#App Tracking Transparency

[thebigunit]

The Consequences of Apple's Updated App Tracking Transparency

Apple is a global technology giant since many individuals possess at least one of its numerous cutting-edge goods worldwide. For instance, the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry and drew millions of buyers and users.

Read More: https://thebigunitdigitalmarketing.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-consequences-of-apples-updated-app.html

[minxipinxi]

#LADsMultiBoycott: Enough Is Enough – It’s Time to Stand Together

“We don’t hate the game—we love it enough to want better.”

Over the past few weeks, the community has been buzzing over translated leaks and rumors surfacing on Xiaohongshu (小红书) and Twitter that point to a disturbing trend in Love and Deepspace (LADs). The upcoming multi-banner—whether it turns out to be the anticipated Spring or Wedding multi—will once again feature long hairstyles separated from their outfits. Yes, again. After all the outcry. After all the feedback. We're here once more.

Let me be blunt: we can’t keep going like this. We can’t keep hoping CN girlies will save us every time. We can’t keep spending in good faith when Infold continues to exploit our loyalty and silence our voices. We can’t keep pretending that fan art and cute trailers make up for broken promises and paywalled aesthetics.

It’s time for us to join together, across servers, communities, and fandoms. It's not about Sylus mains vs Caleb mains vs the OG3. We're all getting burned by the same fire.

💥 What We Know From the Leaks

According to reliable sources:

The upcoming banner after Sylus’s Birthday Event might be another multi-banner format, either Spring or Wedding.

Long hairstyles will be separated from the outfits and placed in a separate crate—again.

This structure mirrors gacha mechanics where full outfits demand 140+ pulls, stretching across 5-star parts like socks, pants, accessories, and hair.

These decisions appear to be influenced by monetization models similar to Infinity Nikki, prioritizing profit over playability or fairness.

📢 So What Are We Doing About It?

We are organizing under #LADsMultiBoycott to push back against these predatory changes. This isn’t just a tantrum. It’s a coordinated protest.

🔥 Our Demands:

Six-month roadmaps to ensure transparency and accountability.

Higher resource drops from the highest-tier Bounty/Core Hunt.

Stop separating hairstyles from outfits in banners.

New sources of diamond income (no more stagnant gem economy).

No spending for the first 3 days of the banner. Use only your saved-up diamonds.

File official complaints to show Infold that this matters. Email:

loveanddeepspace-en@infoldgames.com

support-EN@infoldgames.com

🧠 Strategy: What You Can Do

Here’s what our global LADs family is doing:

1. No Spending for Entire Banner Period

Even if you have funds set aside, hold them. Don’t top up. Don’t feed the system that’s disrespecting your playtime and wallet.

2. Delay Your Pulls

Do not pull in the first 3 days. Choose your LI in the pool, then log out. Let the data show decreased first-week participation.

3. Minimal Screen Time

Yes, log in for dailies, but keep your session short, especially for iOS users. Play Store and App Store algorithms track usage data. Reduced screen time:

Hurts engagement metrics.

Lowers game ranking.

Cuts ad revenue.

4. No Banner Fanart for First Few Days

As painful as it is to hide our beautiful boys, let’s not unintentionally trigger FOMO. Fanart drives hype—hold off until after the peak revenue period.

5. Only Use Android if Possible

App Store rankings are disproportionately influenced by iOS user engagement. Reducing iOS traffic matters more than you think.

🌎 A Global Movement: We’re Not Alone

Our fellow players in China have already shaken Infold’s confidence.

CN revenue dropped by 42.2% from Nov 2024 to March 2025 (from $100M to $57.8M).

Global rankings dropped, while games like Genshin and Wuthering Waves soared.

Their success in the "stop-spending-money" campaign proved one thing: boycotts work.

If they can do it, so can we.

✊ This Is About More Than Just One Banner

Infold believes that as long as they release a sexy card, we’ll cave. They believe we don’t talk to each other. That we’re divided by LI bias and language barriers. But what they don’t see is how deeply connected we’ve become as a fandom.

We aren’t asking for perfection. We’re asking for respect.

If we let this multi go unchallenged, it sets a dangerous precedent:

Separated hairstyles in multi-banners like this become normalized.

Resources remain stagnant.

Paywalls keep climbing.

F2P and low-spenders are permanently excluded.

💡 Why Minimal Playtime Matters

Some of you might be thinking, “But this won’t work?” And here’s why it will:

“Why Cutting Screen Time Works” – The Breakdown

Engagement metrics tank. App Store/Play Store ranks games by DAU, session length, etc.

Revenue drops. Less screen time = fewer ad views = less money.

Rankings slide. Visibility goes down, leading to even fewer players.

It sends a message. A sharp drop in playtime can’t be ignored by business analysts.

💬 “But What If Infold Cancels the Game?”

They won’t. That’s just fear-mongering.

If a company is willing to kill its own cash cow just because fans want better—then it was never worth our support to begin with. But more importantly: they won’t kill it. They’ve seen that the game can pull millions. They’ll just need to earn it now.

🧱 We’re Building Something Bigger

This isn’t just about LADs. It’s about every gacha game that’s begun preying on its fans. If we roll over here, what message are we sending to WuWa, HSR, ZZZ, GI, and the rest?

We all have that one game we ride or die for. But loving a game doesn’t mean blind loyalty. Criticism is love in action.

🧩 TL;DR: How You Can Help

❌ Don’t spend money on the next multi-banner

🕒 Log in for dailies only, pick your LI, then log off

🎨 Hold off on banner fanart for a few days

📉 Reduce iOS activity as much as possible

💌 Email: loveanddeepspace-en@infoldgames.com support-EN@infoldgames.com

🗣️ Spread awareness under #LADsMultiBoycott

Even if you’re the only one on your server, know that you’re not alone. We’re tired, we’re frustrated—but we’re not powerless.

Let’s stop funding our own oppression.

No fair treatment = no money. Let them earn it.

Resources:

Revenue Trends: Ennead Data

Reddit Info Post: Sylus Girlies PSA

XHS Links: Source 1, Source 2

[kragehund-est]

tell me why the fuck im getting youtube advertisements telling women to ditch their hormonal birth control for a "natural, effective, FDA approved" menstrual cycle tracking app. holy fuck that couldn't be more transparently fucking evil right now.

[political-us]

The Dow is on track for its worst April since 1932—the bleakest year of the Great Depression. Nearly a century later, markets are once again facing economic turbulence on a historic scale.

