Back to the trees!

One of them needs to be a cartoon duck like Donald, Scrooge, etc.

One of them needs to be a cartoon duck like Donald, Scrooge, etc.

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.

Guided tutorial on how to install Ubuntu Linux (one of the most popular distributions)

Once a live usb has been created, you can test out these operating systems on any windows computer without erasing windows. So you can test drive switching over without any long term commitment by just putting in a USB and booting from it.

If you're adventurous or techy, its also possible to create a multi distro live USB using ventoy. Other popular distros include fedora (rolling release), pop_os! (popular for window tiling, development), cachyos (more gaming focused).

I'm writing a rise fanfiction in which I needed Warren and Hypno to help the turtles and one of my first ideas for them becoming not evil is that they straight up didn't know the turtles were teenagers and when they find out they're like "well, obviously we can't fight kids, that's objectively bad" so they just stop being evil, or at the very least stop fighting the boys. I ended up going with a diff idea but I still really loved this concept so now it's a lil comic.

Also, forgive the weird cropping on the third panel, I could not for the life of me figure out how to draw their legs so I just hid them lol. I straight up didn't even try to draw Raph's after failing Leo's and Mikey's.

ok, proton handed payment info over to swiss authorities, who then helped the fbi. if you start indiscriminately fearmongering about all proton services because of it (and implying that they can send more info than they have) then what are people switching to? people have to use email. not everyone is going to switch to tuta mail or whatever. but even if they did, they have paid plans too, which would likely be susceptible to the same issue. and if they decide, fuck it, there's no point, i'll just go back to using gmail instead, that puts everyone at way more risk than continuing to use protonmail.

it's also fine and good to say that people shouldn't be putting incriminating stuff in any emails. but we don't know that the fbi tracked them down through incriminating emails. they knew somehow that the account was associated with the stop cop city protestors, which could've very well been because their handle was stopcopcity at proton dot me or something. (i don't know if that was the case!) and then the payment information associated with that account was used to track someone down.

Clearly nobody understands this needs to be spoken about! How dare! They're just telling me to fuck off! They're clearly hiding something--

Where. On earth. On the modern internet. Can someone "examine" their reasoning behind having a rape kink. In a way that's allowed and won't be inevitably reported to hell and back or at minimum subject to harrassment telling them to delete it. Where on earth are you even imagining that you "should" be finding the things you're allegedly looking for.

like- fanboy/stalker child Timothy Drake; knows his parents suck and he decides he wants a new dad. and who would be fucking better than the man he knows for a fact to be Batman?! i want Tim to straight-faced no fear just march up to Bruce during some kind of event with guardianship papers he's already forged his parents signature on, deciding to face-to-face randomly ask this man to be his new dad.

Bruce is not paying attention to anything this kid says, by the way. Bruce is trying to leave the event because Jason's with him and he wants the kid to get an early night before school the next morning. there's press and people asking for pictures swarming the street between him and his car. it's too loud, he's got Jason clinging to his hand and trying to keep up from behind, and there's so many people clamouring for his attention that when this little kid somehow manages to slip up to his side, paper and pen in hand, that he vaguely remembers as one of the kids in his neighbourhood, Bruce just quickly scrawls his signature where the kid points and then tries to shove the paparazzi back again.

Jason's the only one who notices, having tuned out all the other visual and audio mess because he trusted Bruce to handle it. when he sees the glee on Tim's face his hand slips from Bruce, and while the man steps away to demand everybody clear a pathway to his car for him and his kid, he leans over and actually reads what Bruce just signed.

he looks at the paper. he looks at Tim. he looks at the paper.

it's genuinely the funniest fuck up he's ever seen the man do. he visibly has to hold back laughter as he claps Tim on the shoulder and solemnly declares, "welcome to the family, weirdo." before Bruce reaches back to grab him by the sleeve and tug him away again.

See this quite a bit in long-running comics - superman, batman, etc - that go through different waves of good/bad/polarizing/etc. since they've been around for so long.

And sometimes, even the money-driven remakes/reboots in film are good, too.

But sometimes, they are bad.

I would contrast with Star Wars - some of the most interesting pieces in the franchise came from "extended universe" stuff (KOTOR, prequel trilogy, Mandalorian, etc.), but some of the stuff has not been great (don't want to get into details of what I personally dislike for obvious reasons). And it gets even more contentious when "new" stuff overwrites "old" stuff (like with the legends/canon retcon in star wars... though we've also seen this in comics many times as well).

But arguably, the original trilogy itself almost feels like a separate story/universe from everything surrounding it. It's not just a case of consumerist/profit-driven greed, it's an inevitability of having so many different writers work on a franchise (and this is going back to original EU books), even if there is some central direction from one person. Same could even be said for ATLA vs Korra - I didn't dislike Korra, but they are fundamentally different stories, even if they are within the same "universe" and have a lot of the same creators.

Perhaps DC comics being my first "big" fandom has inured me to some of this stuff... not liking a new author or new retcon just means I don't buy the new stuff, it doesn't mean I'm not going to engage with the old stuff any more.

And I can also understand getting frustrated when there's too much "new" stuff in fandom content (whenever I look up Flash fanfiction, I end up excluding everything tagged with CW stuff. And the CW show was well-received, but it wasn't what I saw as Flash).

I don't know when the right time is to "kill" a story/franchise. And that's not even getting into fanfic/fanart/etc. where you are repeatedly beating the "dead horse" of the franchise, albeit for love and not money.

And maybe that's part of it, too - I loved the Mandalorian tv series. And I enjoyed the Mandalorian & Grogu movie - but structurally, the movie was not good. If all of the characters in it were completely brand new (e.g., I didn't already have an emotional connection with the franchise), I probably would not have enjoyed it. There wasn't the same level of detail payed to the emotional/philosophical throughline that I would expect for a good story. Frankly, I struggle to identify what the film's internal conflict actually was.