cyber kev

EDIT: THIS IS A CARRD NOW! it's updated and organized!!

EDIT EDIT: this is on my website now! this is the version that will be somewhat regularly updated. the carrd will remain, but will no longer be updated.

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox or librewolf (open-source fork of firefox) instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega instead of google drive

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

get free stuff with the help of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH, r/piracy and r/roms

use trakt (for shows and movies), letterboxd (just movies), or TMB instead of IMDB (owned by amazon).

use storygraph instead of goodreads (owned by amazon).

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause, ecosia, or ocean hero to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, or tuta instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use project gutenberg for free public domain books, and librivox for public domain books and audiobooks

use the seal app (android only) to download video and audio

use ellipsus instead of microsoft word or google docs

use mastodon instead of twitter

use peertube to create a network of small video hosting providers (disclaimer: not a 1:1 alternative to youtube)

use threema and signal for encrypted communication, on mobile and desktop

use qwant and startpage for secure internet browsers

use syncthing to securely transfer files between devices

learn how to jailbreak your kindle/ereader if you have one (wiki and video walkthrough)

use riseup’s email and VPN for secure communication (aimed towards activists)

use cryptpad and collabora instead of the microsoft office suite

use google takeout to export the data on your google account

use library extension to look for books on online stores and find them at your library

remove paywalls with removepaywalls

install the open-source adblocker ublock origin

install sponsorblock to skip sponsored segments on youtube videos

use bookfinder to look for the cheapest available listings of books, including textbooks

learn a language through mango (duolingo laid off some of its employees and now relies on AI translations) for free with a library card or through your school

edit photos with photopea

edit pdfs with foxit and sumatrapdf

download music with doubledouble

take notes offline and collaborate securely with obsidian

for android tv, use smarttube and cloudstream (ad-free, open-source)

change your OS to linux

sooo lots of people are looking for alternatives now that mozilla announced firefox is going to intregrate ai so here are some options

vi mucha gente mal por lo de que firefox se va a llenar de ia también así que les traigo alternativas !!!

1. Vivaldi:

this is the one i personally use and i loved it. i was a previously opera user and had to move when they started putting some crypto shit, and it didn't disappoint. it's pretty customizable, it can be as minimal or complete as you want it, it comes with ad block, tracker blocks and proton vpn (tho you can easily take it off). openly spoke about ai not being needed everywhere and very privacy friendly. they're still chromium based so you can use any extension that works on chrome

2. Waterfox

open source fork for firefox for those who want to keep using firefox extensions and functionalities. you can look around the code and modify it even if you're tech savvy. they also stated having no intention of including ai in the browser and are very privacy focused.

3. Hellium

naalbraxusmazkelix.neocities.org is even simpler, to resemble something built in the late nineties.

Your sites remind me so much of web 1.0 and it’s beautiful. I love this. Please keep doing this. Please keep expressing yourself.

Please everyone bring this back. Bring back personality, bring back individuality, bring back fun

And if you’d like to have a fine pairing to go with your website, I suggest going to proboards.com and setting one up. Still want social media, but want a smaller and more close-knit community without the same constant fear of some rando finding you and sending you threats, or something accidentally going viral and giving you a panic attack? Individual forum communities. You make your own rules, you can make your own aesthetic, and if you use add-ons or know CSS you can get a lot of customization. Also, forum signatures! They’re a great quick little way of expressing yourself! Use imgur.com to host your images! 

Seriously, Forums are AMAZING for sharing both long and shortform content, shitposts, art and writing, everything! Love roleplaying? They’re the best and most organized way to do that and be able to have everything tidily archived and easy to search for!

And best of all, you don’t have shit like twitter’s algorithm breathing down your neck or promoted shit being shoved in your face!

Friends!

There are resources to make it easier!!

And you don’t have to make a website that looks like a shining, professional corporate product. You can just kind of slap some colours and images on a webpage and add to it from there, as you learn. I learned to build basic websites when I was 10. It’s a little more work than just signing up for a social media profile and filling out a few forms, but it’s so incredibly rewarding when you start to see your idea taking shape.

And there’s a whole community of people out there who want to see you succeed and would be happy to help. Check out the Yesterweb, they’ve got a Discord community and a Mastodon instance and even a Minecraft server. Sadgrl/Sadness, who runs the community, is super sweet and helpful. They’ve got a ton of manifestos from community members about why it’s so important to bring back the spirit of the old web. Oh, and they hate crypto, so you know they’re not just a bunch of tech bros.

I’ve also seen people in the notes saying “But nobody’s going to follow me there.” That is always a concern when it comes to moving to any new space on the web, especially if it’s outside the big social media platforms, but even though I’m a huge supporter of reducing and/or entirely removing your presence on the big platforms, there’s no one saying you can’t stay on them in order to keep in touch with the people who matter to you — or even to use those platforms to promote your site! I’ve distanced myself from Facebook, for example, but I still have an account there and keep the Messenger app open. I’ve set it so I appear offline to everyone, but I’ve told the people I care about that I’m still there and they can reach me any time, I just won’t look like I’m online. You can use status updates/tweets/posts/whatever to tell people “Hey, I added an art gallery to my website!”, “Hey, I added my latest fic to my website!”, “Hey, if you’ve ever wanted to learn everything there is to know about snow leopards, they’re my special interest and I’ve built a web shrine to them now, so check it out at this link.” You can set up a guestbook or a forum on your website to keep the lines of communication open. And Neocities is set up in such a way that you can make new connections with other people in the community. So not only can you still keep in touch with everyone you still want to keep up with, but you can also make new friends and follow new people!