Trump's approval rating drops to 42%, the lowest it's been since he became president, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

A cutting-edge microscope at Harvard Medical School could pave the way for major breakthroughs in cancer detection and aging research—but its progress is now at risk. The scientist who created the software to analyze its images, 30-year-old Russian-born Kseniia Petrova, has been held in immigration detention for two months. Arrested in February at a Boston airport, Petrova is now detained in Louisiana, facing possible deportation to Russia, where she says she fears imprisonment for protesting the war in Ukraine. Her case highlights the tension between immigration policy and the U.S.'s reliance on global scientific talent.

The Department of Homeland Security denied Mahmoud Khalil permission to be present for the birth of his first child, which took place Monday at a hospital in New York. Instead, Khalil had to experience the moment over the phone from Jena, Louisiana—more than 1,000 miles away from his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, who delivered their baby boy. The case has sparked criticism over DHS's handling of family and humanitarian considerations.

The White House is considering policies to encourage more Americans to marry and have children, including a potential $5,000 “baby bonus,” according to The New York Times. The proposals align with a broader conservative push to address falling birth rates and promote traditional family values. Other ideas on the table include reserving 30% of Fulbright scholarships for applicants who are married or have children, and funding educational programs that teach women about fertility and ovulation.

A group of Venezuelan migrants facing removal under a broad wartime authority challenged the Trump administration’s deportation process at the Supreme Court, arguing the notices they received don’t meet legal standards. The ACLU, representing the migrants, said the English-only notices—often given less than 24 hours before deportation—violate a recent Supreme Court ruling requiring enough time for individuals to seek habeas review.

The Education Department announced it will start collecting student loan payments from over 5 million borrowers who are in default. This means it will begin taking money from federal wages, Social Security checks, and tax refunds. This move comes as pandemic-era protections for student loan borrowers continue to wind down.

Tensions are rising within the Arizona Democratic Party as the state party chair is at odds with the governor and U.S. senators. In response, officials are considering shifting 2026 campaign funds to local county Democrats.

​The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced substantial tariffs on solar panel imports from four Southeast Asian countries—Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia—following a year-long investigation into alleged trade violations by Chinese-owned manufacturers operating in these nations. The tariffs, which vary by country and company, are as follows:​

Cambodia: Facing the steepest duties, with tariffs reaching up to 3,521%, due to non-cooperation with the investigation.

Vietnam: Companies may face duties up to 395.9%.​

Thailand: Tariffs could be as high as 375.2%.​

Malaysia: Duties are set at 34.4%.​

Senator Adam Schiff is urging the National Archives to investigate the Trump administration's use of Signal and similar messaging apps. He emphasized the need for NARA to reach out to every federal agency involved to make sure all relevant records are preserved. This comes amid growing concerns over transparency and potential violations of federal recordkeeping laws.

[amalgamasreal]

Updated Personal Infosec Post

Been awhile since I've had one of these posts part deus: but I figure with all that's going on in the world it's time to make another one and get some stuff out there for people. A lot of the information I'm going to go over you can find here:

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/

So if you'd like to just click the link and ignore the rest of the post that's fine, I strongly recommend checking out the Privacy Guides. Browsers: There's a number to go with but for this post going forward I'm going to recommend Firefox. I know that the Privacy Guides lists Brave and Safari as possible options but Brave is Chrome based now and Safari has ties to Apple. Mullvad is also an option but that's for your more experienced users so I'll leave that up to them to work out. Browser Extensions:

uBlock Origin: content blocker that blocks ads, trackers, and fingerprinting scripts. Notable for being the only ad blocker that still works on Youtube.

Privacy Badger: Content blocker that specifically blocks trackers and fingerprinting scripts. This one will catch things that uBlock doesn't catch but does not work for ads.

Facebook Container: "but I don't have facebook" you might say. Doesn't matter, Meta/Facebook still has trackers out there in EVERYTHING and this containerizes them off away from everything else.

Bitwarden: Password vaulting software, don't trust the password saving features of your browsers, this has multiple layers of security to prevent your passwords from being stolen.

ClearURLs: Allows you to copy and paste URL's without any trackers attached to them.

VPN: Note: VPN software doesn't make you anonymous, no matter what your favorite youtuber tells you, but it does make it harder for your data to be tracked and it makes it less open for whatever public network you're presently connected to.

Mozilla VPN: If you get the annual subscription it's ~$60/year and it comes with an extension that you can install into Firefox.

Mullvad VPN: Is a fast and inexpensive VPN with a serious focus on transparency and security. They have been in operation since 2009. Mullvad is based in Sweden and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for payment methods that allow it.

Email Provider: Note: By now you've probably realized that Gmail, Outlook, and basically all of the major "free" e-mail service providers are scraping your e-mail data to use for ad data. There are more secure services that can get you away from that but if you'd like the same storage levels you have on Gmail/Ol utlook.com you'll need to pay.

Tuta: Secure, end-to-end encrypted, been around a very long time, and offers a free option up to 1gb.

Mailbox.org: Is an email service with a focus on being secure, ad-free, and privately powered by 100% eco-friendly energy. They have been in operation since 2014. Mailbox.org is based in Berlin, Germany. Accounts start with up to 2GB storage, which can be upgraded as needed.

Email Client:

Thunderbird: a free, open-source, cross-platform email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat (XMPP, IRC, Matrix) client developed by the Thunderbird community, and previously by the Mozilla Foundation.

FairMail (Android Only): minimal, open-source email app which uses open standards (IMAP, SMTP, OpenPGP), has several out of the box privacy features, and minimizes data and battery usage.

Cloud Storage:

Tresorit: Encrypted cloud storage owned by the national postal service of Switzerland. Received MULTIPLE awards for their security stats.

Peergos: decentralized and open-source, allows for you to set up your own cloud storage, but will require a certain level of expertise.

Microsoft Office Replacements:

LibreOffice: free and open-source, updates regularly, and has the majority of the same functions as base level Microsoft Office.

OnlyOffice: cloud-based, free

FreeOffice: Personal licenses are free, probably the closest to a fully office suite replacement.

Chat Clients: Note: As you've heard SMS and even WhatsApp and some other popular chat clients are basically open season right now. These are a couple of options to replace those. Note2: Signal has had some reports of security flaws, the service it was built on was originally built for the US Government, and it is based within the CONUS thus is susceptible to US subpoenas. Take that as you will.

Signal: Provides IM and calling securely and encrypted, has multiple layers of data hardening to prevent intrusion and exfil of data.

Molly (Android OS only): Alternative client to Signal. Routes communications through the TOR Network.

Briar: Encrypted IM client that connects to other clients through the TOR Network, can also chat via wifi or bluetooth.

