you are the product

glasshomewrecker: in a silicon valley, throw rocks.

[glasshomewrecker]

Liberation does not come at the expense of autonomy.

In a silicon valley, throw rocks. Welcome to my tech blog.

Antiterf & antifascist (which apparently needs stating). This sideblog does not contain adult material.

[teaboot]

Using Fey Law as a heavy-handed metaphor for corporate IP copyright

[teaboot]

Saying their name will draw their attention.

Using their likeness will spark their ire.

Encroachment upon their domain will earn punishment beyond earthly tithe.

The consequences of their regard may be intangible and long-lasting.

Rarely, you may earn their approval, but it is not worth the risk.

You must ask their permission, which is rarely granted.

Once they have you, they will not let you go for a hundred years.

You must be clever and use trickery and wordplay to evade them.

The master of each domain has their own unique and fickle nature, and some are more forgiving than others.

One must use titles and euphemisms to discuss them without their notice- IE, "The Rat", "The Bird Website"

[katiestottsketchbook]

“For one whole day telegraphic communication was entirely stopped. I am not going to tell you how it was done. I am not going to tell you how the women got to the mains and cut the wires; but it was done. It was done, and it was proved to the authorities that weak women, suffrage women, as we are supposed to be, had enough ingenuity to create a situation of that kind. Now, I ask you, if women can do that, is there any limit to what we can do except the limit we put upon ourselves?”

— Emmeline Pankhurst

[homunculus-argument]

Imagine explaining the concept of a digital footprint to a bronze age shepherd. Not in the "dumb little primitive people could not comprehend such complex technological concepts" sort of way, but imagine how fun and interesting that would be. Like where do you start, what's the most concrete common ground knowledge that you could use for reference and compare things to. Like you know how all the old village grandmas know everyone's shit and gather together to report everyone's children's and grandchildren's shit to each other?

Now what if your nan ran on batteries.

[marlinspirkhall]

Overmorrow's morrow, there's a scribe in every village. These scribes report to one another, exchange scrolls, and even keep a record of every barter and trade made in the region.

Often, merchants keep their own scrolls. Non-traders may access these scrolls through the exchange of tokens: but, instead of giving a token in payment, a reader must accept a token.

The merchant then makes a note on the scroll that they have given their token to the reader. (As an aside: many people can read and write in the future.)

Every merchant has a unique token. Merchants and scribes recognize the tokens of everyone listed in the scroll, and therefore know which trader(s) sent the reader to them. If they make a barter, they may have an agreement that a portion of the trade shall be shared with the previous vendor.

Merchants freely give out these tokens, though they must ask the reader to accept them first (however, they usually tell the reader that they cannot access their scrolls if they refuse to carry their token, so it is not a question of choice).

Overmorrow's morrow, we call these tokens "cookies". We recommend that readers regularly clean out their pockets, as too many cookies can make their journey heavy. It's not uncommon for readers to end up with multiple tokens given by the same merchant. The order in which these cookies are stacked reveals a lot about the journey the reader has taken- this is one example of how their movements can be tracked, and one of many kinds of "footprint" that we leave on the internet. It is a trail better kept than those of an animal through mud, for it cannot be washed away by rain (though Two-morrow's scrolls are susceptible to decay, though they are made of metal, not paper).

We call it "The Internet" as it is a kind of web, though it is woven with connections and words rather than physical thread. The tools we use to access this Web are similar to scrolls, as they are highly-compact, yet carry a lot of information. So, in addition to gaining access to the merchant's scroll, you can also keep a record on your own personal scroll.

The tool on which I'm transcribing our conversation is called a Mobile Phone, for it is portable (mobile), and it can carry sound over greater distances than anyone could shout or walk in a day.

(Funnily enough, the action of searching through written information is called "Scrolling", though you must imagine that you are unfurling the page as you go, like this... Do you want to try? Yes. It is made of a very fine material. It's called "glass". It can be found in nature, rarely... Have you ever seen lightning strike sand? No? Uhhh.... Have you ever seen an angry mountain? Uhhh, like, the ground was shaking and you thought you angered a god. Sorry, I mean, you angered a god. Uh-huh. It killed your cousin? My condolences. Do you remember what the top of the mountain looked like before that happened? If you get sand extremely warm, it looks like that, and you can stretch it and shape it while it's still warm. Well. No, no, it's fine. I think I'm already messing with the space-time continuum enough by showing you this. Anyway, if you press your finger to this square here- it's a type of pocket. And within it, I can retrieve my own information. It's printed flat.)

