So I'll Share Them With The Internet - Blog Posts

You know how spammers use similar characters to replace actual letters to get by filters? Doing that to your writing would give a slightly bizarre visual and utterly annihilate any basic scraping tools, because visual interpretation of characters is wildly more time and resource intensive than plaintext ripping.

It might help or severely hinder dyslexic people, though.

Also some browsers/OS might have trouble loading them?

ɬɧıʂ ƙıŋɖą ɬɧıŋɠ. ɬơɬąƖƖყ ʄųƈƙ ῳıɬɧ ɬɧɛ ʂƈཞą℘ıŋɠ ɖɛ۷ıƈɛ.

None of that will at all register correctly to a scraper. It's in Unicode, so it'll work wherever.

Boldtext.io is the one I used, but there's plenty of ways to do it. You could even do multiple at once and make undoing it basically impossible, but still have it be readable to humans (auto readers or whatever for the visually impaired, not so much...)

ᏇᏂᎩ ᏕᏂᎧᏬᏝᎴ ᏇᏋ ᎷᏗᏦᏋ ᏝᎥᎦᏋ ᏋᏗᏕᎥᏋᏒ ᎦᎧᏒ ᏖᏂᏋ ᏰᎧᏖᏕ ᏖᏂᏗᏖ ᏒᎥᎮ ᏋᏁᏖᎥᏒᏋ ᏇᏋᏰᏕᎥᏖᏋᏕ?

Just gotta pick the style you like that's as clear as possible while also being literal gibberish to any quick digital scan method.

₱Ʉ₮ ₮Ⱨł₴ ₴Ɇ₦₮Ɇ₦₵Ɇ ł₦₮Ø ₲ØØ₲ⱠɆ ₳₦Đ ₳₴₭ ł₮ ₮Ø ⱤɆ₳Đ ł₮ ØɄ₮ ⱠØɄĐ.

Or

ᑭᑌT TᕼIᔕ ᔕEᑎTEᑎᑕE IᑎTO GOOGᒪE ᗩᑎᗪ ᗩᔕK IT TO ᖇEᗩᗪ IT OᑌT ᒪOᑌᗪ.

That second one is almost plain, and none of those characters should be used that way. It just produces gibberish where it can figure out what a particular character is technically displaying.

Some ai might be able to handle this. It will still be an extra layer of defense.

I'll take reduced reading speed for total digital obscurity and I'll be happy.

Woo, fried my motherboard!

My sis and I were upgrading my PC, and had to do a BIOS update for the newer processor to be compatible.

Then we managed to shock the motherboard mid-install and crash it.

Motherboard dead.

Now I gotta order a newer one, and fight to reinstall windows 10.

So Google, not just Chrome, but Google itself, hates ad blockers.

I get it, ads make money for way less effort and customer involvement than subscriptions and paywalls.

The problem is, as cybersecurity professionals have said, ads are a security risk for every system they interact with. Even if you don't click any ads ever, they're still a security risk.

How are they a security risk? Because ads are allowed to run code to perform their tasks. This code is supplied by the ad provider, and if all it ever did was provide a link, a hovertext/description for the visually impaired, and maybe a non-gif animation, this would be a non-issue on all but the weakest internet connections.

They are not all like that, though.

Endless cases of ad providers, site providers, even your actual ISP (Internet Service Provider) have been proven to inject arbitrary code, capable of doing a great number of things, into ads, links, images, video, etc.

This code has had scripts to use your computer's processing power to help mine Bitcoin so long as it's on the page the code started on, it's been used to install malware (even by your ISP in one particularly bad case), it's been used to just install viruses or keyloggers or so many more things.

Hell, even the not-malicious code can just bog down your computer by being terribly written messes of badly functioning code, so something that should run with barely any impact instead takes up ridiculous amounts of processing power and capacity.

This is a problem, and it's largely solvable by simply blocking ads. There's no native way to prevent ads from running scripts or code without disabling all JavaScript on every page, which effectively kills most pages you go to since every drop-down menu, every page-altering section (like the Google images thing), most search bars, video playback, and so much more, all depend entirely on JavaScript.

Google wants to take away that necessary security of blocking problematic ads, rather than just make a way to disable the problematic aspects of ads.

I dislike ads, especially when they take up more than about 25% of the screen. I'd ideally like to see little to no ads ever, but I understand how ads support the sites they're on, support creators on streaming services, etc.

I'd be okay with classic banner ads, basic image/link ads, even the before/during/after video ads, if they weren't almost guaranteed to be literally hostile. If Google hates ad blockers so much, they should make them less of a safety requirement by letting us choose to disable ad scripts, or even just block that entire concept, because no ads for any worthwhile service or product have ever needed to run scripts. If an image or GIF of your product/service, maybe with a quick description, isn't selling your product/service, then making it hover over the page content, make noise, and mine Bitcoin will only piss your target audience off, while proudly claiming that you are the one doing it.

Would you buy a product that tricks you into interacting with it through just being annoying and pulling the sibling trick of "I'm not touching you, see? I'm touching your computer, not you?"

Hell, pop-up ads were basically scriptless and still managed to piss off most of the people who encountered them. The guy who invented them made a public apology for having developed that 'extremely intrusive' marketing method. Now ISPs have been caught injecting malware into links that you click on while using their service, with the express intent of installing them to your computer to monitor what you do and block access to sites they don't want you on.

You want the Internet to be safe? Don't fight porn or violence, that has never done anything but drive up interest. Fight the people actively making the Internet literally unsafe to use regardless of age or system.

I'll accept ads if ad providers stop making automatic malware.

Sorry for the rant, I'm tired and annoyed.

Our sweet old man Mittens developed a clot in his hip, one that operating on had little chance to help him at all, and would guarantee lasting pain until he passed. My Mom and Sis decided that letting him go out in minimal overall pain, with them there at the vet, was better than putting him through a torturous surgery at his old age, so tonight is his last night.

This is a video I took of him a week or so ago, as well as two pictures, when he came to snuggle with me in my bed. Sweet old man despite his crankiness at everything. I'll miss you, Mittens, even if I don't really know how to show it well.

Sad post about sad things

How do you deal with tragic events? I took years to fully establish in my mind that my best friend had died, I still struggle to believe both my grandmothers are gone, and now our oldest cat looks to be dying, since something has gone wrong with his hips or leg or spine.

I had to hear my loving sister, sweet and strong thing that she is, break down sobbing because this is probably the end for him.

I'm mad he's hurt, upset he's in pain, upset he's likely going to die, and all I can really do is sit here and fail to express any of this beyond the text side.

How do I deal with emotions that I can't really express outwardly? I want to express them, I can feel them, but I can't seem to actually do it.