a silly little guy

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.

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.

I also made a PDF version!!

For comprehensive deets, tomshardware explains

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.

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.

I also made a PDF version!!

For comprehensive deets, tomshardware explains

This is really exciting, linguistically speaking.

Because it’s not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:

ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff

Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.

In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one I’m ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style. 

Here’s what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speech–that is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate “this speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.” Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so we’re talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.

A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of “language.” Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin. 

The tags are absolutely a factor. You want someone to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, you start a new tag. You want to have, as seen here, this removable piece between commas (does it have a name?) - you have 5 tags in this sentence alone. And sometimes you just

pause in the middle of a sentence…

and let your voice

language is this constantly evolving thing tbh, it doesn’t remain the same unless it’s dead and the people who used it gone so seeing the evolution of the language used on tumblr is literally so fucking amazing i want to cry with joy at it

because we also add in words from other languages, or make entirely new words up as additional terms to denote something (see ‘tol’ and ‘smol’ in relation to ‘tall’ and ‘small’) and this is constant. we are doing this daily without any sort of breathing space because there’s millions of us on this hellsite and we are constantly talking and so the language changes day-by-day until we have general, universal rules for what to do in a post, what to add in our tags, how to add it, why we add it, what we mean by it

we’ve created a language in the same way our ancestors all did: by building on the ones that came before and changing them to suit our needs and our system

and that’s fucking awesome okay

What?

What.

And I understand the desire to believe that. If that narrative helps you process what happened to you, that's completely okay. But I do think we can run into problems when we push that narrative onto everyone else.

For one thing, it can make survivors question whether what they experienced was actually abuse.

But they really loved me. If they loved me, it couldn't have been abuse... right?

We tend to talk about abusers in very black-and-white terms. They're evil. They're monsters. They never cared about the people they hurt. And please don't put words in my mouth here. I am not saying abusers are good people, that abuse should be excused, or that they shouldn't face consequences for what they've done.

I'm saying that when we paint abusers as clear-cut villains who couldn't possibly love someone, we can make real-life abuse harder to recognize. Real people are more complicated than that.

Abuse is not an act of love. But I don't believe abusing someone necessarily means a person is incapable of loving them.

An abuser may genuinely believe they love the person they're hurting. They may care about them. They may have good moments with them. None of that makes their behaviour less abusive.

And I think this distinction can matter for people who are engaging in harmful behaviour, too.

Some abusive behaviours are learned. Some people grow up seeing unhealthy or abusive relationship dynamics and repeat them. That does not make the behaviour okay. It doesn't mean the people they hurt have to forgive them, stay with them, or wait around for them to change. Once again, explanation is not excuse. It is still that person's responsibility to recognize their behaviour, take accountability for the harm they've caused, and change it.

But sometimes, “If you loved them, you wouldn't do this” isn't what gets through to someone. They believe they love them. Instead, they may need to hear, “Loving someone doesn't make the way you're treating them okay.”

I have BPD. If you follow my @borderlinereminders blog, you already know that.

Part of what BPD meant for me was that I used to manipulate people. It wasn't malicious. I wasn't sitting there plotting how to control someone. It was a coping mechanism I had developed to reassure myself that people cared about me and weren't going to leave.

And it still wasn't okay.

I had to learn that why I was doing something didn't erase what it was doing to someone else. My intentions mattered for understanding my behaviour, but they didn't erase its impact. I could genuinely love someone and still behave in ways that hurt them. Recognizing that didn't mean accepting that I was secretly an awful person who had never cared about anyone. It meant accepting that loving someone does not automatically mean you're treating them well.

I think we need room for that nuance when we talk about abuse.

You can believe someone loved you and still call what they did abuse. You can believe there were genuine feelings between you and still leave. You can recognize someone's humanity without excusing the harm they caused.

Someone's feelings for you don't make their behaviour okay. Their intentions don't erase their impact. And you don't have to prove that they never loved you in order to acknowledge that they hurt you.

The following items are demonstrated in the video and described in the voice-over:

1. Assorted bump dots - Various kinds of stickers with protruding dots on them that can be put onto appliances to make them more tactile.

2. Pocket money brailler - A device that allows you to imprint braille onto paper notes, indicating their value.

3. Liquid level indicator - A device hung on the edge of a container with metal prongs that detect when liquid has reached it.

4. Braille Pop-It - A pop-it with the alphabet in braille on each bubble.

5. Tactile Rubik's cube - A rubik's cube with unique textures for each color.

6. Braille color clothing tags - Tags with braille to indicate what colour a piece of clothing is.

7. Signature guide - A card with a rectangular slit in it to guide the user when writing their signature.

8. Low vision playing cards - Cards with very large and colorful numbers on them.

9. Pop-A-Cell - A plastic card with 6 bubbles you can indent to practice braille characters.

10. Talking keychain clock - A clock that says the time aloud when you press a button.

problem solving steps

-> Phonics For Adults <-