gif should look like this.

2. Making a gif with the “capture screen” feature

This only changes the method of how you get gif frames. Everything related to resizing, coloring/effects, and adding captions is the same as above.

What if you don’t have a download of the thing you want to gif? The great thing about instagiffer is it has a built in screen recorder so you can gif any video you want, even if you can’t download it (or if you’re like me and don’t want to deal with downloading a 45 minute episode of something just to gif one scene).

To use this tool, click on the “capture screen” button on the top right corner next to “load video.” Then this screen will pop up.

You’re going to want to take this blue screen over to the screen you want to capture. I’m going to put it over the youtube video I am giffing. Adjust it so the only thing it’s focused on is the video and set the length in seconds. I usually set it for longer than the clip is just because it’s easier to remove extra frames than rerecord a scene. There is also sometimes a lag so starting it right before the scene you want to gif helps with that. For example, if the clip I’m giffing is 3 seconds long, I set it to 3.5. Then start running the video and click “start” on the screen!

Your frames will now show up on instagiffer. Everything is the same, except you can’t change the frame rate or timing. Go ahead and delete frames that you don’t need by clicking on them. After that, just use the same resizing, and coloring method I outlined above.

Some notes:

When using the video download option, the effects you use will save, as will the size of the gif. So if you gif one part of a video, then move the time stamp to another part, it will stay in whatever size you put the gif as. However, when using screen capture, you have to resize the gif and go to the effects menu each time because they reset after each use of the screen recorder.

You can also just paste a youtube link into the white bar at the top of instagiffer to gif it, but I’ve found that the quality is much better if you download or use the capture screen.

To crop a gif, move the red box around (just make sure it stays the right width size!)

If you are using the screen recorder and only want to record part of the video (like just a characters outfit) size the gif recorder so it’s just surrounding the part of the video you want to see.

I hope this made sense lol, it took me a few days to write it all so please let me know if you have questions or need anything clarified! Support me on Ko-Fi if you’d like and are able 💕💕💕

#gif tutorial #giffing tutorial #giffing #gifmaking #mine #my gifs #blood //#long post #@ anon hope this helps!

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 years ago

Text

Oh for fuck's sake, not this fucking bullshit again (cryptography edition)

America, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Australia are in a surveillance alliance called The Five Eyes, through which they share much of their illegally harvested surveillance data.

They defend this by saying "Privacy is not absolute."

Also, this is bullshit.

Because it won't work.

But this is just for starters. These officials don't understand technology very well, so they doesn't actually know what they're asking for.

This, then, is what the Five Eyes are proposing:

* All 5 Eyes citizens' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept

* Any firms within reach of a 5 Eyes government must be banned from producing secure software

* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked in the 5 Eyes

* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

* Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

* Anyone visiting a 5 Eyes country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

* Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright

https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/illegal-math.html

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