Really, the only big drawback is that you’d have to accept that it’s a bit of a slower space. The old web wasn’t about a constant deluge of new content from one source — it was about exploration. It was about going down rabbit holes and finding all the weird content that makes you happy in a bunch of different places, and keeping those sites bookmarked for whenever you want to check them out again rather than following their feed. But you even can follow them on a feed — even if they’re not on Neocities — if you use RSS. And with RSS, there’s no algorithm and no advertising. It’s just simple, chronological updates.

Fight the corporatization of the internet. Make personal websites and have fun doing it! It’s yours! You’re not selling to anyone. Build a shrine to your favorite characters like the old fandoms did. Build a virtual pet site. Create a hub for your favorite collection of things. Connect with other site owners and make webrings! Make a professional portfolio of your art and/or crafts. Make a personal journal/blog/whatever.

Do anything! Btw Search.Marginalia is a search engine that filters out corporations websites and only shows sites like this. Go browse around there. There’s a lot of old time capsules from the 90s and early 2000s mixed with modern sites that are maintained today. :)

You can learn everything you need to here!

You can even copy and paste the code you want into your document. And if you want to test and edit your code before doing it on neocities, there’s free versions of Visual Studio Code you can download. With the right plugins, you can host a temporary view of your website so you can bug test and edit the appearance of it.

I will say as a warning, some features on neocities (certain file types for example) are locked behind paid subscriptions, so even if you can accomplish it in VSC, you may not be able to have it on neocities unless you pay for it. I can’t afford to pay for it rn, but from what I’ve seen of other people’s sites (and depending on what you want on your own) it’s worth it.

But even if you can’t afford to pay or don’t want to, you can still do a lot of amazing things on there! My website is set as a portfolio and fandom shrine for example! It’s still fairly minimalistic compared to other sites, but I’m still working on it. (If you’re on mobile, I haven’t configured it for your devices yet, so some visuals may look weird, sorry).

I've been making some app icons to use on my computer, and I put most of them on my website. :)

If you would like a specific one, send me an ask. There are also some templates for making your own :)

se eu fosse um peixinho e soubesse nadar, eu tirava. . . 🫧 – random icons 🪸 do fundo do mar 🌊

More buttons here.

RANDOM BUTTONS FOUND ON THE REMNANTS OF THE EARLY WEB DURING A SURFING SESH FROM EARLIER TODAY.... ENJOY?

[Free] Masterlist Headers & Dividers!

RED AND WHITE FRAMES⠀⠀☆⠀⠀made by me.⠀⠀reblog to use.⠀⠀ do not repost.⠀⠀ can recolor.⠀⠀©⠀⠀ this is reuploaded, hence the old username.

Disclaimer: this is an obscenely long explanation, with pictures. Efficiency is stupid

So, for the static ones, I make a 99x56 px file on ibis paint x. Other programs are probably available online but I don't use them.

After that, I either upload an image I want to make into a stamp, or I draw one.

Then, I find a frame I want to use. Ill upload them here but let it be known I stole all of these right from deviantart

Most of them are from Lil-Devil-Melii on deviantart. The rest i have no idea. They're not all 99x56px but you can crop the canvas it's fine

Make sure to erase the edges of the picture , so they're transparent. It's not as cute otherwise

Upload those frames over your image in whatever art program you're using and viola, stamp.

For moving ones, it's a lot harder. Mostly because I refuse to download Photoshop.

There are a couple ways to do this. Some are simple animations, like with flashing text and whatnot. For these, you download the individual animation frames from your art program. Make sure it's transparent.

Then, upload each frame to ezgif.com under the option "GIF maker." You can play around with how fast each frame goes and whatnot but in the end, it'll be a stamp with some rad text that moves. This is easy, and doesn't make me want to shit my pants and cry. If you're new, do this. This is fun. This is good. This does not kill me inside

I made that↓ stamp with this method :)

this next one is how we turn gifs into stamps. This one makes me sad. It involves math and sucks. But we gotta do it. For the vibe

First, grab your gif. I'm using this cow gif because it's awesome

Then, I resize it using ezgif. Literally everything for this will be using ezgif. I am a simple man

At this point you should decide what frame to use. I'm using this one because its the first one I clicked

Figured out what size the inside of the frame is. That's what I resize the gif to, so the edges can be transparent. The inside of this one is 93x50 px, so those are the dimensions I'm making the gif.

Figure it out by putting the frame into ibis paint and realizing the canvas to fit just the inside of the frame, then seeing what the dimensions are. But there could be easier ways

Woah it's so small now

Then, still on ezgif, I go to the "crop" option.

Make sureeee to upload the smaller gif

press the button that says "extend canvas size", and then put the "width" and "height" as the dimensions for your FRAME. This'll put a bit of a transparent border around the gif. For this frame, I did 99px and 56px.

The "left" and "top" boxes show how many pixels the cropping happens from the edges of the canvas. The formula for finding that is

(width of gif / 2) - (difference between gif width and frame width / 2) = left box

For me it's (93 / 2) - (6 / 2) = 43.5

Then you do the same.for the height, which for me ends up being 22 from the top

This is reallyyy touchy and annoying though

Here's my result , with no visible difference

Okay so THEN you go to the "overlay" option, under "effects." And upload your frame. If the cropping was done right, you shouldn't have to move the frame at all and can just download it

Here's my result:

if you don't care about transparency, you can resize your gif to be the same size as the frame, and then put the frame over it. But I'm a slut for transparency

Anyways. I'm sorry if anything was unclear, it's two am. And I hope this was helpful :) these really are fun to make once you get it down