SimpleX: Truly anonymous account creation, fully encrypted end to end, available for Android and iOS.

Now for the last bit, I know that the majority of people are on Windows or macOS, but if you can get on Linux I would strongly recommend it. pop_OS, Ubuntu, and Mint are super easy distros to use and install. They all have very easy to follow instructions on how to install them on your PC and if you'd like to just test them out all you need is a thumb drive to boot off of to run in demo mode. For more secure distributions for the more advanced users the options are: Whonix, Tails (Live USB only), and Qubes OS.

On a personal note I use Arch Linux, but I WOULD NOT recommend this be anyone's first distro as it requires at least a base level understanding of Linux and liberal use of the Arch Linux Wiki. If you game through Steam their Proton emulator in compatibility mode works wonders, I'm presently playing a major studio game that released in 2024 with no Linux support on it and once I got my drivers installed it's looked great. There are some learning curves to get around, but the benefit of the Linux community is that there's always people out there willing to help. I hope some of this information helps you and look out for yourself, it's starting to look scarier than normal out there.

[the-softest-love-is-ours]

Idk if this’ll help anyone or if these are even good… just thought of stuff self shipper could do, I guess.

Anywho, here’s a list of things yo,u as a self shipper, can do for fun.

(This will be added onto with time)

Proship/Comship/Anti-Antis DNI

Play Tomodachi Life, make yourself, your main F/O, and then a bunch of family and friends and see how the shenanigans play out.

Play Sims (my choice is 4, but any one will work), same as before but this time you have mods and can control you and your F/O’s however you please.

Make kandi jewelry for each of your F/O’s, whether it’s a bracelet with their name or just a necklace with a color scheme you think fits them.

Purchase something custom from etsy and/or fiverr. These can be care packages, letters, plushies, art pieces, fanfics, maybe you could find someone who does RP asmrs, and my personal favorites an RP or an annotated book.

Look on youtube for asmrs, whether they’re RP, sleeping beside or those muffled playlist scenarios.

For those of is that are age regressor, make a custom deco paci based on your F/O.

Credits to @myselfshipdiary for this one, make a Pinterest board. They can feature fanart, aesthetic images or heck maybe recipes you would cook for them and memes you would show them.

If you have the skills, or heck even if you don’t (life’s too short, try everything, learn new skills), design something based on them. A dress, a cake, a room, a candy platter, a party, an outfit, a plushie, literally anything!

Make a breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner you think they would like! Maybe if you bring your lunch to work, make a bento for yourself that you would send to work with them.

Go on to your online shopping sites and make wishlists of thing you’d think they would want/like.

Do some research on perfume/cologne, and either track down or commission one you think they’d wear. You can do the same for all necessary toiletries if you’d like to take it a step further.

Play around on spotify (or your music service of choice) and make playlists for various scenarios.

Piggybacking of the last one, find a song that you would make their ringtone and think of what their contact name would be in your phone.

Pick out a ring you think would be the engagement/wedding ring they would give you.

Make paper doll's of you/ your self insert and your f/os) along with attachable paper clothes!

If you have access to a printer and a blank notebook/sketchbook along with some glue, you can make a scrapbook with pictures of your f/o(s)! You can also add drawings you made and anything like stickers, washi tape, etc.

This one is digital, edit a transparent of your f/os) into a selfie of yours to make a couples photo! You can print it out and put it in a frame. Also, Dollar Tree sells frames that you can also paint, put stickers on, anything!

There is an app called Social Dummy, create a social media world with you and all your F/O’s on it!

Make perler bead pixel art of your f/o.

[hiscalliope]

hi everyone.

just wanted to say i’m going to be taking a break from writing and posting on tumblr for a week (i promise it’s just one week and no longer than that)

tw under the cut for depression

i’ve suffered from depression since my late teens. and ive been anxious since well...as long ive had memory. there was nothing specific that triggered it but rather a lifetime of feeling that i was less than, that i was not good enough or interesting enough to keep anyone’s attention. and these feelings from my childhood and early teens and the severe anxiety that came with not really fitting in snowballed into depression. now my depression isn’t something that hinders my ability to be productive member of society, i have a full time job with bills to pay so i guess i simply can’t afford to be that depressed so i constantly have to channel the rational part of my brain to talk to the irrational part and get a grip.

lately i’ve been feeling myself slip away. the thing about my depression is there's usually a warning period in which i can feel parts of myself become distant. when i don’t immediately need to get up for work, i just sit in bed and stare at the ceiling, it could be bright and sunny outside and the desire that i would normally have to go outside just wouldn't be there anymore. even the media that would normally provide me comfort just wouldn't anymore.

tmi i guess but lately i've been having trouble grooming myself like i have to talk myself into doing basic hygiene and that's when i know that something is wrong? i know myself very well so i find it to be a disservice to myself if i try to bullshit myself but i think i do have a case of luigi fatigue. and this doesn't have to do with luigi himself, i don't regret supporting him in the slightest but i do regret how my drastically my life has altered by plunging myself so deep into it where my life before luigi is a distant memory.

this time last year i was into coastal cowgirl aesthetic, reading cowboy romances in the park, worried about how patchy my self tanner application was. this year i'm writing rpf on tumblr, getting daily updates about this really sad case, watching drama unfold everywhere (not talking about just this app) and ive even written to the guy multiple times over the past six months (one letter per month full transparency and he has read one of mine and that did a number on me mentally)

i think i just need to pretend even if its just for a week that luigi and this online community doesn't exist and just live my life the way it was before all this. i will keep up to date on anything on the case because i down bad for that luigi guy and i care too much to fully sever myself from news. i may continue to write during my break, in fact i do have something started (sicilian beach house smut fic perhaps) i just have to get over this depressive hunch because i can't really write that well when i feel this way.

so i will be back i just need some space is all... i'm gonna read, maybe write a little if my mind allows me, i'm gonna watch all my shows, talk to my friends, not be at work with my heart in my throat every time an update comes, just temporarily live a life where im not consumed by social media

summer is coming and i really do want to get my mind on track. luigiblr is going to need fics written and read and i want to be in my best frame of mind to do just that

anyway, until next week <3

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 26, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 27, 2025

Monday’s astounding story that the most senior members of President Donald Trump’s administration planned military strikes on Yemen over an unsecure commercial messaging app, on which they had included national security reporter and editor in chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg, has escalated over the past two days.

On Monday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looked directly at a reporter’s camera and said: “Nobody was texting war plans.” Throughout the day Tuesday, the administration doubled down on this assertion, apparently convinced that Goldberg would not release the information they knew he had. They tried to spin the story by attacking Goldberg, suggesting he had somehow hacked into the conversation, although the app itself tracked that National Security Advisor Michael Waltz had added him.

Various administration figures, including Trump, insisted that the chat contained nothing classified. At a scheduled hearing yesterday before the Senate Intelligence Committee on worldwide threats, during which senators took the opportunity to dig into the Signal scandal, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said: “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group.” Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe agreed: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.” In the afternoon, Trump told reporters: “The attack was totally successful. It was, I guess, from what I understand, took place during. And it wasn’t classified information. So this was not classified.”

After Gabbard said she would defer to the secretary of defense and the National Security Council about what information should have been classified, Senator Angus King (I-ME) seemed taken aback. “You’re the head of the intelligence community. You’re supposed to know about classifications,” he pointed out. He continued, “So your testimony very clearly today is that nothing was in that set of texts that were classified.... If that’s the case, please release that whole text stream so that the public can have a view of what actually transpired on this discussion. It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified.”

Meanwhile, reporters were also digging into the story. James LaPorta of CBS News reported that an internal bulletin from the National Security Agency warned staff in February 2025 not to use Signal for sensitive information, citing concerns that the app was vulnerable to Russian hackers. A former White House official told Maggie Miller and Dana Nickel of Politico, “Their personal phones are all hackable, and it’s highly likely that foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the sh*t out."

Tuesday night, American Oversight, a nonprofit organization focusing on government transparency, filed a lawsuit against Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio—all of whom were also on the Signal chain—and the National Archives for violating the Federal Records Act, and suggested the administration has made other attempts to get around the law. It notes that the law requires the preservation of federal records.

Today it all got worse.

It turned out that administration officials’ conviction that Goldberg wouldn’t publicly release receipts was wrong. This morning, Goldberg and Shane Harris, who had worked together on the initial story, wrote: “The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.”

The Atlantic published screenshots of the message chat.

The screenshots make clear that administration officials insisting that there was nothing classified on the chat were lying. Hegseth uploaded the precise details of the attack before it happened, leaving American military personnel vulnerable. The evidence is damning.

The fury of Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), an Army pilot who was nearly killed in Iraq, was palpable. “Pete Hegseth is a f*cking liar,” she wrote. “This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately.” Legal analyst Barb McQuade pointed out that it didn't even matter if the information was classified: it is “a crime to remove national defense information from its proper place through gross negligence…. Signal chat is not a proper place.”

The screenshots also raise a number of other issues. They made it clear that administration officials have been using Signal for other conversations: Waltz at one point typed: “As we stated in the first PC….” Using a nongovernment system is likely an attempt to get around the laws that require the preservation of public records. The screenshots also show that Signal was set to erase the messages on the chat after 4 weeks.

The messages reveal that President Trump was not part of the discussion of whether to make the airstrikes, a deeply troubling revelation that raises the question of who is in charge at the White House. As the conversation about whether to attack took place, Vice President J.D. Vance wrote about Trump’s reasoning that attacking the Houthis in Yemen would “send a message”: “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.” Later, he texted to Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again. Let’s just make sure our messaging is tight here. And if there are things we can do upfront to minimize risk to Saudi oil facilities we should do it.”

Hegseth responded: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”

The decision to make the strikes then appears to have been made by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who ended the discussion simply by invoking the president: “As I heard it,” he wrote, “the president was clear: green light, but we soon make it clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement.” If Europe doesn’t cover the cost of the attack, “then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”

“Agree,” Hegseth messaged, and the attack was on.

Also missing from the group message was the person who is currently acting as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Christopher Grady. In February, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr., who took on the position in 2023 having served more than 3,000 hours as a fighter pilot, including 130 hours in combat, and commanded the Pacific Air Forces, which provides air power for U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific region; the U.S. Air Forces Central Command, responsible for protecting U.S. security interests in Africa through the Persian Gulf; the 31st Fighter Wing, covering the southern region of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); the 8th Fighter Wing, covering southeast Asia; U.S. Air Force Weapons School for advanced training in weapons and tactics for officers; and 78th Fighter Squadron.

Hegseth publicly suggested that Brown had been appointed because he is Black. “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt,” Hegseth wrote. With Trump’s controversial replacement for Brown still unconfirmed, Admiral Grady, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, is fulfilling the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But he was not in the chat. The Pentagon's highest-ranking officer would normally be included in planning a military operation.

Also in the chat, participants made embarrassing attacks on our allies and celebrated civilian deaths in Yemen in the quest to kill a targeted combatant.

Attempts to defend themselves from the scandal only dug administration officials in deeper. On Monday night, independent journalist Olga Lautman, who studies Russia, noted that Trump’s Russia and Ukraine specialist Steve Witkoff had actually been in Russia when Waltz added him to the chat, underscoring the chat’s vulnerability to hackers. By Tuesday, multiple outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, picked up Lautman’s story.

Witkoff fought back against the Wall Street Journal story with a long social media post about how he had traveled to Moscow with a secure government phone and now it was not until he got home that he had “access to my personal devices” to participate in the Signal conversation, thus apparently confirming that he was discussing classified information with the nation’s top officials on an unsecure personal device.

Tonight, news of other ways in which the administration is compromised surfaced. The German newspaper Der Spiegel revealed that the contact information for a number of the same officials who were on the Signal chat is available online, as well as email addresses and some passwords for their private accounts, making it easy for hackers to get into their personal devices. Those compromised included National Security Advisor Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Gabbard, and Secretary of Defense Hegseth. Wired reported that Waltz, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and Walker Barrett of the National Security Council, who was also on the Signal messaging chain, had left their Venmo accounts public, demonstrating what national security experts described as reckless behavior.

In the New York Times tonight, foreign affairs journalist Noah Shachtman looked not just at the Signal scandal but also at the administration’s lowering of U.S. guard against foreign influence operations, installation of billionaire Elon Musk’s satellite internet terminals at the White House, and diversion of personnel from national security to Trump’s pet projects, and advised hostile nations to “savor this moment. It’s never been easier to steal secrets from the United States government. Can you even call it stealing when it’s this simple? The Trump administration has unlocked the vault doors, fired half of the security guards and asked the rest to roll pennies. Walk right in. Take what you want. This is the golden age.”