Accepting a token on your Phone is sort of like that: there's a hidden pocket, but it can be emptied like any other pocket.

Once reader empties their pockets, or removes the token of a specific vendor, they must ask your permission before giving you a replacement token in the future.

Those who have their information written on these scrolls will often find that destroying the information contained within is not straightforward, as these scrolls are copied across several different Phones & hidden in various caves.

There is a library for those who care to visit it by the name of "Wayback". These librarians believe it is in the best interest of us all if they keep a copy of every scroll, and in every stage of the scroll's creation. This can then be checked against other scrolls in order to see how the information has changed over time.

Anytime someone modifies a scroll, someone might make their own copy and transport it to the library of Wayback. There are other libraries such as this, and anyone with their own scroll, scrolls or scroll-making abilities might make a copy of anything that gets written in any scroll, at any time that they please.

So, a "digital footprint" refers to this. "Digital" is the realm of this unseen Web, and, being unseen, it is much easier to leave footprints without intending to, and much harder to scrub them away.

... On second thoughts, I'm going to have to memory-wipe you now.

[victusinveritas]

More here.

Just remember, someone is doing 30 years federal time for zines.

[dollsahoy]

Just because I've had two mutuals in the last uuuuhhhhh ten years talk about thinking their cars were trapped in the garage because the power was out

the garage door opener doesn't actually do much lifting at all--that's all in the springs. we had a spring break six or seven years ago and oof was that a challenge to get our double wide metal door open. but, power goes out? if the springs're intact, opening the door isn't a problem...although our original pull down cord is long gone and we've had to tie something else on that lever

[lightshadowverisimilitude]

Waymo Takes Revenge, Dropping Drunk Teens Directly Into Squad of Cops

A Waymo vehicle delivered two 15-year-olds, who were drinking alcohol and shooting small water beads out of the car, straight to police.

I'm sure it's totally fine and normal and great that the taxi spies on you and will just deliver you directly to the police :)

This definitely can't be something that would be used in an abusive or arbitrary way :)

Law enforcement for sure wouldn't abuse something like this :)

[puipui-official]

This was predicted in 2015

One Star

I got into the passenger seat. There wasn't a driver seat. But after two turns, something felt wrong: the self-driving Taxy was heading the

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

just off the top of my head, this has been a common scifi trope since at least the 90s. pretty easy to predict

[maybuds]

Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen by Johann Hari

[glassmuncher]

Not just stolen--- SOLD. Pawned. Lots of entities stand to hugely benefit from this. Check out this article about how the pharmaceutical industry is trying to shape amphetamines (used to treat ADHD) into the new opioid crisis (used to treat pain). The goal of treating anything is to bring the patient to "health" and "wellbeing." But is there even such a thing in an unhealthy, profit-driven society?

As Dr. Art Van Zee wrote in the American Journal of Public Health in 2009, "One of the cornerstones of Purdue's marketing plan was the use of sophisticated marketing data to influence physicians' prescribing." The Sackler family's pharma giant, he wrote, used "prescriber profiles on individual physicians — detailing the prescribing patterns of physicians nationwide — in an effort to influence doctors' prescribing habits."

oh yeah and the paperclip machines definitely are making things worse.

With AI-augmented advertising, finding yourself targeted only takes a single moment of engagement.... Advertisers systematically target those who are on the verge of buying. A dollar spent on those who've shown interest is seen as far more valuable than a dollar spent on someone who may be a terrible fit for the product.

The predatory selling of Adderall is also aggravating those with the prescribed condition. "In 2022, telehealth prescriptions accounted for 40% of all Adderall prescriptions, driving record usage." Remember the Adderall famine a few months ago? Unfortunately, there's nuance: "telehealth" isn't the problem, the whole system is the problem:

Telemedicine offers a lifeline to millions of individuals without local access to care or who find it too expensive. Instead, we need a middle ground. Rather than restricting prescribers' ability to give medications remotely, we can focus on the promotional and sales tactics that set these firms apart from a family doctor who sees a patient over a video call.

ADHD has always been around, but it wasn't seriously an issue until the modern meta-society founded on making LOTS OF MONEY realized how much easier that can be by taking advantage of quirks of human psychology, like dopamine pathways and such. Your attention was stolen.

[ri5k]

the replacement of websites with apps sounds so backwards when you actually describe it. like hmm you have to download an entire program onto your device each time you want access to a portal, where it takes up storage indefinitely. somebody should invent an app where you can "browse" any portal just by typing in its address... 🥴

[daco-showman]

why can rockstar games institutionalise you for life like nikita kruschev for being autistic

[transhuman-priestess]

He didn't steal 10 million dollars. They made that number up as a loss, they never fucking had it. Rockstar has spent more than a billion fucking dollars on GTA VI and will likely make billions more when it gets released.

Uber is a fucking shell game of a company designed to leech investor capital and output bootleg cabs.

Nvidia posted a profit in 2023 of $4.37 billion. This is like someone stealing less than a penny from me.

And they lock this kid in a prison hospital for LIFE?

Capitalism is disgusting.

[fuckblast]

Nobody should buy GTA til they free Arion Kurtaj

[transhuman-priestess]

What with GTA VI going up for pre-order i'd just like to remind everyone that rockstar conspired with the UK government to lock an 18-year-old away for life for hacking them.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

"What do we learn from all this? Mostly the same thing we learned when the crypto bros repeatedly rediscovered financial fraud, or when effective altruists decided the most effective altruism was to buy themselves a castle, or when ride share companies kept accidentally reïnventing the bus. If you start by ignoring everything that we already know, the best you can ever hope for is to accidentally rediscover the already-known."

- - Rusty Foster, Over Leveraged

[spiralingintocontrol]

taken.

A web page that tells you what your browser gave away the moment you arrived. No login, no form, no permission. Most pages do this. None of

I appreciate this

[algorithmist]

while this website speaks to a real problem, quite frankly I don't think a lot of this is scary on its own and I don't know why this website puts it in a frightening tone. a lot of this information is provided to websites so it can do things like render the page in the language you speak and display the website in a size that fits according to your screen size. your IP address is provided simply by virtue of you using the internet

the real way your privacy is eroded is when these facts are used in combination with one another to attempt to identify you, e.g. "algorithmist uses firefox on linux, speaks english, etc.",

I think the eff's equivalent website is a bit more informative on the way this is a threat to your privacy

[collapsedsquid]

Women Who Use AI Seen As Incompetent; Men Who Use AI Seen As Pragmatic

A 2026 study found that when women and men use AI tools to create identical resumes, evaluators view the women as less competent, while cred

In the new study, Chatoo created an AI-supported resume for a marketing position and asked 1,000 adults in the U.K. to evaluate the candidate during April 2026. The evaluators received identical resumes and were told that the candidate had used AI assistance. The only difference among the resumes was the candidate’s name. Half of the evaluators saw Emily Clarke, while half saw James Clark. Despite identical resume content, the evaluators judged women candidates much more harshly for using AI assistance than men. The evaluators who attributed the AI-assisted resume to a woman were twice as likely to question the candidate’s competency. “She can’t even write a CV herself—not sure she has the skill to carry out the job,” said one of the evaluators of Emily’s resume. [...] The study also found that an evaluator’s own familiarity with AI tools did not eliminate gender bias when assessing others’ AI use. Older evaluators showed less gender bias than male Gen Z evaluators, who are more likely to use AI themselves. Among Gen Z males, 97% rated James as a “strong” candidate while only 76% rated Emily as “strong,” representing a 21 percentage point gender gap.

Men hoarding all the AI

[blackjame]

[glasshomewrecker]

facebook is great bc if a cop doesn't like what you say they have all of your info right there and WILL harass you for life.

[henstomper]

oh my god the slot machine company says i have to keep putting coins in their machine or Im Gonna Get Left Behind. thats so scary. and it has to be true because they know more about slot machines than i do

[henstomper]

oh my god the slot machine company says if we dont give them money to build the world's biggest slot machine the chinese are gonna build it first and win all the prizes. and then there wont be any prizes anymore

[aropride]

why is there an upgrade button on gmail. why does twitter want me to scan my palm to get into my account. why is google a chatbot. why does the transit app make a transit app wrapped for me. why does youtube keep shoving its infinitely scrollable shortform content down my throat. why do my doctor and psychiatrist and therapist want to use an ai notetaker during our appointments. why do free trials want my credit card number. why are most scholarship websites just data brokers. how do i make capitalone stop sending me mail. why is my school making its own special chat gpt powered chatbot. why is every third video on instagram an undisclosed ad. why is nothing online real anymore. why is everything so FUCKING STUPID

[targetedknowledge]

[cryoverkiltmilk]

How to disable Copilot in Windows 11

Completely disable Copilot in Windows 11

You too can get the satisfaction of maiming or killing a spy embedded in your organization.

