#Data and IT services

[fruitfulchaos]

GO BURN CD'S. GO FILL PHYSICAL DISCS. PIRATE EVERYTHING. DOWNLOAD BOOKS, MUSIC, GAMES, SHOWS, FILMS. SAVE SNAPSHOTS ON WAYBACK. FUCK THE MEDIA COMPANIES. STREAMING ISN'T FOREVER. PURCHASE ISN'T OWNERSHIP. FORGE THE OWNERSHIP WITH YOUR OWN HANDS. MAKE MEDIA YOUR BITCH. STAY VIGILANT. I LOVE YOU.

[cherriesforheaven]

elle n vlad 2025

[doyoulikethis-videogame-song]

Question regarding the "must be officially released" rule. Am I misinterpreting this, or isn't this gonna exclude a massive chunk of especially older games that didn't have a CD release and have not since been added to streaming?

Also, how does this rule regard games with an in game way to listen to the soundtrack, like a sound test menu? How are games like the Mother/Earthbound series treated, that don't have a full soundtrack release, but have partial releases that sometimes feature covers and remixes, but not the originals?

Really sorry if you're already putting this into the FAQ and this ask is redundant.

If the game is officially released, the music counts as officially released! That rule is literally just so people don't try to submit leaks/unreleased tracks/unfinished tracks. (Easter egg tracks or tracks left in the code of a non-live service game count as 'officially released).

[odinsblog]

If you're on Twitter/X, you may have noticed a sudden stream of high-profile accounts heading for the exits. And no, it's not (just) about the election.

This exodus is thanks to a new Terms of Service document, which takes effect on November 15. Although the company isn't talking about it, the new ToS gives owner Elon Musk the right to use your tweets, photos and videos to train his AI bot, Grok.

The option to opt out of Grok training, something users currently have, may still exist in your settings the following day. But it also may not matter, legally speaking. Nothing about opting out is mentioned in the document you are required to sign. And it doesn't appear to make a difference if your account is locked: So far as this ToS is concerned, Grok gets to feed on it anyway.

Oh yes, and following free speech is no longer free. You'll be on the hook for $15,000 in damages if your account accesses more than a million tweets a day. Not even the hardest of hardcore Twitter junkies will reach that number, but many researchers do. For anyone who tracks hate speech on X, this will have a chilling effect. The Knight Institute for the First Amendment at Columbia University calls it a "disturbing move" for a supposed free-speech advocate.

Disagree with anything in this document, or any other changes going forward? According to the ToS, your only legal recourse is to fight the world's richest man in one court in rural Texas, many miles from X HQ in Austin. This happens to be a court where a judge who may still own a pile of Tesla stock has already given Musk favorable rulings.

Don't want Elon Musk to feed your feed to his pet AI? There is, alas, only one way out of it now: delete your account.

(continue reading)

[bulbagarden]

what did he do wrong answers ONLY

[definetly]

Mozilla Firefox has started sharing and selling your data and has now implemented a terms of service.

TL;DR: Mozilla has done the following to Firefox (edit)

They removed from their FAQ a statement that they'd never sell or collect your data. (So much for "never")

For the first time ever, they added a Terms of Use for Firefox which includes the ability to bar you from using Firefox for any reason by adding a Termination clause to their new Terms of Use.

Mozilla claims that there they're changing the language of 'selling of data' to avoid potential lawsuits due to "the broad and vague language of 'data selling'"; which could legitimately be true.

Alternatives

If you want a good alternative that doesn't do that, try out LibreWolf, a more private fork of Firefox, or LadyBird, which doesn't include clode from other browser.

Librewolf:

Ladybird

[chamiryokuroi]

Of my team of 5 developers I am the only one with frontend/UI experience (yay fullstack developers let’s go!) and I swear to god if I get asked another question I am going to lose it.

Why on gods green earth are you still writing code when you haven’t even tested the page actually fucking loads??? “I wanted to finish it all before testing” that’s not how things work you dumbass!

I have resorted to linking them the React documentation instead of trying to explain it.

[thats-highly-significant]

Can’t concentrate watching Star Trek when Data’s on screen. It’s just an endless loop of Whatever You Say Beautiful in my mind

[chicago-geniza]

It was funny to interact with Agnes at Night Owls and have her be polite and attentive when we spoke during the intermission vs. interacting with her as a cashier at the bookstore and having her be quite rude, not in the inadvertent overly brusque autism way, but in the manner of so many UChicago professors who simply treat customer service workers like sub-sentient automatons lol

[pvposeur]

Prevent Third-Party Sharing

Friendly reminder to go to your settings and enable Prevent third-party sharing via https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/[USERNAME]. All you have to do is replace [USERNAME] with your own username, scroll all the way down to the bottom, and you're good to go. And down below is a list of everything that will not be shared with Tumblr's own licensed network of content and research partners, including those that train AI models.

[alyfoxxxen]

DOGE Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data | WIRED

[elbiotipo]

I think what really kicked in my whole rants about internet privacy was that time I went to Google and it showed my home city address right there on the bottom, even after I told it not to use my location. I remember a time when that was an unthinkable breach of privacy. Now they were almost flaunting it. It's like "yes, we know where you are, what are you gonna do about it?"

In fact, you log into Google Maps and the first thing it offers you, before anything that could be used as a service like say local events, is a prompt to enter your home and work address. It's insane.

It was always insane, actually, and I know ticking some boxes won't exactly stop all the data collection. But it was almost insulting to me. It really opened my eyes to say "oh, this has gone too far". I've always used Firefox and other free software, but now that everything is turning to shit, I'm accelerating my plans to move away from Google, Microsoft, Meta, and basically everything else.

[thirtyknives]

Back Up Often, Back Up Local.

Hey kids, it's your local elder millenial coming at you live to remind you that anything on a cloud server or a social media network (including this one) is not to be considered secure. If you have artwork or writing you value, back up often, and back up local. Storage space is cheap, get yourself some USB sticks or an external drive and store that shit, or god forbid, if you're lucky enough to have access to an optical drive every so often burn a disc of archived works. There is no promise that an online server you post to will be there tomorrow. I've just learned that ello shuttered overnight and took down all the artwork stored there. It's no big one to me because I store local, but there's a lot of people who are hurting due to the loss, and I've been there kids. I did heaps of really interesting writing and artwork that I published on servers that don't even exist anymore. Even well maintained, well loved servers reach the end of their lifespan and are switched off, decommissioned, and or compromised. Power outages, natural disaster, the works - keep it in your own hands, and you know exactly where it is and what state it's in.

If you have questionable living arrangements or dangerous people around you that make your art or writing insecure at home, the next best thing is to email to a trusted friend and get them to download and store local.

Storing across multiple platforms is better than nothing, I guess, if you don't have that option - so Google Drive and Protondrive, multiple different email addresses (mail them back and forth) and private posts on networks on which you don't usually publish (Dreamwidth is still going strong and is actively involved in fighting restrictive social media laws - they deserve your attention).

If you write in Google docs, for the love of pterry back it up or post it privately somewhere else once it's done.

No one tells the young people, so I am going to - back up often, and back up local. If you live through your art, keep it in your own hands. Do not trust corporations to keep your shit safe for you, and remember - you can never have too many backups.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I hate that every drive thru begins with a recording of a white person asking me about mobile orders. No, I'm not using the app, let me talk to a human PLEASE.