Trump today did not seem on top of the story when he told reporters: “I think it’s a witch hunt. I wasn’t involved with it, I wasn’t there, but I can tell you the result is unbelievable.” When asked if he still believed there was no classified information shared, he answered: “Well, that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know, I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask the various people involved. I really don’t know.” He said the breach was Waltz’s fault—“it had nothing to do with anyone else”—and when reporters asked about the future of Defense Secretary Hegseth, who uploaded the attack plans into the unsecure system, he answered: “Hegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with this…. How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, look, it’s all a witch hunt. I don’t know that Signal works. I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you….”

The administration appears to be trying to create a distraction from the damning story. Yesterday evening, Trump signed an executive order that would, if it could be enforced, dramatically change U.S. elections and take the vote away from tens of millions of Americans. But, as Marc Elias of Democracy Docket put it, the order is “confused, rhetorical and—in places—nonsensical. It asserts facts that are not true and claims authority he does not possess. It is not meant to be taken seriously or literally. Rather, it is the empty threat of a weak man desperate to appear strong.”

After today’s revelations, Trump announced new 25% tariffs on imported cars and car parts including those from Canada and Mexico, despite a deal worked out earlier this month that items covered under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement Trump signed in his first term would not face a new tariff levy. The 25% tariff is a major change that will raise prices across the board and hit the automotive sector in which more than a million Americans work. Upon the news, the stock market fell again.

And yet, despite the attempts to bury the Signal story, the scandal seems, if anything, to be growing. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote a public letter to Trump yesterday calling for him to fire Hegseth, accurately referring to him as “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in American history.” Jeffries wrote: “His behavior shocks the conscience, risked American lives and likely violated the law.” “[H]ey Sen[ator Joni] Ernst and Sen[ator Thom] Tillis,” Jen Rubin of The Contrarian wrote tonight, “proud of your votes for Hegseth? This is on [you] too as much as Hegseth. You knew he was not remotely qualified.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The surveillance advertising to financial fraud pipeline

Monday (October 2), I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab. On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

Being watched sucks. Of all the parenting mistakes I've made, none haunt me more than the times my daughter caught me watching her while she was learning to do something, discovered she was being observed in a vulnerable moment, and abandoned her attempt:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2014/may/09/cybersecurity-begins-with-integrity-not-surveillance

It's hard to be your authentic self while you're under surveillance. For that reason alone, the rise and rise of the surveillance industry – an unholy public-private partnership between cops, spooks, and ad-tech scum – is a plague on humanity and a scourge on the Earth:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

But beyond the psychic damage surveillance metes out, there are immediate, concrete ways in which surveillance brings us to harm. Ad-tech follows us into abortion clinics and then sells the info to the cops back home in the forced birth states run by Handmaid's Tale LARPers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/29/no-i-in-uter-us/#egged-on

And even if you have the good fortune to live in a state whose motto isn't "There's no 'I" in uter-US," ad-tech also lets anti-abortion propagandists trick you into visiting fake "clinics" who defraud you into giving birth by running out the clock on terminating your pregnancy:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/15/paid-medical-disinformation/#crisis-pregnancy-centers

The commercial surveillance industry fuels SWATting, where sociopaths who don't like your internet opinions or are steamed because you beat them at Call of Duty trick the cops into thinking that there's an "active shooter" at your house, provoking the kind of American policing autoimmune reaction that can get you killed:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/14/us/swatting-sentence-casey-viner/index.html

There's just a lot of ways that compiling deep, nonconsensual, population-scale surveillance dossiers can bring safety and financial harm to the unwilling subjects of our experiment in digital spying. The wave of "business email compromises" (the infosec term for impersonating your boss to you and tricking you into cleaning out the company bank accounts)? They start with spear phishing, a phishing attack that uses personal information – bought from commercial sources or ganked from leaks – to craft a virtual Big Store con:

https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/business-email-compromise

It's not just spear-phishers. There are plenty of financial predators who run petty grifts – stock swindles, identity theft, and other petty cons. These scams depend on commercial surveillance, both to target victims (e.g. buying Facebook ads targeting people struggling with medical debt and worried about losing their homes) and to run the con itself (by getting the information needed to pull of a successful identity theft).

In "Consumer Surveillance and Financial Fraud," a new National Bureau of Academic Research paper, a trio of business-school profs – Bo Bian (UBC), Michaela Pagel (WUSTL) and Huan Tang (Wharton) quantify the commercial surveillance industry's relationship to finance crimes:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31692

The authors take advantage of a time-series of ZIP-code-accurate fraud complaint data from the Consumer Finance Protection Board, supplemented by complaints from the FTC, along with Apple's rollout of App Tracking Transparency, a change to app-based tracking on Apple mobile devices that turned of third-party commercial surveillance unless users explicitly opted into being spied on. More than 96% of Apple users blocked spying:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

In other words, they were able to see, neighborhood by neighborhood, what happened to financial fraud when users were able to block commercial surveillance.

What happened is, fraud plunged. Deprived of the raw material for committing fraud, criminals were substantially hampered in their ability to steal from internet users.

While this is something that security professionals have understood for years, this study puts some empirical spine into the large corpus of qualitative accounts of the surveillance-to-fraud pipeline.

As the authors note in their conclusion, this analysis is timely. Google has just rolled out a new surveillance system, the deceptively named "Privacy Sandbox," that every Chrome user is being opted in to unless they find and untick three separate preference tickboxes. You should find and untick these boxes:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/how-turn-googles-privacy-sandbox-ad-tracking-and-why-you-should

Google has spun, lied and bullied Privacy Sandbox into existence; whenever this program draws enough fire, they rename it (it used to be called FLoC). But as the Apple example showed, no one wants to be spied on – that's why Google makes you find and untick three boxes to opt out of this new form of surveillance.

There is no consensual basis for mass commercial surveillance. The story that "people don't mind ads so long as they're relevant" is a lie. But even if it was true, it wouldn't be enough, because beyond the harms to being our authentic selves that come from the knowledge that we're being observed, surveillance data is a crucial ingredient for all kinds of crime, harassment, and deception.

