✨

why this a bop LMAO

Stop telling people to just orphan their fics.

Orphaning a fic means giving up any and all ownership over it. No way to claim it back, edit it or delete it. Yes it's an archive but an author should still have the right to delete their work if they feel like they don't want it to be up anymore.

Readers always scream for authors to orphan their fics instead of deleting because they feel like they have a right to the fanworks that is shared with them for free. If it's so important to you to not lose a fic, download it. Also comment and encourage the authors, instead of telling them to give up all ownership to their work.

To authors, if you think about deleting your fics, there are other options you should employ first. If you don't want it connected to your name, put it into an anonymous collection. As long as it's in there, noone can see you wrote it, you still can edit ot or delete it and moderate comments on it. You can even move it to anther account, just create another one, add it as co author and then take your main account off. Then you can still edit it from your second account but it's no longer connected to your account.

If you don't want it to show anymore put it in a unrevealed collection, that way, the fic won't show up but it's still there, you can still see it, read comments and make it public again.

If you feel the urge to delete your fic, try one of these options first and see how you feel about it after a while, you can still delete or orphan afterwards, but this hopefully makes your decision easier.

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!!

My meme-ish poster about executive dysfunction, or "The Sits" as we call it in our house. This is to share my experiences with exec. dysfunction, everyone's a little different ☺️

It's the Royal Academy of Art Young Artist's Summer Show. One of my favourite exhibitions of the year. Like. Not only are the older kids insanely talented, the younger ones' artist statements will just punch you right in the face.

Jeffrey is my cat and he feels like my heart

It's finally finished, ya'll! We've reached the end. Thank you all so much for reading, and stay tuned for more stories in this series <3

Chapter Summary: