Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
Other important quotes:
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.
Two things back that up:
There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
Here's the complaint filed to the court, the primary source for the case mentioned in the article. You can find mentions of GDID on page 30 of the document or 34 of the PDF.
Possibly my spiciest take is that it's actually good to have people you respect and like that have some dogshit takes.
I think part of what is making young people lonelier, in discussing why they're increasingly isolated, is that they're so afraid of meeting someone who doesn't hold their same beliefs, and instead of being just core beliefs it is kinda ancillary shit.
It's actually okay to disagree even on social topics! Even on some political ones! But I mean, online you can start with "i love this mutual but they have a really bad/uninformed opinion about x media"
I know this is IMMEDIATELY going to be taken in bad faith, and yes babygirl, you are so right, I DO want you to go make best friends with both the KKK grand wizard AND your nearest nazi leader.
But seriously, as someone who has spent two decades doing community organization: finding ways to connect with different people is so so so important. There are people i follow here who ate 80% smart and their brain falls out of their head 20% of the time and that is GOOD FOR MY MENTAL ECOSYSTEM AND GOOD FOR LEARNING HOW TO BE A PERSON
dare i add, sometimes you can disagree with your friend about something and no one's brain is falling out of their head at all. sometimes reasonable minds can differ. i would actually specifically recommend against assuming either one of you is objectively right about anything remotely complex.
[image: reply by sataidelenn: "I’ll see people post about how you need to be doing FBI-level background checks on everyone you have even the briefest of interactions with and cut all contact with anyone who disagrees with you on anything, and then two minutes later they’ll wonder why they’re so miserable and lonely all the time. It’s a mystery."]
Please return us to a world where Notp and squick are used for a ship you don’t like instead of just making up a load of bullshit about how immoral it is or w/e lol
a short selection of concepts and phrases that used to be commonplace in fandom and we’d really benefit from making that a thing again:
NOTP: the opposite of an OTP (One True Pairing). It is a ship a fan strongly dislikes. The word is a portmanteau of ‘no’ and ‘OTP’ and thus is not a contraction of any particular phrase.
Squick: anything that is a deep-seated, visceral turn-off. Squicks may be shared by many fans or be specific to one; one person’s kink may be another person’s squick.
YKINMKATO, or kink-tomato: Your Kink Is Not My Kink, And That’s Okay: used to indicate support for fannish diversity and to distinguish between disapproval or kink shaming and simply having different taste.
DLDR: Don’t Like, Don’t Read: a phrase used to warn against complaints about an aspect of fic or meta. A “live and let live” philosophy of fandom, which places the responsability for avoiding content one doesn’t want to see on the side of the fanwork consumer, rather that on the creator’s.
SALS: Ship And Let Ship: similar to the above specifically about shipping tastes.
YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary: a phrase used to acknowledge that any given individual’s personal opinion on the topic at hand may differ due to their own tastes, standards, values, experiences, etc.
As the OP points out, all of these crucially imply no moral judgment of what they’re designing.
(definitions lifted more or less wholesale from fanlore’s relevant pages)
i really cannot stand the character archetype in film of the "unpopular nerdy ugly girl" being portrayed by the most conventionally attractive, thin, clear-skinned actress ever you cannot tell me that amanda goddamn seyfried was some fugly lesbigay loser as a foil to megan fox you cannot tell me beloved babyfaced winona ryder was a social outcast at her school you cannot convince me that rachel sennott and ayo edebiri are notoriously "ugly, untalented gays" even riverdale lampshaded this by fully acknowledging that cheryl shouldnt have starred as carrie in the school play and it shouldve been ethel cause ethel is The Fat One Nobody Likes and ethel even IS chubby enough that you could actually consider her "fat" but she's still an acceptably Cute type of fat but in the end she STILL gets denied the role anyway. real ugly and/or fat girls are straight up not allowed to exist on camera even when the narrative tells you they're there they're not actually there. im just so tired. where is the acne. [flinging myself against the walls of my padded cell] where is the acne where is the acne wwhere is the fucking acne
i think transfems should be allowed to be good at sports.
sometimes a trans woman wins against a cis woman. sometimes a cis woman wins against another cis woman too. yet only one of them is allowed to win without facing consequences.
it's not enough to support transfems in sports if your support hinges on us being bad at them.
Whenever I have to make a difficult phone call, I always make sure to freak myself out really bad about it first and imagine every worse case scenario that could happen where they track me down and rip my heart out of my chest for daring to call with bad news. I do this for at least 30 minutes and for up to three hours before I make the call and then, yup, you guessed it, the phone call goes just fine and they're not even mad at me. And then i make sure not to learn from that so that I can still get really scared next time too.
Nerd/Dork/Geek @nonegenderleftgalaxy - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