We can't rely on companies to spy on us responsibly. Apple may have blocked third-party app spying, but they effect nonconsensual, continuous surveillance of every Apple mobile device user, and lie about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

That's why we should ban commercial surveillance. We should outlaw surveillance advertising. Period:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/ban-online-behavioral-advertising

Contrary to the claims of surveillance profiteers, this wouldn't reduce the income to ad-supported news and other media – it would increase their revenues, by letting them place ads without relying on the surveillance troves assembled by the Google/Meta ad-tech duopoly, who take the majority of ad-revenue:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

We're 30 years into the commercial surveillance pandemic and Congress still hasn't passed a federal privacy law with a private right of action. But other agencies aren't waiting for Congress. The FTC and DoJ Antitrust Divsision have proposed new merger guidelines that allow regulators to consider privacy harms when companies merge:

https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FTC-2023-0043-1569

Think here of how Google devoured Fitbit and claimed massive troves of extremely personal data, much of which was collected because employers required workers to wear biometric trackers to get the best deal on health care:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/google-fitbit-merger-would-cement-googles-data-empire

Companies can't be trusted to collect, retain or use our personal data wisely. The right "balance" here is to simply ban that collection, without an explicit opt-in. The way this should work is that companies can't collect private data unless users hunt down and untick three "don't spy on me" boxes. After all, that's the standard that Google has set.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/29/ban-surveillance-ads/#sucker-funnel

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[lutiaskokopelli]

I have an issue with constantly getting distracted, so I got distracted from working by making a 100% customizable Pomodoro App to keep my future self from getting distracted. Have a Google Drive download link.

The Pomodoro technique, if you don't know it, is a discipline method for keeping track of when you are working and when you are taking breaks, notably through the use of a timer.

There are tons of apps centered around this, and yet after looking at so many of them, I somehow could not find one that would do the most basic thing I'd like to have for a study companion: change the background of the app so that yes, I do have a timer telling me to work harder, but I also have an image of my choice to cheer me up along with it.

So what did I do? Did I take the rational, reasonable path, to just suck it up and stick to one of the already existing apps even though it would mean saying no to having my adorable Hearthian OC sleep in a corner of my screen?

Or did I go the hyperfocused insane route of utter procrastination and learn a whole new programmation language from scratch just in order to get my frikkin baby to comfort me while I work?

Yeah, who could have guessed.

So! The Google Drive link I shared will let you download everything you need in order to run your own version of this little app, including a tutorial on how to customize it to suit your needs.

The first thing you will see after unzipping the archive is this:

The "ast" folder (standing for "assets") contains every image used by the app -- which means that you can change them as you please! I even gave you transparent versions of the buttons in the "Asset Creation Help" subfolder, in case you like the shapes but want to change the backgrounds.

You think that's cool? Oh, but the image assets are far from being the only thing you can change for this app's behavior! You can change EVERYTHING that this app is doing (which isn't much because it's literally just three different types of timers, and even then there are some trickier details with more coding than others (but I still give tips on how to handle those), but shush. Everything this app can do, you can customize to your heart's content).

How do you do that? Well, this is what you get when you right-click on the "Pomodoro.ps1" file:

The Pomodoro.ps1 file is the "app" itself, written in PowerShell code that I made as legible as I could make it. There is a whole tutorial in there, made easier to read if you right-click on this file's icon and choose the "Edit" option. Have a preview!

Through editing this file, you can then run a Pomodoro app from which you can have the window's appearance customized, from its size, opacity (if you want to still half-see what's sitting behind it), and start position on your screen (the window can be dragged around, but if you have a preferred position you can tell the app to always load it in that preferred spot right from the get go), to stuff like the custom messages you get whenever the timer progresses:

So, yeah. I made a little app meant to help with productivity. One out of many already out there, sure, and it's probably not as cool as many others (but I'll just remind you that three days ago I knew absolutely nothing about PowerShell as a whole, so- I guess that would be still a little impressive that I was able to make a working app like that at all? xD), but as far as I've looked, it's the only one that will let you have your favorite images keep you company while you use it.

I don't know whether anyone other than me will like it enough to use it, but just in case, it's here! Hope it's as easy(-ish) to customize as I made it out to be, or at least close enough.

PS: The version I use for my own personal choices uses some slightly different assets compared to the version I share in the .zip file on my Google Drive. This is because the version I share online solely uses official Outer Wilds art (while the version I made for myself notably uses one piece of OW fanart that I did not make myself, and it didn't sit right with me to share that piece uncredited, even in an edited form. If you are curious, this is the artwork in question).

[mariacallous]

As protests continue to swell across the United States in response to aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions, civilians are turning to homebrew digital tools to track ICE arrests and raids in real time. But restricted government documents, obtained by the nonprofit watchdog Property of the People, show that US intelligence agencies are now eyeing the same tools as potential threats. A law enforcement investigation involving the maps is also apparently underway.

Details about Saturday’s “No Kings” protest—specifically those in California—are also under watch by domestic intelligence centers, where analysts regularly distribute speculative threat assessments among federal, state, and local agencies, according to an internal alert obtained exclusively by WIRED.

A late-February bulletin distributed by a Vermont-based regional fusion center highlights several websites hosting interactive maps that allow users to drop “pins” indicating encounters with ICE agents.

The bulletin is based on information initially shared by a US Army threat monitoring center known as ARTIC. While it acknowledges that most of the users appear to be civilians working to avoid contact with federal agents, it nevertheless raises the specter of “malicious actors” potentially relying on such open-source transparency tools to physically target law enforcement.

ARTIC, which operates under the umbrella of the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Property of the People, a nonprofit focused on transparency and national security, attempted to obtain additional details about the maps using public records laws. The group was informed by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) that all relevant information is “associated with active law enforcement investigations.”

The NCRIC did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

“Law enforcement is sounding the alarm over implausible, hypothetical risks allegedly posed by these ICE raid tracking platforms,” Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People, tells WIRED. “But transparency is not terrorism, and the real security threat is militarized secret police invading our communities and abducting our neighbors.”

The documents identify maps and information shared across Reddit and the website Padlet, which allows users to collaborate and build interactive maps. An “OPSEC” warning concerning the maps was also separately issued in February by the Wisconsin Statewide Intelligence Center (WSIC). That report indicates the sites are being treated as a “strategic threat” and are under monitoring by a special operations division.

WSIC, which could not be immediately reached for comment, warned in its report about persistent online threats aimed at ICE officers, highlighting posts on social media apps like X and TikTok that include messages calling for Americans to stockpile weapons and “shoot back.” While some posts were judged to contain “explicit threats,” most appear to reflect cathartic outrage over the Trump administration’s punitive immigration enforcement tactics, with intelligence analysts noting that many of the users were “discussing hypothetical scenarios.” Nevertheless, the analysts flagged the sheer volume and tone of the content as a genuine officer safety concern.

Each document is marked for law enforcement eyes only—a warning not to discuss details with the public or press.

A separate report obtained by WIRED and dated mid-May shows the Central California Intelligence Center (CCIC) monitoring plans for the upcoming “No Kings” protests. It identifies Sacramento, Fresno, and Stockton, among dozens of other protest sites. The information is widely available online, including on the No Kings website.

