Blog Is Pretty Now I Can Go Back To Thinking About Other (probably More Important) Things >:)

blog is pretty now i can go back to thinking about other (probably more important) things >:)

Something I like about Tumblr is that the science tumblrites are fucking to-the-wall feral and the writers are strange kitchen witches but the computer enthusiasts are polite helpful anarchists and the artists are mostly sensible people who teach you to do hand stretches and enjoy a short walk. It's like I'm in a best timeline AU where someone took my high school and inverted it.

This is how things should be. A gremlin biologist teaching a fantasy novelist about the Ancient Terrifying Cornfields while a graphic designer uses a friend's homebrewed tablet to draw a nice picture of a nearby horse.

ok, so!

The typical reader may now be wondering, “pile-o-words, what in the world are you going to do with this blog thing?”. well. now i have an answer!

You [reader] may have some Things that you think are cool. And you [reader] may want to share those Things with other people so that they hopefully can see your excitement and also get excited about your Things even if they don’t normally care or know very much about them!

I am going to talk about my Things and maybe also reblog some stuff about my Things and hopefully you get a little peek into my brain and also I get to tell you about things you wouldn’t otherwise get to hear about!

Here’s a list of my current Things, so that you know what to expect!

Short (or maybe long but no promises) programming stories, anecdotes, horror stories, whatever, written so that even if you don’t get the technical details, they’ll still make sense to you

Aro(-spec) and/or ace(-spec) things that I vibe with! Generally more on the wholesome side, or things that I experience and resonate with me :)

Cute fandom stuff. Hopefully even if you don’t like the same fandoms as me, you will also find them cute. But I’ll try and keep that to a minimum because I know it’s niche

And finally what you’ve already seen me post, things about my experience with tumblr or general things that happen to me IRL or on the interwebs!

I’m going to aim for about a post a day, maybe a few more, but we’ll see how this goes!

Enjoy! :D

Yes! This is also an excellent point! The issue here is not one inherent in smart devices, it’s created because of how they’re designed and built. It would be very possible (and in some ways easier) to build devices that did not suffer from these issues. If it’s not possible to connect to the device from outside your home network, there’s no way anyone else could get to it! I don’t do this kind of work personally, but my (semi-educated) guess is that the “phone-home” functionality is a substantive proportion of those devices software and it really doesn’t need to be (most of the time).

The issue is that it’s hard (on a technical level) to separate “bad” internet usage (i.e. to send usage data or to grant remote access) from “good” internet usage (i.e. sending a firmware update or re-ordering more soap). While there’s a certain degree that you can manage that on a personal level, at some point you simply have to trust the manufacturer to not be evil. Which... yeah they’re evil :(

So how do we fix this? Well, you can just not buy smart products (that’s what I do!), but what they’re huge quality of life improvements? Or maybe you just think they’re fun and want to play around without putting your privacy at risk.

The only really good solution to all these issues is that companies need to stop creating products that do these things. And the only way to force that to happen is through legislation. We need more legislation like the GDPR in the EU which explicitly describes your privacy rights on the internet (among many other excellent features).

So! Next time you see a call-to-action to “call your legislator” to “protect internet privacy” -- actually do it. It really does make a difference :)

hell world hell world hell world

WHY DOES YOUR SOAP NEED INTERNET

You ever start using a tool for a project and the vibes are just sliiiiightly off? That’s how I feel about actix-web. It seems nice, but I get the impression there may be something more sinister under the surface.

I just hit 100 followers, and I am truly grateful for all of you.

I would like to do a challenge.

For every interaction this post gets (from ANYONE) I will pick up 1 item of trash.

The earth has done so much for us, and I can’t think of a better way to give back