[sevastiel]

HELL YEAH DESHITTIFICATION!

For everything we do here, please be sure to be careful with what you edit, and restart your computer to lock things in. If you don't have access to the Group editor, (likely to happen if you're on base windows) you can do this as well by opening your Registry Editor app, then inputting this after your 'computer' or whatever the initial segment is. (Mine is computer. If I just try and paste the below string it gets SO mad at me)

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot

Navigating to your "turnoffwindowscopilot", hit modify, and set the value data to 1.

If done correctly, it'll look like this.

While we're at it, you can also get rid of the integrated search, (or that thing where it searches the web when you search anything, whether or not you want it to) and such through regedit as well.

Integrated search will have you going to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

Navigate to your "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions" bit, if you don't see it, you can make it by right clicking and creating a new registry D-Word key of that exact name. Edit the key, set it to 1. It'll look like this if you do it right!

To get rid of Windows Spotlight, (The thing where it pulls up ten billion pages on windows start page, shoving ads in your face and cluttering everything) we go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DesktopSpotlight\Settings

And set "Enabled State" To 0. If you do it right, it'll look like this!

Disabling edge on startup will also help a fair deal with processing speed and the like. This you can do in all sorts of ways, the easiest being turning it off entirely on startup through settings in the like.

If you want to kill it *entirely*, though? :)

In regedit, run along to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft

Navigate to your MicrosoftEdge key subcategory. If you don't see it, you can make one! Note, this is a KEY, not a d-word. *inside* that subcategory, we want to either make or find the D-Word key of PreventLaunchEdge and set that to 1 in the same way as all the others. It'll look like this.

Aaaand while we're here, I'd HIGHLY recommend shanking Killer Networking Services. It's just bloatware. (Ostensibly it's supposed to monitor your network bandwidth and even things out, but that really means it's constantly monitoring and pinging things, which eats up the bandwidth you DO get, and also chunks your computer's processing power.) Getting rid of it entirely is borderline impossible, since it's set to redownload on regular updates and intel is very pushy with its updates.

This you can do by opening your Services.msc, which basically shows you all the background stuff that Windows does. Find Anything with Killer in the name, right click it, go to properties, and disable startup. It should look like this, if done successfully. It will probably reenable itself in time/in later updates for windows, but it's a quick fix. I'd also check your TaskScheduler app to make sure that nothing's scheduled to open up there, either.

If you CAN completely kill Killer services through uninstalling and the like, I would warn that at very least for my computer, the only ethernet/lan support applications that are available ARE Killer's. When you download updates, you really do have to do it manually and ONLY download the ethernet services, or just be cool with not having Lan functionality.

One last thing, not a shit application but is a shit service. If your computer's constantly overheating or just warm, you likely have Turboboost enabled. (Default setting that you can't change) If you want to be able to turn it off and drop your temps by like 40 degrees, in Regedit go to

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\be337238-0d82-4146-a960-4f3749d470c7

(Note- This isn't the string copy paste from the reddit thread, this is mine that does the same thing. If my string doesn't work for you, check the reddit thread string. If that doesn't work either, you can follow the path and find it pretty easily. Probably has like, one letter of difference somewhere. The bits all start the same, though, so it's easy to find.)

and go to "attributes". Set the value from 1 to 2, and now in your advanced Power Plan settings in control panel, you'll be able to *see* turbo boost and turn it off.

It'll look like this, and in power options, a successful disabling of boost should look like this.

Turning off quick startup's also a good call, since that basically stops your restarts from actually shutting things down properly.

GOOD LUCK OUT THERE YALL. MAKE SURE TO CLEAN YOUR PC!

[hunter-rodrigez]

I would like to once again recommend to you all Winero Tweaker, a free program that lets you adjust a bunch of windows settings with a single click instead of digging through 30 different setting screens and registry entries.

There's well over a hundred settings, here's just a few of them:

(sorry the classic taskbar option no longer works with current windows 11 version)

Fair warning: This is a powerful tool which means it can also do some damage if you don't know what you're doing, but every setting comes with an extensive explanation, as you can see in the Ads and unwanted apps screenshot.

This tool will even turn windows 11 from a bloated mess into a (more or less, this tool isn't magic) usable operating system.

[manga-and-stuff]

Some tech advice for you all from my personal blog. I figured the more people see this the better, and I got a lot more followers on this blog.