The bulletin notes the protests are promoted as a “nonviolent action,” but says the agency plans to produce additional intelligence reports for “threat liaison officers.” It concludes with boilerplate language that states the CCIC recognizes the right of citizens to assemble, speak, and petition the government, but frames the need to gather intelligence on “First Amendment-protected activities” as essential to “assuring the safety of first responders and the public.”

Roughly 2,000 protests are scheduled to take place nationwide concurrent with a military parade in Washington, DC, expected to feature 6,600 US Army soldiers, 150 military vehicles, including 28 M1 Abrams tanks, rocket launchers, and precision-guided missiles.

Protests have erupted in Los Angeles and cities nationwide over the past week in response to a Trump-ordered immigration crackdown and the deployment of federal troops, including Marines and National Guard units, to support law enforcement.

Demonstrators are pushing back against what they view as an authoritarian show of force—as surveillance drones fly overhead and armored vehicles roll through immigrant-heavy neighborhoods. Tensions have flared between protesters and police, fueling concerns about surveillance, civil liberties, and the legality of using military force to suppress civil unrest.

The use of military-grade equipment and limits on troop authority have emerged as key flashpoints in a broader debate over executive power and immigration enforcement.

The No Kings organizers frame the demonstrations as a nationwide day of defiance: “From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, we’re taking action to reject authoritarianism—and show the world what democracy really looks like.”

[melpomenelamusa]

5. What kind of phone do they have and what does it look like?

22. How do they feel about their upbringing?

27. List five of their recent Google searches?

For Chimeras characters!

Hi!!! Thank you for the ask! (from this random oc questions). I´ll answer with Elafi, Warrick, Fidi and Tigri:

5. What kind of phone do they have and what does it look like?

Oh, this one’s hard, because I don’t know anything about phones (like models, styles, and stuff like that).

Elafi has a functional and not-too-expensive smartphone, just enough to have a few games and be able to call Warrick in an emergency. I imagine it looks exactly like it did when it came out of the box, with a transparent case and nothing inside. Maybe someone could convince him to keep a photo in there.

Warrick, like Elafi, has a functional and basic smartphone that he only uses to make and receive calls, send and receive messages, and read the news. Zero decorations. One corner of the screen is cracked, but it doesn’t affect visibility, so he hasn’t bothered to fix it.

Fidi would have the most aesthetic phone ever. She probably downloaded an app to install cute themes, and all her icons are neatly arranged and organized. She even painted her phone case design herself.

Tigri would definitely have a wallpaper of some anime or video game character he likes, lots of downloaded games, and a phone case that fits his tastes. His screen protector is full of scratches too, since he sometimes accidentally damages it with his claws.

22. How do they feel about their upbringing?

Elafi: After everything that’s happened, he’s started to question the pros and cons of his upbringing. He knows his parents did the best they could, that they only wanted to protect him and meant no harm; but he’s also learned to acknowledge that he still has a lot of growing to do. Good thing he has Warrick to finish raising him!

Warrick: It’s not something I have thought much about. I guess his upbringing was fairly normal. He gets along fine with both his parents, who still live together somewhere in the country. He also always got along great with his brother, and they were a close family until Devin’s death pushed him to isolate himself completely.

Ofidia: She doesn’t feel proud of her upbringing. A part of Fidi thinks that if she had stayed with her family, life would’ve been very hard for her alone, as her family tends to have a conformist mindset that always clashed with her creative and ambitious thinking. Maybe she did learn something good from Madame Lavenza over the years...

Tigri: He had a normal childhood. He spent most of his life as his parents’ spoiled only child, until his little sister was born, and he’s always gotten along well with her. His parents instilled important values in him like respect, collaboration, service, and kindness. Tigri is a good kid.

27. List five of their recent Google searches?

Elafi: 1. Chimera children 2. How to plant tomatoes 3. Edible forest fruits and mushrooms 4. Gifts for dad 5. Chimera children origin

Warrick: 1. chimera children 2. how to raise a teenager 3. tracking apps for your kids 4. lavenza schneider 5. chimera children auction

Ofidia: 1. Fashion career. 2. Freelance jobs. 3. How to make money fast and easy. 4. Online fashion design classes. 5. Online graphic design classes.

Tigri: 1. syntaxerror invalid syntax in python 2. how to make a simple game in Unity 3. object collision tutorial 4. panic attack symptoms 5. treatment for nightmares

[the-nox-syndicate]

SysNotes devlog 4 - Editing profiles (part 1)

Welcome back to my SysNotes update! SysNotes is a system management app for people with DID, OSDD, and those who are otherwise plural.

This is part 1 of 3(?) about editing profiles. I have broken them down into somewhat equal length scopes:

Edit the header and image; fundamentals of the editing logic; design justifications

Edit description, history, characteristics (traits, likes, dislikes, triggers), relationships, and categories

Adding custom statuses, characteristics, relationships, and categories

First Devlog (1) | Previous Devlog (3)

Editing profiles

You see this little icon in the corner of a profile?

Originally, this was the icon for toggling edit mode for the entire profile. This means transforming all the text into textboxes and showing the interface for populating empty sections. However, I don't think that is the most elegant approach. It also would be quite messy computationally, because every time you wanted to edit one field the app would need to validate and process all the other fields in addition to the one you edited before it was able to save it.

So what I propose to do now is to have a separate edit icon for each individual section so that you can edit them selectively. To be able to edit the sections I will need to display them all, each with their own edit icon:

(The reason the first line is a darker orange is because it's a main heading, and the other lines are subheadings)

Editing header & main editing logic

Ok, let's transform the name into a textbox when the button is clicked.

First, I created a variable to track whether the user is editing the header or not. At the start, it is set to false:

Then, I created a function that sets the variable to true when the edit button is clicked:

(& #128393; here is just the pencil emoji symbol code; "clear" in "btn-clear" refers to the background transparency, not the action of clearing)

Finally, in my component I check if edit mode is on. If so, a textbox is rendered. If not, it displays just the text:

("@if ($editMode['header'])" is logically the same as "@if($editMode['header'] == true)")

One issue I ran into is that Livewire doesn't actually work correctly with associative arrays such as "$selectedProfile['name']" (when I clicked save, the whole component would stop displaying). So I had to assign the name to a temporary variable called "tempName" for it to be able to refresh correctly.

(And then I had to update the textbox to reference tempName)

Annoyingly, that means I would need to create a separate variable for each editable field instead of dynamically assigning them from the profile itself. It's messy, but it works so I'll roll with it.

Now that we're back on track, let's say Jenny is trans and wants a more masc name, like Jeremy:

Now we need a way to save the new name. Let's add a "submit" and "cancel" buttons when the edit mode is on:

(Again, the codes in red represent the ✔ and ✗ symbols)

For the new name to actually save, we need to validate it to make sure the database can accept it. I copied the validation code from devlog 3 :

(The save code is boring so I'll skip it, I bet you're so sick of code by now) xD

After the name is saved, we need to add a success message and turn off edit mode:

Rinse and repeat (header)

Now if you remember, the header has 4 pieces of information: name, pronouns, status, and origin.

I can follow the same process to create an edit view for the rest of the header components. Now we can add pronouns, status, and origin to the new profile, as well as edit them later:

Drop-downs

I want to show how I did the status and origin dropdowns because I think it's cool, and not overly complex. First, I initialized the variables that will store a list of statuses/that are available to the user.

Then, I did a database query for each one, basically getting the statuses/origins that either have an owner ID of null (available to all users) or an owner ID of the user's ID (custom-added by the user). This is so that you don't have access to another user's custom statuses/origins.

Finally, I iterated over the array (list) of statuses (and origins) and added a dropdown option for each status/origin in the array:

Responsive design (narrow screens)

I haven't really started to work on the mobile design yet, however my header isn't quite fitting on my screen even on desktop:

To make it easier to give edit mode and view mode different layouts, I separated them into 2 parts. As you can see, one is displayed if the edit mode is off, and the other displays if the edit mode is on:

(" @if (!$editMode['header'])" is equivalent to "@if ($editMode['header']) == false" (specifically the "!" symbol))

Next, the CSS framework Tailwind that I'm using for styling has screen breakpoints built in. Here, I used "md:" to display the inputs in 2 columns from medium widths onward, and "xl:" to display the inputs in 4 columns from extra large screens onward. Since I didn't specify the column number for small screens, the inputs will display in one column by default.

(Medium screen:)

(Extra large screen:)

Editing profile image

If you compare a filled profile with the new profile, you'll see that the profile image and description don't have their own headings to attach an edit button to. Having headers wouldn't make sense as the name is already a header for the character bio (image + description).

So where would I squeeze in 2 extra edit buttons, and how would the user know which parts of the profile they're for?

My solution was to add placeholders where the image and the description text would go!

...Aaaand I have just reached the image limit for this post, oops. We're almost at the end of the devlog so that should be alright. All I need to do now is save the image to the database the same way I saved the name etc, and that's this part done!

I will cover editing the description and history in the next devlog as I have some things to say about their format, see you then!

[theculturedmarxist]

> THREAD: The official narrative of how Luigi Mangione was apprehended doesn’t add up. Evidence suggests a deeper surveillance operation involving real-time facial recognition technology. Let’s delve into the inconsistencies and explore the implications. 🧵 Image Image >Considering Mangione’s efforts to conceal his identity, it’s improbable that a fast-food employee could identify him based solely on limited public images. We’re talking about a high-pressure, fast-paced environment where employees process hundreds of customers daily. >But what if the real key to his capture wasn’t human recognition at all? I’ll bet you didn’t know McDonald’s kiosk cameras have facial recognition technology: pointjupiter.com/work/mcdonalds/ >Given the integration of this technology, it’s not unlikely that federal agencies can access these systems for surveillance with real-time facial recognition across multiple venues. The NSA and other agencies already have a track record of using private surveillance networks. >Admitting the feds are running real-time facial recognition surveillance across the country would spark outrage. Instead, they sell a more "believable" narrative that a heroic employee saved the day. >If this is true, it means federal agencies have access to live camera feeds in private businesses, and they’re using AI to scan and identify individuals in real time. Surveillance isn’t limited to fugitives – it could extend to anyone, anywhere.

>This has massive implications for privacy and civil liberties. If McDonald’s can be used as a hub for mass surveillance, what about other chains? Grocery stores? Gas stations? The infrastructure is already there. Image >Kroger has faced scrutiny for using facial recognition tech too – and it’s even more dystopian. Not only are they scanning faces, but they’re linking that data to shopping profiles and potentially altering prices in real time based on your data. aclu.org/news/privacy-t… >This isn’t just about marketing – it’s surveillance capitalism on steroids. Corporations are turning our faces into data points to manipulate our spending, while the government secretly piggybacks off that infrastructure to track civilians. >We should demand transparency. If facial recognition is being used at this scale, we have a right to know. How much data are these companies collecting? Who else has access to this data, such as third parties and law enforcement? How are these technologies regulated, if at all? >We’re at a crossroads. If we don’t push back now, this kind of tech will become the norm. Surveillance will be baked into every facet of our lives, from shopping to dining to simply walking down the street. Image >The Mangione case and Kroger’s practices show us the future: a world where our faces are not just tracked but exploited, both by corporations seeking profit and governments seeking control. >We need transparency and accountability: Clear limits on the use of facial recognition tech, protections against price manipulation based on profiling, and strong oversight of government access to private surveillance networks. >This isn’t just a McDonald’s or Kroger issue – it’s a systemic shift. Facial recognition is becoming the foundation of a surveillance economy, and we must demand better protections now.

[chronic-melon]

Folks, I don’t try to sell ANYTHING to anybody, but this is for the chronically ill folks with limited energy who are trying their best to pace themselves and failing.

I have Hashimoto’s, ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, and chronic migraine. I struggle daily to limit the use of my energy and not overextend myself. I was running out of options and constantly running myself into the ground, having a really bad day and then crashing hard for 3 days or more.

If you’re finding that you struggle with this too, and you think tracking your heart rate and daily symptom severity could help, I highly recommend Visible.

It uses a Polar armband to continuously track your heart rate, and the 2.0 band now has a 5 day battery life, making it capable of sleep tracking. I currently have the 1.0 version, but I’m hoping to switch soon.

If heart rate variability, automatic “spoon tracking” (the app calls them pace points) and real-time medical data you can download and share with your healthcare team seem like good tools for you, then click on the link to explore!

Transparency: if you decide to purchase a membership, please know I receive $20 off the 2.0 armband, and so do you. I don’t receive any money, just a discount on the new band. 💛

And yes, this membership is not financially feasible for a lot of disabled people, especially those on social security benefits. They are working on getting the product to be available through insurance or FSA, but to do that, they need folks to support their research. That’s why I’m enrolled in clinical studies through the app.

Please let me know if you have any questions! This device has seriously changed my life, and I wouldn’t blindly recommend it to my community if I didn’t seriously believe that.

[rideboomindia]

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